Political Thought 2

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Contents
1. KARL MARX .....................................................................1

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................1
Historical Materialism .......................................................................................................4
Class Struggle...................................................................................................................6
Revolution ........................................................................................................................8
Theory of the State ............................................................................................................9
Dictatorship of the Proletariat ............................................................................................9
Communism ................................................................................................................... 10
THEORY OF ALIENATION ................................................................................................. 10
2. ANTONIO GRAMSCI ......................................................... 14

Concept of Power and Hegemony .................................................................................... 15
Concept of Ideology ........................................................................................................ 18
Role of intellectuals......................................................................................................... 18
Philosophy of Praxis........................................................................................................ 20
Concept of Historical bloc ............................................................................................... 20
Gramscian view of state .................................................................................................. 21
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 22
Popular comments: ......................................................................................................... 23
3. NEO-MARXISM ............................................................... 24
CLASSICAL MARXISM ON STATE ..................................................................................... 24
Lenin’s View on End of State ............................................................................................ 25
NEO MARXIST’S VIEW ON STATE: MAIN FEATURES........................................................... 27
MARXIAN PERCEPTION OF ALIENATION .......................................................................... 31
CONCEPT OF ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN ............................................................................ 31
SOCIALISM ..................................................................................................................... 35
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4. FEMINISM ...................................................................... 36
Feminism: Nature and Evolution ....................................................................................... 36
Sex and Gender ............................................................................................................... 38
Radical Feminism ............................................................................................................ 42
5. HANNAH ARENDT ........................................................... 46

BOOKS BY HANNAH ARENDT........................................................................................... 46
CRITICISMS AND CONTROVERSIES .................................................................................. 51
POWER ........................................................................................................................... 51
IDEOLOGIES .................................................................................................................... 54
Ideology and Totalitarianism ............................................................................................ 57
6. FASCISM........................................................................ 60
Factors Responsible for the Rise of Fascism .................................................................... 60
PERCEPTIONS OF POWER ............................................................................................... 63
1 KARL MARX
(German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary)
Life Sketch: He was born in 1818, at Travis, like Saint Ambrose. Travis had been profoundly influenced by the
French during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, and was much more cosmopolitan in outlook than most
parts of Germany. His ancestors had been rabbis, but his parents became Christian when he was a child.
He married a gentile aristocrat, to whom he remained devoted throughout his life. At the university he was
influenced by the still prevalent Hegelianism, as also by Feuerbach’s revolt against Hegel towards materialism.
He tried journalism, but the Rheinische Zeitung, which he edited, was suppressed by the authorities for its
radicalism. After this, in 1843, he went to France to study Socialism. There he met Engels, who was the manager
of a factory in Manchester. Through him he came to know English labour conditions and English economics.
He thus acquired, before the revolutions of 1848, an unusually international culture. So far as Western Europe
was concerned, he showed no national bias. This cannot be said of Eastern Europe, for he always despised the
Slavs. He took part in both the French and the German revolutions of 1848, but the reaction compelled him to
seek refuge in England in 1849. He spent the rest of his life, with a few brief intervals, in London, troubled by
poverty, illness, and the deaths of children, but nevertheless indefatigably writing and amassing knowledge.
INTRODUCTION
The present unit aims at examining and explaining the principles of Marxism, which is the most revolutionary
ideology of our age. Along with liberalism, Marxism ranks as the most important philosophy of our time.
Liberalism, Idealism and Marxism are the three important theories of Political Science. C.L Wayper has divided
various views regarding the state into three parts, viz., the state as a machine, as an organism and as a class.
In other words, the organic view of the state, the mechanistic view of the state and the class view of the state.
The organic view is idealism, the mechanistic view is liberalism and the class view is Marxism. The present unit
is subdivided into the definition of Marxism, Utopian and Scientific Socialism, Revolutionary and Evolutionary
Socialism, the main principles of Marxism, a critique and a conclusion. The main principles of Marxism are
seven, viz., Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism, Theory of Surplus Value, Class Struggle, Revolution,
Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Communism. The concept of Alienation and freedom generally associated
with younger Marx or the humanist face of Marxism has also been dealt with.
WHAT IS MARXISM?
Marxism generally refers to the ideas of the German philosopher, Karl Marx. But Marxism does not mean
exclusively the ideas of Marx. It includes the ideas of Marx, Friedrich Engels and their supporters, who call
themselves Marxists. Thus, Marxism refers to the body of ideas, which predominantly contains the ideas of
Karl Marx and the subsequent development and addition to his theories. Marxism is a living philosophy. Marxist
thinkers are continuously contributing to the philosophy of Marxism. Thus, the saying that Marx is dead, but
Marxism is still alive. The Marxist philosophy existed even before the birth of Karl Marx. This is the reason
David Mclellan has written three volumes on Marxism, viz., Marxism before Marx; Thought of Karl Marx and
Marxism after Marx. Similarly, the Polish thinker Leszek Kolakowski has authored three volumes on Marxism.
The point once again is that Marxism does not mean only the ideas of Karl Marx.
UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

As said earlier, Marxism existed before Marx. These are known as the early socialist thinkers. Karl Marx calls
them Utopian Socialists. They were utopian, because their diagnosis of the social ills was correct, but their
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remedy was wrong. It was impracticable, and therefore, they were called utopian. The world ‘utopia’ was derived
from a novel of Thomas Moore titled, ‘Utopia.’ It refers to an imaginary island, called Utopia, where a perfect
socio-economic- political system existed. There was no exploitation and people were happy. Some important
utopian socialist thinkers are Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, Saint Simon, Sismondi and Proudhon.
Marx calls his socialism as ‘Scientific Socialism’. It is scientific, because it offers the economic interpretation
of history by using the scientific methodology of dialectical materialism. It explains not only the true causes
of exploitation, but also offers the scientific remedy of revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat to cure the
social ills of exploitation. It not only offers scientific reasons for class division and also struggle in society, but
also provides for a scientific mechanism to establish a classless and exploitation less society.
EVOLUTIONARY & REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM

Socialism is further divided into evolutionary and revolutionary socialism. Evolutionary socialism does not
believe in revolution and wants to attain socialism through peaceful means. Evolutionary Socialists have faith
in parliamentary democracy and want to bring social change through the ballot. They eschew violence and
so, are opposed to a violent revolution. They also do not subscribe to the dictatorship of the proletariat and
advocate a peaceful democratic transition from a class divided to a classless society. Fabian Socialism, Guild
Socialism, Democratic Socialism is all various types of evolutionary socialism.
Revolutionary socialism, on the other hand, believes in class struggle, revolution and the dictatorship of the
proletariat. According to them, social change cannot be peaceful. It has to be violent. A peaceful revolution
is a contradiction in terms. Revolution is the midwife of social change, and this revolution must be violent.
Revolutionary Marxism is generally identified with the scientific socialism of Karl Marx. Syndicalism is also a
type of revolutionary socialism.
Evolutionary socialism also traces its roots from the ideas of Karl Marx and Engels. They have talked about
the withering away of the state. Exponents of evolutionary socialism have picked up the theory of withering
away of the state, and argued that gradually through peaceful means, social change can be effected and
an exploitation less and classless society can be established. However, the critics of evolutionary socialism
do not accept this thesis, and argue that the idea of withering away of the state applies only to the socialist
state or the dictatorship of the proletariat and not to the capitalist state. It will never wither away. It has to be
smashed through a violent revolution. Therefore, the logic of evolutionary socialism is flawed.
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM

The basic tenets of Marxism are the following: dialectical materialism, historical materialism, the theory of
surplus value, class struggle, revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat and communism. Now, these principles
will be discussed in detail.
Dialectics comes from the Greek ‘dialego’, to discourse, to debate. In ancient times dialectics
was the art of arriving at the truth by disclosing the contradictions in the argument of an
opponent and overcoming these contradictions.
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
Marx agreed that history unfolded according to a dialectical plan, but he did not believe the controlling factors
to be ideas. Hegel, he declared, had turned history on its head. Ideas did not control reality. They were rather
the result of material conditions. In a famous passage in Capital he stated, “To Hegel . . the process of thinking,
which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [creator]
of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary,
the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of
thought. If the entire world of natural phenomena is essentially materialistic and if, further, the whole of it is
fully knowable, how then its development is to be studied and known?
According to Marx, that is possible only with the aid of the laws of dialectics. The first principle of dialectics is
that nature is not an agglomeration of unconnected things, that the world is characterised by an interdependence
of things. Secondly, since every component of the world is essentially a matter the world is never static but is
in a state of continuous movement and change, for there can be no matter without motion or, to put it more
precisely, motion is the mode of existence of matter. Thirdly, the change that so occurs always implies a
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qualitative change in a progressive direction; it represents an onward and upward movement—a development
from the lower to the higher state of things. Fourthly, this development is achieved only through a struggle of
opposites. Everything, according to Marx, embodies an internal contradiction, for everything has its negative
and positive sides in the sense that it represents something which is disappearing and something which
is developing, and development results from a struggle between these two opposites. It is for this struggle
that development is never a simple and smooth affair. It proceeds not in a straight line, but in spirals ; it is
a development by leaps, catastrophes and revolutions. That is to say, the internal contradictions, whenever
intensified, force a sudden violent break that ushers in a radical, qualitative change.
Marx’s and Engels’ dialectics is taken from Hegel, with some modifications. The three most
important dialectical laws are:
1. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa.
2. The law of the unity of opposites.
3. The law of the negation of the negation.
In Hegel’s dialectical system, development is the emergence of a logical contradiction and
its subsequent sublation. In this sense, development is the birth of the internal negation of
the previous stage, followed by the negation of this negation. This leads to the emergence
of “a new concept, a higher, richer concept than the previous one, for it has been enriched by
its negation or opposite; it contains in itself the old concept, but it contains more than this
concept alone, and it is the unity of this and its opposite” (Moscow). Radical change in a
given quality—the shattering of the old and the birth of the new—constitutes a leap. A leap is a
transition from an old quality to a new one, from one measure to another. “What distinguishes
the dialectical transition from the undialectical transition? The leap. The contradiction.
The interruption of gradualness” (V. Lenin). The transformation of a phenomenon from one
qualitative state to another constitutes the unity of extinction and origination, of being and
nonbeing, of negation and affirmation; this is in line with the law of the unity and struggle
of opposites. A leap includes the moment when the former phenomenon is replaced by the
emerging one; the qualitative and quantitative changes mutually condition each other, in
accordance with the law of the negation of the negation. In reality the transformation of
one phenomenon into another involves interaction between qualitative and quantitative
changes, which pass through a series of intermediate phases. Moreover, the various phases
in the change of a given quality signify a change in the degree of that quality, making it
in fact a quantitative change. From the point of view of quantitative measurements, this
transformation over time appears to be gradual, but from the point of view of qualitative
measurements it is a leap.
WHAT IS DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM?

Dialectical materialism is the scientific methodology developed by Marx and Engels for the interpretation of
history. Dialectics is employed to discover truth by exposing contradictions, through a clash of opposite ideas.
Hegel refined it by developing the trilogy of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. It is popularly known as the
Dialectical Triad. Progress or growth takes place through the dialectical process. At every stage of growth, it is
characterized by contradictions. These contradictions induce further changes, progress, and development. The
thesis is challenged by its anti-thesis. Everything contains within itself the element of its being (thesis) and
the contradiction to it (anti-thesis). The being is permanent, but the contradiction is transitory. The true
elements of both the thesis and the anti-thesis are fused together in a synthesis. This evolved synthesis
during the course of time becomes a thesis and so, it is again challenged by its opposite anti-thesis,
which again results in a synthesis. This process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis continues until the
stage of perfection is reached. In this evolutionary process, a stage will come, when there will be no more
contradiction after they are destroyed at different stages of evolution. It will constitute the perfect stage
and the final synthesis, and so, there will be no further growth. The dialectical process will come to an
end after arriving at the perfect truth. It is the contradictions, which move the dialectical process and a
complete elimination of contradictions marks the end of the dialectical process itself.
Dialectics means contradictions in the very essence of things. Everybody is seen in the
contradictions of its opposite and these contradictions form the very basis of social change.
Social change is possible in the society because of the existence of opposite tendencies in the
society. Something new has to come.
THE MATERIALISM IN MARX

For materialism, Marx is highly indebted to the French school of materialism, mainly the French materialist
thinker Ludwig Feuerbach. It is the matter, which is the ultimate reality and not the idea. The latter is a
reflection of the former. How we earn our bread determines our ideas. It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their existence but, on the contrary, it is their social existence that determines their
consciousness. Marx has observed that “Hegel’s dialectics was standing on its head and I have put it on
its feet”. Hegel has developed dialectical idealism. For him, it is the idea, which ultimately matters. Ide
lies in the base or the sub-structure, which determines everything in the superstructure. Society, polity,
economy are in this superstructure which is shaped by the prevalent dominant ideas of the age. Ultimately
it is the idea, which matters, and the other things are only its reflection. Marx replaced idea with matter.
According to Marx, the material or the economic forces are in the substructure and the idea is a part of the
superstructure. Idea is the reflection of material forces. The economic forces determine the idea and not
vice versa. Thus, Marx has reversed the position of idea and matter. This is the reason that he claims that
“in Hegel it was upside down and I have corrected it”. The base or the substructure consists of the forces of
production and the relations of production. These two together constitute the mode of production. When
there is a change in the forces of production because of development in technology, it brings changes in
the relations of production. Thus, a change in the mode of production brings a corresponding change in
the superstructure. Society, polity, religion, morals, values, norms, etc. are a part of the superstructure and
shaped by the mode of production.
The example of class struggle in societal change is undoubtedly the best example of a
contradiction in a fully dialectical process. The exploited class and the exploiting class
are relationally defined and opposed in their essential interests. During most of the history
of class society, an exploiting class has been the dominant class, but during a period of
social revolution and the post-revolutionary period of consolidation the relative positions of
dominant—dominated switch. During the period of consolidation and construction of the new
social formation the two classes disappear into a social structure which may possess new
classes or even a single class, depending on the concrete case. Many other socio-historical
processes display a dialectical character, as the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. aptly
demonstrate.
Historical Materialism
Marx modified the dialectic of Hegel, and discovered the key to the movement of history in
the struggle between classes under the pressure of economic forces. As Marx observed, ‘in
Hegel’s writing dialectics stands on its head ; one must turn it the right way up again’. Head or
human thought is the superstructure imposed on a material or physical basis.
According to Marx, all historical changes are determined by the modes of production which
constitute in them the economic forces. Any change in the mode or technique of production
causes a change in the pattern of relations between men and men or what Marx called the
relations of production. In his Misery of Philosophy Marx observed : ‘In changing the modes of
production mankind changes all its social relations. The hand mill creates a society with the
feudal lord ; the steam mill, a society with the industrial capitalist.’
Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialism to the interpretation of history. It is the
economic interpretation of world history by applying the Marxian methodology of dialectical materialism. The
world history has been divided into four stages: primitive communism, the slavery system, feudalism and
capitalism.
Marx and Engels identified four main stages of past historical development: (a) primitive communism in which
forms of production are slight and communally owned; (b) ancient slave-owning society in which the means
of production are owned by masters and labour for production is done by the slaves; (c) medieval feudal
society in which the means of production are owned by feudal lords and labour for production is done by
the serfs; and (d) modern capitalist society in which the means of production are owned by capitalists and
labour for production is done by the proletariat—the propertyless workers. At each stage, society is divided into
antagonistic classes; the class which owns the means of production and controls the forces of production,
dominates the rest, thus perpetuating tension and conflict. At each stage of historical development, the forms
or conditions of production determine the structure of society. Thus ‘the hand-mill gives you society with the
feudal lord, the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist’. The structure of society will in its turn breed
attitudes, actions, and civilizations. Therefore ‘all the social, political and intellectual relations, all religious and
legal systems, all the theoretical outlooks which emerge in the course of history, are derived from the material
conditions of life’.
THE DIFFERENT HISTORICAL STAGES AS EXPLAINED BY MARX:

Primitive communism refers to the earliest part of human history. It was a property less, exploitation
less, classless and stateless society. Means of production were backward, because technology was
undeveloped. The community owned the means of production. They were not under private ownership
and so there was no exploitation. Stone made hunting weapons, the fishing net and hooks were the
means of production. The entire community owned these. Production was limited and meant for self-
consumption. There was no surplus production and so there was no private property. Since there was no
private property, there was no exploitation. Since there was no exploitation, there was no class division.
Since there was no class division, there was no class struggle. Since there was no class struggle, there
was no state. It was, thus, a communist society, but of a primitive type. Though life was difficult, it was
characterized by the absence of exploitation, conflict and struggle.
The ancient slave owning society is divided into masters and slaves. Masters are the haves and the
slaves are the have nots. The slaves carry out all the production work. The masters live on the labour
of slaves. They exploit the slaves and whenever the slaves resent, the state comes to the rescue of the
masters. Thus, the state serves the interests of the master class. It uses its coercive powers to suppress
the voice of the slaves.
The slave system is succeeded by feudalism. Technological development leads to changes in the
means of production and this brings about corresponding changes in the relations of production and
the superstructure. The slave system is replaced by the feudal mode of production and it is reflected
in the society, polity, morality and the value system. The division of society into feudal lords and peasants
characterizes feudalism. The feudal lords own the means of production, that is land, but the peasants carry
out the production work. By virtue of ownership of the land, the feudal lords get a huge share of the produce
without doing anything. Thus, the feudal lords are like parasites, who thrive on the labour of peasants. Feudal
lords exploit the peasants and if the peasants ever resist their exploitation, their resistance is ruthlessly crushed
by the state, which protects and serves the interests of the feudal lords. The peasants are a dependent and
exploited class, whereas the lords are a dominant and exploiting class.
Capitalism succeeds feudalism. Technological development continues and so there is change in the
forces of production, which leads to a mismatch between the forces of production and the relations of
production, which is resolved through a bourgeois revolution. Thus the contradiction between the forces
of production and the relations of production is resolved. The feudal mode of production is replaced
by the capitalist mode of production. Division of society into the bourgeois and the proletariat class
characterises capitalism. The bourgeois class owns the means of production, but the proletariat class
carries out the production. Proletariats are the industrial workers.They sell their labour in lieu of meager
wages. It is usually a subsistence wage, which is sufficient only to support them and their families, so
that an uninterrupted supply of labour force can be maintained. Production is not for consumption by
the self, but for profit. The desire to maximise profit leads to a reduction in wages and a rise in working
hours. This further deteriorates the lot of the working class, which is eventually pushed into a situation,
where it has nothing to loose except its chains. This paves the way for the proletariat revolution.
BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

Base and superstructure are two linked theoretical concepts developed by Karl Marx, one of the founders of
sociology. Simply put, base refers to the forces and relations of production—to all the people, relationships
between them, the roles that they play, and the materials and resources involved in producing the things needed
by society. Superstructure, quite simply and expansively, refers to all other aspects of society. It includes culture,
ideology (world views, ideas, values, and beliefs), norms and expectations, identities that people inhabit, social
institutions (education, religion, media, family, among others), the political structure, and the state (the political
apparatus that governs society). Marx argued that the superstructure grows out of the base, and reflects the
interests of the ruling class that controls it. As such, the superstructure justifies how the base operates, and in
doing so, justifies the power of the ruling class.
THEORY OF SURPLUS VALUE

Marx has developed the theory of surplus value to explain the exploitation in the capitalist society. Here, Marx
was influenced by the theories of classical economists. According to Marx, labour is the sole creator of value.
Of the four elements of production—land, labour, capital and organisation— three are sterile or constant, and
only one is variable. Land, capital and organisation are sterile they are capable of reproducing only what is put
in them. They do not change their value in the of production. Only labour is a variable element. It is capable of
reproducing a surplus over and above its equivalent. Labour produces two values : (1) necessary value and (2)
surplus value. Necessary value is equal to the wage which the labourer gets in exchange of his labour. Surplus
value is appropriated by the capitalist. This surplus value is the profit of the capitalist. The rate of surplus
value, according to Marx, indicates the degree of exploitation of by capital. ‘The rate of surplus value (degree of
exploitation) is defined as the ratio between surplus value and the variable (wage) capital. “This arises from the
dominating economic position that the capitalist enjoys because of his ownership of the means of production.
Hence, with the state ownership of the means of production, the source of surplus value will be eliminated, and
labour will secure the full share of his product.
For instance, if a worker has created a value of say Rs. 25,000 in a month and has been paid Rs.
15,000 as wages, then the remaining Rs. 10,000 will constitute the profit of the capitalist. Thus,
the worker always creates more value than he is actually paid. This surplus value created by
the worker is the profit of the bourgeois, which has been defended by the classical economist,
because it leads to capital accumulation, which is invested further in new industries and
enterprises and leads to growth and prosperity. For the Marxists, it is the exploitation of the
workers, which has to be abolished.
With the growth of capitalism and the rise in competition, the wages of the workers continue to fall and reach
the stage of subsistence level. Subsistence wage is the minimum possible wage; beyond this the wage
cannot be reduced. It is the minimum possible wage for the survival and perpetuation of the labour force.
Thus, cut throat competition in capitalism leads to deterioration of the lot of the proletariat. This intensifies
class struggle and eventually leads to revolution.
Class Struggle
In Marxist theory, the constant struggle between the dominant and the dependent classes
which began with the emergence of private property. The dominant class comprised of the
owners of means of production. The dependent class, which thrived on labour, was oppressed
and exploited by the dominant class. Their interests cannot be reconciled. This struggle
has entered its decisive phase under capitalism. After socialist revolution, this struggle will
continue till a classless society comes into existence. In this phase, working class will use its
power to liquidate the remnants of capitalism.
According to Marx, the history of all hitherto existing society has been the history of class struggle. Except
the primitive communist stage, all historical ages have been characterised by the antagonism between
the dominant and dependent classes or the haves and the have nots. This antagonism is caused by class
contradictions; it is the result of exploitation by the property owning class of the property less class.
Throughout history, there have been two contending classes in every epoch. In the slavery system, they were
the masters and the slaves, in feudalism, the feudal lords and the peasants and in capitalism, the bourgeois
and the proletariat. The masters, the feudal lords and the bourgeois are the owners of the means of production.
However, it is the slaves, the peasants and the proletariat, who carry out production, but their produce is taken
away by their exploiters and in return, they are given just enough for their survival. By virtue of the ownership
of the means of production, the property owning class exploits the propertyless class. This is the main source
and cause of class struggle. The interests of the contending classes are irreconcilable. No compromise or
rapprochement is possible between the contending classes. The inherent contradictions of contending classes
of every epoch can be resolved only through the annihilation of the exploiting classes.
MARX’S THEORY OF CLASS

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels comment that the history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggles and treated individual primarily as a member of a class. Analysis of class divisions and
struggles is especially important in developing an understanding of the nature of capitalism. For Marx, classes
are defined and structured by the relations concerning (i) work and labour and (ii) ownership or possession
of property and the means of production. These economic factors more fully govern social relationships in
capitalism than they did in earlier societies. While earlier societies contained various strata or groupings which
might be considered classes, these may have been strata or elites that were not based solely on economic
factors – e.g. priesthood, knights, or military elite. The main classes in capitalism are the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. However, other classes such as landlords, petty bourgeoisie, peasants, and lumpenproletariat also
exist, but are not primary in terms of the dynamics of capitalism.
Bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie or capitalists are the owners of capital, purchasing and exploiting labour power,
using the surplus value from employment of this labour power to accumulate or expand their capital. It is the
ownership of capital and its use to exploit labour and expand capital is key here. Being wealthy is, in itself, not
sufficient to make one a capitalist (e.g. managers in the state sector or landlords). What is necessary is the
active role of using this wealth to make it self-expansive through employment and exploitation of labour.
Proletariat: The proletariat are owners of labour power (the ability to work), and mere owners of labour power,
with no other resources than the ability to work with their hands, bodies, and minds. Since these workers
have no property, in order to survive and obtain an income for themselves and their families, they must find
employment work for an employer. This means working for a capitalist-employer in an exploitative social
relationship.
Group Basis: For Marx, classes cannot be defined by beginning observation and analysis from individuals, and
building a definition of a social class as an aggregate of individuals with particular characteristics. For example,
to say that the upper class is all families with incomes of $500,000 or more is not an adequate manner of
understanding social class. The latter is a stratification approach that begins by examining the characteristics
of individuals, and from this amassing a view of social class structure as a whole. This stratification approach
often combines income, education, and social prestige or status into an index of socioeconomic status, creating
a gradation from upper class to lower class. The stratification approach is essentially a classification, and for
Marx classes have meaning only as they are real groups in the social structure. Groups mean interaction
among members, common consciousness, and similar types of behaviour that are connected in some way
with group behaviour. Categories such as upper class, middle class and lower class, where those in each
category may be similar only in the view of the researcher are not fully Marxian in nature.
Classes are groups, and Marx discusses the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, not individual capitalists and
individual workers. As individuals, these people may be considered members of a class, but class only acquires
real meaning when it the class as a whole and the social relationships defining them that are considered. For
example, “The bourgeoisie ... has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. ... “ (Giddens and Held).
Here the bourgeoisie is historically created and is an actor in politics, economics and history.
In terms of individuals as members of classes, they are members of a class as they act as members of that
class. To the extent that individuals are considered in the social system, they are defined by their class. For
Marxists, class structures exist as objective facts, and a researcher could examine class and membership of a
class, but would have to understand the nature of the whole social and economic structure in order to do so. To
the extent that these members act in society, they act as representatives of their class, although Marx would
leave some room for individual freedom of action.
Property and Class: Classes are formed by the forces that define the mode of production, and classes are
an aspect of the relations of production. That is, classes do not result from distribution of products (income
differences, lender and borrower), social evaluation (status honour), or political or military power, but emerge
right from relationship to the process of production. Classes are an essential aspect of production, the division
of labour and the labour process. Giddens notes:
Classes are constituted by the relationship of groupings of individuals to the ownership of private property in
the means of production. This yields a model of class relations which is basically dichotomous [since some
own and others do not, some work and others live off the fruits of those who labour]: all class societies are built
around a primary line of division between two antagonistic classes, one dominant and the other subordinate.
An elite is not necessarily a class for Marx. Examples of elites are military elites, priests or religious leaders, and
political elites – these may may very powerful and oppressive, and may exercise formal rule at a certain time
or place. An elite could form a class, but a political or military elite is not necessarily a class – an elite may be
based on recruitment (rather than ownership) and may not have much ultimate say in determining the direction
of society. Or the elite may be based on religious, military, political or other structures. This would especially be
the case in pre-capitalist or non-capitalist societies. For Marx, and especially in capitalism, domination came
from control of the economy or material factors, although it was not confined to this. Thus, the dominant class
was the class which was able to own, or at least control, the means of production or property which formed
the basis for wealth. This class also had the capability of appropriating much of the social surplus created by
workers or producers. An elite may have such power, but might only be able to administer or manage, with real
control of the means of production in the hands of owners.
Class as Social Relationship – Conflict and Struggle: At several points, Marx notes how the class defines
itself, or is a class only as it acts in opposition to other classes. Referring to the emergence of the burghers or
bourgeoisie as a class in early capitalist Europe, Marx notes how,
The separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another
class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. (Giddens and Held)
Both competition and unity can thus characterize a class; there can be very cut-throat competition among capitalists,
but when the property relations and existence of the bourgeois class is threatened, the bourgeoisie acts together to
protect itself. This becomes apparent when rights of private property or the ability of capital to operate freely comes
under attack. The reaction of the bourgeoisie may involve common political action and ideological unity, and it is
when these come together that the bourgeoisie as a class exists in its fullest form. In commenting on France, Marx
notes that the French peasantry may be dispersed and lacking in unity, but
In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life,
their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter,
they form a class. (Giddens)
It is when the peasantry as a group is in opposition to other classes that the peasantry form a class. These
quotes do not provide an example of the same with respect to the proletariat, but in his other writings Marx
noted that the proletariat is a true class when organized in opposition to the bourgeoisie, and creating a new
society.
Class, for Marx, is defined as a (social) relationship rather than a position or rank in society. In Marx’s analysis,
the capitalist class could not exist without the proletariat, or vice-versa. The relationship between classes
is a contradictory or antagonistic relationship, one that has struggle, conflict, and contradictory interests
associated with it. The structure and basis of a social class may be defined in objective terms, as groups with
a common position with respect to property or the means of production. However, Marx may not be primarily
interested in this definition of class. Rather, these classes have meaning in society and are historical actors
only to the extent that they do act in their own interests, and in opposition to other classes. Unlike much other
sociology, Marx’s classes are defined by class conflict.
Revolution
Class struggle paves the way for revolution. Class struggle is imperceptible, but revolution is perceptible.
Intensification of class struggle prepares the ground for revolution. Class struggle is a long drawn affair, but
revolution is short, swift and violent. In the words of Marx, ‘revolution is the indispensable mid-wife of social
change’. Transition from one historical stage to another occurs through revolution. Feudal revolution brought
an end to the slavery system; the bourgeois revolution ended feudalism and the proletariat revolution will
bring an end to capitalism. Thus, any epoch making social change is always brought about by a revolution.
Revolution occurs when there is incompatibility between the means or forces of production and the relations
of production. To resolve this incompatibility, revolution occurs, which brings corresponding changes in the
relations of production and the superstructure to make it compatible with the forces or means of production.
Technological development brings changes in the means of production. The hand mill gives you a society
with the feudal lord, and the steam-mill, a society with the industrial capitalist. Proletarian revolution will be
the last revolution in the annals of history. Revolution occurs to resolve contradictions. So revolution will not
take place, if there is no contradiction in society. After the proletarian revolution, there will not be any further
revolution, because there will be no contradiction. However, revolution will take place only when the forces
of production have fully matured. Revolution cannot be advanced or postponed. It will occur when the forces
of production have matured and do not match the relations of production. Revolution brings an end to this
mismatch.
The sequence and direction of social evolution cannot be changed. No stage can overleap another stage.
No stage can be short-circuited. Primitive communism will lead to the slavery system, the slavery system to
feudalism and feudalism to capitalism. Dictatorship of the proletariat or socialism will succeed capitalism,
which is the penultimate stage of social evolution. Dictatorship of the proletariat will eventually lead to the
establishment of communism. With the proletarian revolution, revolution itself will come to an end.
Theory of the State

As we have previously observed, Marx regarded the state as a reflection of prevailing economic forces. It
is part of the class struggle. Engels observed that the state comes into being when the governing class
finds it needs the protection of an organized coercive power to maintain existing property relationships.
The state is nothing more than organized oppression. The ruling economic class “by force of its economic
supremacy becomes also the ruling political class, and thus acquires new means of subduing and exploiting
the oppressed masses. The ancient state was therefore the state of the slave-owners for the purpose of
holding the slaves in check. The feudal state was the organ of the nobility for the oppression of the serfs and
dependent farmers. The modern representative state is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labour.
As the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, the state’s primary task is to provide law, order, and stabilized
economic relationships. This is made increasingly difficult, however, by the previously mentioned self-
consciousness of the working classes and by their growing militancy. The state, through its police power
and through hired armies, will seek to continue oppression because no ruling class will voluntarily relinquish
such an advantage; but it must ultimately fail in the face of the unrelenting dialectical forces of history. At a
point when proletarian pressures equal the forces of the bourgeoisie a revolution will follow.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The proletariat revolution will lead to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is also known
as the socialist state. The state apparatus created by the bourgeois to oppress the proletariat will be taken
over by the proletariat themselves. Now, the table will be turned and the proletariat will use the state apparatus
against the bourgeois. The bourgeois will try to stage a counter-revolution to restore the old system and so,
the coercive institutions of the state are needed to restrain the bourgeois.
The state has always been the instrument of oppression. The dominant class to oppress the dependent class
has created the state. It is a class instrument. The state protects and serves the interests of its creator, which
is the property owning class. This class has always been in a minority, whether it is the masters or the feudal
lords or the capitalists. Thus, a minority has been oppressing a majority viz., the slaves or the peasants or
the proletariat through the coercive organs of the state. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the first
time the state comes under the control of the majority. Now, for the first time, the state’s coercive apparatus
is used by the majority against the minority.
According to Marx, all states have been dictatorships and so the socialist state is no exception. It is also a
dictatorship. The state has always been used by one class to suppress the other class. In the socialist state,
the proletariat class will use the coercive organs of the state such as the army, the police, prison, judicial
system etc., against the bourgeois class. Marx argues that if democracy means the rule of the majority, then
the proletariat state is the most democratic state, because for the first time in the annals of history, power
comes into the hands of the majority. Before the proletariat state, power has always been in the hands of the
minority. So if majority rule is the criterion, then only the proletariat state can be called a democratic state.
Communism
Under the living care of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialist state will blossom forth into communism.
Socialism is a transitory stage. It will pave the way for the eventual emergence of communism, Which is
stable and permanent. This will be the phase of social evolution. After the establishment of communism,
there will be no further social change. The dialectical process will come to an end. A perfect, rational social
system will be established, free from antagonisms and contradictions.
There will be no class contradictions and so, no class struggle. Infact communism will be a classless,
stateless, private propertyless and exploitationless society. In a communist society, there will be no private
property in the form of private ownership of the means of production. The means of production will be under
the ownership of the community. Cooperation and not cutthroat competition will be the basis of communist
society. Production will be for consumption and not to earn profit.
Profit motive will be replaced by social needs. Since there will be no private property, there will be no
exploitation. Since there will be no exploitation, there will be no class division, no property owning and
propertyless class, no haves and have nots or no dominant and dependent class. Since there is no class
division, there is no class struggle and so no need of the state. This is the reason why a communist society
will be a classless and stateless society.
State is the instrument of exploitation. It is a class instrument and a result of class division in society. Since
there is only one class of workers in communism and no other class to suppress or oppress, there will not be
any need of the state. It will become redundant in a communist society. It will be relegated to the museum.
The state, however, will not be smashed; it will gradually wither away. Communist society will be governed
by the Louise Blanc principle of ‘from each according to his capacity to each according to his need’. There
will be no place for parasites. He who will not work will not eat also. There will be only one class of workers.
The entire society will be converted into the working class. There will be no place for exploitation. It will be an
egalitarian society. There will be harmonious relationship among the people.
THEORY OF ALIENATION
There have been two disƟnct phases in the Marxist philosophy. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
of 1844, present the human face of Marxism. In the Manuscripts, capitalism has been analysed
without reference to class antagonism, class struggle and violent revoluƟon. Here, the evil influences
of capitalism have been explained through alienaƟon and loss of idenƟty and freedom. These views
of Marx have been idenƟfied with a younger Marx. There occurs an epistemological break in Marx’s
philosophy with the wriƟng of Communist Manifesto in 1848. The later Marx is known as mature
Marx, who developed the theory of scienƟfic socialism. Marx’s earlier ideas were discovered only in
1932, with the publicaƟon of the Manuscripts.
The theory of alienaƟon is an important Marxian concept. The Hungarian Marxist George Lukacs had
developed the theory of alienaƟon enƟrely on his own even before the publicaƟon of Manuscripts
in 1932. However, the concept of alienaƟon became popular only aŌer the publicaƟon of the
Manuscripts. Marx has idenƟfied four levels of alienaƟon. Firstly, man is alienated from his own
product and from his work process, because the worker plays no part in deciding what to produce
and how to produce it. Secondly, man is alienated from nature. His work does not give him a sense
of saƟsfacƟon as a creaƟve worker. Under mechanisaƟon, work tends to become increasingly
rouƟnised and monotonous. Thirdly, man is alienated from other men. The compeƟƟve character
of the capitalist system forces everyone to live at someone else’s expense and divides society into
antagonisƟc classes. Lastly, man is alienated from himself. The realm of necessity dominates his life
and reduces him to the level of an animal existence, leaving no Ɵme for a taste of literature, art,
and cultural heritage. The capitalist system subordinates all human faculƟes and qualiƟes to the
condiƟons created by the private ownership of capital and property. The capitalist himself, no less
than the worker, becomes a slave of the tyrannical rule of money.
THEORY OF FREEDOM
The Marxian view of freedom is fundamentally different from what has been characterised
as the ‘bourgeois individualistic view of freedom’. In the capitalist system, the Marxists argue,
the concept of ‘freedom’ has always been a symbol of the individual’s separation from society.
The freedom of the individual is thus a kind of private acquisition of an isolated person who
regards other people in the society as his rival in the constant struggle for wealth, status and
life. The Marxist critique of the bourgeois theory Of freedom has influenced the structure and
working of the state in capitalist society. Attempts have been made to bring about institutional
changes to bridge the gap between the state and the individual.
As a humanist philosophy, Marxism is primarily a philosophy of human freedom. Freedom consists not only
in securing material satisfaction of human needs, but also in removing the conditions of dehumanisation,
estrangement and alienation. The capitalist system is characterised by necessity as opposed to freedom.
Necessity refers to the conditions under which the inevitable laws of nature govern the life of man. These
laws of nature exist independent of man’s will. Man can acquire scientific knowledge of these laws, but
cannot change them at his will. Freedom does not consist in an escape from necessity. Freedom lies in the
knowledge of these laws of nature and the capacity to make these laws work towards the definite end of
the emancipation of human society. Thus, a sound knowledge of the productive forces operating behind the
capitalist system and a programme to make these forces work toward human ends were essential instruments
of human freedom. Only a programme of socialist revolution would accomplish humanity’s leap from the
kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The emancipation of human society and the realisation of
true freedom is possible only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of communism.
A CRITICAL APPRAISAL AND AN OVERVIEW

Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to predict the following:
1. The income gap between the capitalists and the workers would increase. More and more independent
producers would be forced down into the proletariat, leaving a few rich capitalists and a mass of poor
workers.
2. Workers’ wages, with short-lived expectations, would remain at a subsistence level.
3. The rate of profit would fall.
4. Capitalism would collapse because of its internal contradictions.
5. Proletarian revolutions would occur in the most industrially advanced countries (Singer)
Many (nearly all) of these predictions, did not come true as Marx failed to take into account the changes within
capitalism. He did not anticipate or comprehend its tremendous resilience. By the late nineteenth century,
capitalism stabilized itself. Historical developments did not validate many of Marx’s observations, which
became increasingly obsolete in the twentieth century. Besides these, there was a basic error in the model
which was that he failed to take cognizance of the fact that “a hatred of capitalism need not lead to socialism”
(as it could) “take other political directions” (Shklar). The operationalization of democracy, extensive social
security cover and labour welfare laws had improved the working conditions and the position of the working
class. “The proletarian class no longer exists in its previous stage. Workers have rights in developed countries,
they are proprietors” (Djilas)
Marxism has been subjected to severe criticism. It has simplified the class division of society into two classes,
the haves and the have nots. This is far from the reality.
Society is very complex and is divided into numerous groups. There is no clear cut division of classes as
envisaged by Marxism. Moreover, there exists a huge middle class. Marxian thinkers predicted that with the
advancement of capitalism, the middle class would disappear and merge with the proletariat class. But this
has not happened so far and there is no possibility of it ever happening. Infact, the reverse has happened; the
middle class has strengthened its position and increased its size. Marxists also predicted the narrowing of
the capitalist class. Here again, just the opposite has happened. Instead of shrinking, the base of the capitalist
class has been enlarged. Marx predicted the accumulation of capital, but there has been the dispersal of
capital. The condition of the proletariat class has not deteriorated as predicted by Marx. Thus, the actual
working of the capitalist system has proved the Marxist theory of classes to be wrong.
Marxists had predicted that the inherent contradictions of capitalism would lead to its collapse. But this has
not happened so far. No advanced capitalist system has collapsed. Capitalism has proved its resilience. It
is the socialist system, which has collapsed in various parts of the world. Capitalism has the tremendous
capacity of adaptation. This is the main reason for its survival. Marx failed to assess capitalism correctly.
According to Marx, the proletarian revolution will occur only when capitalism has matured. There is no chance
of the proletarian revolution occurring and succeeding in a backward feudal society. But this is exactly, what
has happened in reality. Revolution has taken place only in feudal societies such as Russia, China, Vietnam,
Cuba etc. This was the main issue of debate between two factions of Russian Marxists, the Mensheviks led by
Plekhanov and the Bolsheviks led by Lenin. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks prevailed over the Mensheviks, but the
latter were closer to classical Marxist teachings. According to Marx, his teachings can lessen the birth pangs,
but cannot short circuit the various stages of social evolution. However, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and Mao
in China established communism in a feudal society without going through the process of first establishing
capitalism. To resolve this obvious contradiction, Trotsky developed the ‘theory of Permanent Revolution’. He
fused the bourgeois revolution with the proletarian revolution in his theory. These two revolutions can occur
simultaneously in the view of Trotsky. Though this seems to be a more practical view, it does not confirm to
the basic Marxian principles.
In the 1890s, Bernstein rightly perceived that many of the Marxist predictions became obsolete. He pointed
out that the peasantry and the middle classes were not disappearing. Small business organizations did not get
eliminated, and the industrial working class was not becoming the overwhelming majority of the population.
Instead, the substantial portion of the population was neither bourgeois nor proletarian. Rather, the middle
class was on the increase. Among the members of the working class, the rapid growth in membership and
votes for social democratic parties did not necessarily indicate any desire for Socialism. The workers voted
and joined social democrats for many reasons other than purely a commitment for Socialism. Bernstein also
questioned the capacity of the working class to assume control of the means of production.
Taking a cue from Webb, who had pointed out that the poor performance of the cooperative was because of its
democratic character on the one hand, and the need for functional differentiation and hierarchy Of authority on
the other hand, Bernstein asserted the impossibility of the idea Of the manager being “the employee of those
he manages, that he should be dependent for his position on their favour and their bad temper” (Bernstein).
Based on these observations, Bernstein pointed to the lack of revolutionary ardour among the workers.
Economic determinism is a theory suggesting that economic forces determine, shape, and
define all political, social, cultural, intellectual, and technological aspects of a civilization. The
theory stresses that societies are divided into competing economic classes whose relative
political power is determined by the nature of the economic system. Marxist thinkers have
dismissed plain and unilateral economic determinism as a form of “vulgar Marxism”, or
“economism”, nowhere included in Marx’s works.
The Marxian theory of economic determinism has been severely criticised. It is not only the economic factor,
but other factors also that are equally important in bringing about social change. If economy determines polity,
society, morality, value system etc., then economy itself is shaped by these. It is a two way process. Economic
forces are not immune to the influences of polity, society, culture, religion, values, norms etc. If the base or the
substructure shapes the superstructure, then the superstructure also shapes the substructure. Thus, the theory
of economic determinism cannot be accepted. Later Marxist thinkers like Gramsci accepted the important role
of the superstructure. The Marxian concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism suffer from
several flaws. After the proletarian revolution, the proletariat will seize the state apparatus from the bourgeois.
With the establishment of communism, the state will become redundant and will gradually wither away. This
has not happened. In socialist society, the state in fact became all-powerful. Instead of weakening, the state
has consolidated its position and there is no possibility of its fading away.
The Marxian dream of a stateless society will never be realised. The state will continue to play a leading role
in a socialist and communist society and there is no possibility of it ever being relegated to the museum.
The socialist state wherever it has been established, has either been overthrown or discredited. Wherever, it is
still surviving, it has been compelled to introduce wide ranging changes, which do not confirm to the teachings
of classical Marxism. The collapses of communism in Eastern Europe, disintegration of the Soviet Union
and economic reforms in China have led thinkers like Francis Fukuyama to write the obituary of Marxism.
Fukuyama in his famous book End of History proclaims the triumph of capitalism over communism in the
post-cold war world. According to him, with the victory of capitalism over communism, history has come
to an end. Here, Fukuyama talks of history in the Hegelean sense. After capitalism, there will be no further
economic and political evolution. Capitalism is the most rational and perfect system. It is the most perfect
ideology and philosophy. So ideological and philosophical evolution comes to an end with the emergence of
capitalism. Its main challenger communism has been defeated and this further proves its claim that it is the
best possible social, economic and political system ever evolved by humanity. It is very difficult to accept
the thesis propounded by Fukuyama. The importance of Marxism lies in two fields. Firstly, it has been used
as a tool for social analysis. Secondly, it gives a voice to the voiceless. It is the philosophy of the poor, the
oppressed and the suppressed people. If the contribution of Marxism is analysed in these two fields, we will
reach the conclusion that it is still relevant and has not become redundant as claimed by the liberal critics.
Marxism as an approach of social analysis is still relevant as it was in the past. Its importance as a method
of social analysis will never diminish, irrespective of whether the socialist state survives or not.
In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Plato, Hegel and Marx are the principal (but by no means the only)
targets of Popper’s attack. According to Popper, Marx created the myth of class war and violent revolution. In
Popper’s view, all these ‘false prophets’ were the advocates of a closed society that suppresses free speech,
equal rights and critical deliberation. He argued that science and freedom flourish only in an open society
which is prepared to accept new ideas. In his another important work The Poverty of Historicism (1957)
Popper sought to refute all forms of historicism on two grounds: (a) In the first place, Popper argued that
the growth of knowledge itself exerts its influence on the course of history. Neither the growth of knowledge
nor its general effects can be predicted, since to predict knowledge means that we already possess it; and
(b) Secondly, that social science is of such a nature that it cannot generate laws of total social development,
but only laws for fragmented and isolated social units. Popper argued that the so-called historical laws are,
at best, indications of a historical tendency. Marx’s law of the increasing concentration of capital simply
indicates a tendency. To forecast on the basis of a tendency would be misleading. It would never yield correct
result.
Marxism as an ideology has definitely lost its edge, but it has not become totally redundant. As long as
exploitation will continue, people will be oppressed and suppressed, Marxism will remain relevant. Marxism
as a philosophy of the exploited and the oppressed will continue to inspire the masses to strive for their
emancipation. So there is no question of its defeat and irrelevance. Infact the systems, which have collapsed,
were not organised on classical Marxian principles. They were a variant of Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism. So
it is the Leninist-Stalinist systems, which have collapsed in Europe and elsewhere and not classical Marxism.
Marxism as an approach will continue to be used by scholars for social analysis and the exploited-oppressed
people will continue to espouse Marxist philosophy for their emancipation. Here, Marxism will never become
irrelevant. It will always provide an alternative philosophy to liberalism. Marxism will also act as an effective
check on the excesses of liberalism. It will mitigate the rigors of the capitalist system.
**********
2 ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Antonio Francesco Gramsci (22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher and
communist politician. He wrote on political theory, sociology and linguistics. He attempted to break from
the economic determinism of traditional Marxist thought and so is considered a key neo-Marxist. He was
a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito
Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
Life Sketch: Antonio Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia in 1891. He grew up in poverty amongst the
peasants of the island, and his experience of the class differences between mainland Italians and Sardinians and
the negative treatment of peasant Sardinians by mainlanders shaped his intellectual and political thought deeply.
In 1911, Gramsci left Sardinia to study at the University of Turin in northern Italy, and lived there as the city was
industrialized. He spent his time in Turin amongst socialists, Sardinian immigrants, and workers recruited from
poor regions to staff the urban factories. He joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1913. Gramsci did not complete a
formal education, but was trained at the University as a Hegelian Marxist, and studied intensively the interpretation
of Karl Marx’s theory as a “philosophy of praxis” under Antonio Labriola. This Marxist approach focused on the
development of class consciousness and liberation of the working class through the process of struggle.
Gramsci as Journalist, Socialist Activist and Political Prisoner
After he left school, Gramsci wrote for socialist newspapers and rose in the ranks of
Socialist party. He and the Italian socialists became affiliated with Vladimir Lenin and the
international communist organization known as the Third International. During this time of
political activism, Gramsci advocated for workers’ councils and labor strikes as methods of
taking control of the means of production, otherwise controlled by wealthy capitalists to the
detriment of the laboring classes. Ultimately, he helped found the Italian Communist Party to
mobilize workers for their rights.
Gramsci traveled to Vienna in 1923, where he met Georg Lukács, a prominent Hungarian
Marxist thinker, and other Marxist and communist intellectuals and activists who would
shape his intellectual work. In 1926, Gramsci, then the head of the Italian Communist Party,
was imprisoned in Rome by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime during its aggressive campaign
of stamping out opposition politics. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison but was
released in 1934 because of his very poor health. The bulk of his intellectual legacy was
written in prison, and is known as “The Prison Notebooks”. Gramsci died in Rome in 1937,
just three years after his release from prison.
Gramsci argued that although capitalists maintain control/domination through means of production but
there are other different ways which play important role, e.g., consent of rule. According to Gramsci, capitalist
class rules through consent in two ways –
1. Imposition of its own value and belief system over masses. Thus, control over minds of men came
through cultural hegemony.
2. Gramsci argued that ruling class always does not work for its narrow class interest. In order to maintain
its ruling position, it enters into arrangement of compromises and alliances with other groups in the
society and creates a “historic bloc”. Thus, it is a strategy of creation of social bloc to get the consent of ruled.
In the Gramscian philosophy, role of ideas and culture is the core means of rule. So, Gramsci suggested that
there should be a creation working class alliance, i.e., historic bloc to overthrow capitalism.
An Overview of the Context in which Gramsci developed his theory

The idea of a ‘third face of power’, or ‘invisible power’ has its roots partly, in Marxist thinking
about the pervasive power of ideology, values and beliefs in reproducing class relations and
concealing contradictions (Heywood). Marx recognised that economic exploitation was not
the only driver behind capitalism, and that the system was reinforced by a dominance of ruling
class ideas and values – leading to Engels’s famous concern that ‘false consciousness’ would
keep the working class from recognising and rejecting their oppression (Heywood).
False consciousness, in relation to invisible power, is itself a ‘theory of power’ in the Marxist
tradition. It is particularly evident in the thinking of Lenin, who ‘argued that the power of
‘bourgeois ideology’ was such that, left to its own devices, the proletariat would only be able to
achieve ‘trade union consciousness’, the desire to improve their material conditions but within
the capitalist system’ (Heywood). A famous analogy is made to workers accepting crumbs
that fall off the table (or indeed are handed out to keep them quiet) rather than claiming a
rightful place at the table.
The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned for much of his life by Mussolini, took
these idea further in his Prison Notebooks with his widely influential notions of ‘hegemony’
and the ‘manufacture of consent’ (Gramsci).
In practical terms, Gramsci’s insights about how power is constituted in the realm of ideas and
knowledge – expressed through consent rather than force – have inspired the use of explicit
strategies to contest hegemonic norms of legitimacy.
Concept of Power and Hegemony

The concept of hegemony first appeared in Gramsci’s Notes on the Southern Question (1926), where it was
defined as a system of class alliance in which a “hegemonic class” exercised political leadership over “subaltern
classes” by “winning them over”. Gramsci noted that the real source of strength of the ruling classes in the
West is manifested in their spiritual and cultural supremacy. These classes manage to inculcate their values
system in the mind of their people through the institutions of the civil society. Gramsci particularly focused on
the structures of domination in the culture of the capitalist society.
The conventional Marxist theory had held that economic mode of production of any society constituted its base
while its legal and political structure and various expressions of its social consciousness including religion,
morals, social custom and practices constituted its superstructure. The character of the superstructure was
determined by the prevailing character of its base. During the course of social development the changes in
the base led to the corresponding changes in the superstructure. So it focused on changes in the base; the
superstructure was not regarded to deserve an independent analysis. Gramsci did not accept this position.
He suggested that the superstructure of the contemporary Western society had attained some degree of
autonomy; hence its analysis was also necessary.
Gramsci particularly focused on the structures of domination in the culture of the bourgeois society. He
identified two levels of this superstructure:
Political Society or State which resorts to coercion to maintain its domination. The whole organization of
government comes within its purview. The structures associated with this part of superstructure are called
‘structures of coercion’
Civil Society which resorts to obtaining consent of the citizens to maintain its domination. This part of the
superstructure is closer to the base and it is relatively autonomous. The structures associated with this part
are called ‘structures of legitimation’. Gramsci pays special importance to this part of the superstructure.
Gramsci saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a ‘political society’ (which
rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which rules through consent). This is a different meaning of civil
society from the ‘associational’ view common today, which defines civil society as a ‘sector’ of voluntary
organisations and NGOs. Gramsci saw civil society as the public sphere where trade unions and political
parties gained concessions from the bourgeois state, and the sphere in which ideas and beliefs were
shaped, where bourgeois ‘hegemony’ was reproduced in cultural life through the media, universities and
religious institutions to ‘manufacture consent’ and legitimacy (Heywood)
Hegemony
HEGEMONY
Bourgeois Class
rule the society, their values
became the ‘common sense’
values of all.
Superstructure
IDEOLOGY
School church
media
Politic Society Civil Society
brute force, forced Cultural hegemony
CONSENT-PERSUASION
dominant class’s ideas
organic intellectuals and world view spreads
to society
Society accepts these

values and make their
own
According to Gramsci, the institutions of civil society—family, school and church familiarize the citizens with
the rules of behaviour and teach them to show natural respect to the authority of the ruling classes. These
structures lend legitimacy to the rule of the bourgeois class so that even injustice involved in this rule would
carry the impression of justice. That is why these are called ‘structures of legitimation’. They enable the
bourgeois society to function in such a manner that the ruling classes seem to be ruling with the consent of
the people. When the power is apparently exercised with the consent of its subject, it is called ‘hegemony ‘.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF STRUCTURES OF LEGITIMATION?

The ‘structures of legitimation’ within the bourgeois society usually prevent any challenge to its authority.
Bourgeois society largely depends on the efficiency of these structures for its stability.
It is only when civil society fails to prevent dissent that political society is required to make use of its
structures of coercion, including police, courts and prisons.
Conclusion: The strategy of communist movement should not be confined to the overthrow of the capitalist
class but it should make a dent in the value system that sustains the capitalist rule. This value system is likely
to persist through the institutions of civil society even under socialist mode of production. Fresh efforts will
have to be made to transform the culture of that society by inculcating socialist values in the minds of the
people. “The class struggle then changes from a ‘war of maneouver’ to a ‘war of position’ fought mainly on the
cultural front.”
COUNTER HEGEMONY
The complex program of radical social change in a modern liberal democracy, as described by Gramsci, involves
more than anything, developing a strong and dynamic culture capable of establishing the necessary institutions
for a subversion of hegemony. Counter-hegemony refers to attempts to critique or dismantle hegemonic power.
In other words, it is a confrontation and/or opposition to existing status quo and its legitimacy in politics, but
can also be observed in various other spheres of life, such as history, media, music, etc. This idea of a ‘counter-
hegemonic’ struggle – advancing alternatives to dominant ideas of what is normal and legitimate – has had
broad appeal in social and political movements. It has also contributed to the idea that ‘knowledge’ is a social
construct that serves to legitimate social structures. ‘War of manoeuvre’ and ‘war of position’ are two methods
conceived by Gramsci to challenge hegemony. They are best understood as points on a continuum rather than
mutually exclusive options.
Abstract Model of Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

Status quo challenge
Creation of
Alternatives Contestation
COUNTER-
HEGEMONY
Break Consent
POWER
RELATIONS
Asymmetric/
Inequitable
HEGEMONY Sanctioned Discourse

Co-option & Legitimacy
Status quo maintenance up

ack
lb
na
ter
Ex
WHAT IS THIS ‘WAR OF POSITION’& Superstructure

‘WAR OF MANOEUVRE’ IN
GRAMSCI’S THEORY? Political Society Civil Society
(Rules through force) (Rules through consent)
The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, used the
terms ‘War of Position’ and ‘War of Manoeuvre’ Government Culture Media
to indicate two different phases in the class Military Education System
struggle, and thus the appropriate strategies for
Police Family
revolutionaries to take. The War of Manoeuvre is,
for Gramsci, the phase of open conflict between Religion
classes, where the outcome is decided by direct
clashes between revolutionaries and the State. War
of position, on the other hand, is the slow, hidden
conflict, where forces seek to gain influence and War of Manoeuvre War of Position
power.
Indirect Attack
War of Manoeuvre is the struggle of force referring Frontal Attack
Long Struggle
to any open struggle between classes, not simply Goal is Winning Quickly
revolutionary/counter-revolutionary struggles. Aims to gain Control of Aims to gain control
War of Position is the struggle to gain decisive the state, military, police of civil society through
influence in society. To win this would mean that cultural and
there are bases of significant self-organised class
ideological struggle
power and that a libertarian socialist vision is
predominant in the working class.
Concept of Ideology
Gramsci’s conception of ideology is essentially found in his ‘Prison Notebooks’. Yet, Gramsci does
not provide any systematic treatment of ideology. One has to reconstruct his conception of ideology
within the general context and conceptual pattern that he provides. Hegemony implies the ways or
relations in and by which the ruling bloc/elite provides the ‘consent’ of people in civil society for its
rule/domination. Whether hegemony implies also the coercive means of domination is a matter of
discussion, yet it is mostly understood as based on consent. Ideology is one of the means or levels,
along with political or economic ones, through which hegemony is established. Thus hegemony
includes ideology, but cannot be reduced to it.
Ideology is neither a false consciousness nor a system of ideas, according to Gramsci, but conceived as a
“lived, habitual social practice”. It creates the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their
position, struggle, etc.” One can say that this terrain is an amalgam of civil society and common sense, two
key concepts for Gramsci’s conception of ideology. Civil society means as formulated by Eagleton, “the whole
range of institutions intermediate between state and economy”. It is the main area where hegemony is to be
constituted.
For an ideology to organize the masses and acquire a hegemonic character, at least two things are required.
First, ideology (be it Marxism or bourgeois ideology) should be accompanied and supported by other means
of hegemony, such as political or economic power. This point explains why bourgeois ideology is far more
hegemonic in civil society and has more power to organize the masses. Since ruling bourgeois elite has in
its hands the means and institutions of political and economic power to organize civil society and establish
its hegemony. Second, ideology should not remain only in the level of systematic philosophy limited to and
circulating among the intellectuals. It should be formulated and expressed in the level of common sense, in
order to be grasped and adopted by the people.
What is critically important and innovative in Gramsci’s conception of ideology is his recognition of the
importance of popular consciousness, of common sense, as an area where ideological battle for hegemony
is fought. Common sense is neither a mere reflection of economic structure, nor totally shaped by bourgeois
ideology as to serve its own interests. Common sense has a complex and contradictory character, rather than
a monolithic or coherent one. The elements of bourgeois ideology are constitutive of common sense along
with the practical consciousness of people towards their own class interests. Common sense is continually
re-formed and reproduced within the social practice. It has a dynamic character, rather than a static one.
It is this process of the formation of common sense where ideological battle must be fought, according to
Gramsci.
Unlike Althusser, Gramsci emphasizes struggle. He noted that ‘common sense is not something
rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself’. As Fiske puts it, ‘Consent must be
constantly won and rewon, for people’s material social experience constantly reminds them of
the disadvantages of subordination and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony...
posits a constant contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate that
makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle’. References to the mass media
in terms of an ideological ‘site of struggle’ are recurrent in the commentaries of those influenced
by this perspective. Gramsci’s stance involved a rejection of economism since it saw a struggle for
ideological hegemony as a primary factor in radical change.
In this ideological battle, “organic intellectuals” have an important role. They must fight this ideological battle
for counter/hegemony and revolution, not by bestowing upon people a consciousness brought from above,
but by “entering into the area of common sense” to expose the contradictions of the bourgeois ideology
permeated there and to reveal the practical and revolutionary consciousness, which is already found in the
common sense.
Role of intellectuals
Traditionally, different intellectuals have shaped the ideologies that have formed societies; each class creates
one or more groups of intellectuals. Thus, if the working class wants to thrive in becoming hegemonic, it must
also create its own intellectuals to develop a new ideology. Gramsci also contributed his political ideology in
describing the role of intellectuals.

Gramsci proposes that although all tasks require a degree of intellectual and creative ability, some persons will
be required to perform tasks or functions which are visibly intellectual. In the first case, these occupations are
related with the particular technical requirements of the economic system. Afterwards, they may be related
with the more general administrative and organisational institutions which synchronise the activities of the
economy with those of society as a whole. In the political sphere, each social group or class generates a
need for intellectuals who both represent the interests of that class and develop its ideational understanding
of the world. Gramsci stated that the revolutionary intellectuals should originate from within the working
class rather than being imposed from outside or above it.
He visualized that intellectuals are decisive in articulating and disseminating the outlooks of the classes for
which they speak, in a way that goes beyond the simple expression of economic interests. For the working
class, an intellectual who satisfied that role was not confined in Gramsci’s thought to a stratum of educated,
revolutionary elite. Rather, the “organic intellectual” could also be a lay person whose expression of the
specific ideology of his class instigates out of his actual working life. This notion arises out of Gramsci’s
disagreement that all individuals are intellectual in the sense of having and using an intellect, though not all
are intellectuals in terms of their formal social role.
According to Gramsci, intellectuals are a broader group of social agents. Gramsci’s group of “intellectuals”
includes not only scholars and artists or, in his own terms, the “organizers of culture,” but also functionaries who
exercise “technical” or “directive” capacities in society. Among these officials, administrators and bureaucrats,
industrial managers, politicians, are included. Furthermore, Gramsci categorizes these intellectuals in two
dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical dimensions. On the vertical dimension, he categorized the
“specialists,” those who organize industry in particular for the capitalists (including the industrial managers
and foremen). On that dimension also find the “directors”, the organizers of society in general. On the horizontal
dimension, Gramsci categorizes intellectuals either as traditional intellectuals or as organic intellectuals.
Traditional intellectuals are those intellectuals related to tradition and to past intellectuals; those who are
not so directly linked to the economic structure of their particular society and, in fact, conceive of themselves
as having no basis in any social class and adhering to no particular class discourse or political discourse.
Organic intellectuals are more directly related to the economic structure of their society simply because of
the fact that “every social group that originates in the fulfillment of an essential task of economic production”
creates its own organic intellectual. Consequently, the organic intellectual “gives his class homogeneity and
mindfulness of its own function, in the economic field and on the social and political levels”.
ROLE OF TRADITIONAL INTELLECTUALS VS. ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS:

Gramsci is clearer as to the positionality of the intellectual types in the super-structural level of society.
Organic intellectuals, part of the dominant class, provide employees for the coercive organs of political
society. Traditional intellectuals, important in civil society, are more likely to reason with the masses and try
to obtain ‘spontaneous’ consent to a social order. Yet, in the struggle of a class aspiring for hegemony the
organic intellectuals created by that class operate on the level of chase for direct consensus and as such
hold no position in the coercive political structures to operate on a coercive basis. Hence, it is observed that
in the struggle for social hegemony, these organic intellectuals must reason with the masses and engage in a
decisive ‘war of position’ to combine the hegemonic status of the class the interests of which they share.
Gramsci elaborated that the intellectuals are the “deputies” of the dominant group, the
functionaries, exercising the subaltern but important functions of political government and
social hegemony. In particular, the organic intellectuals are most important since they are the
ones who actually elaborate and spread organic ideology. The political importance of these
intellectuals rests also in the fact that, normally, the organic intellectuals of a historically and
realistically progressive class will be able to establish their dominance over the intellectuals
of other classes, and hence will be able to create a “system of solidarity” maintained so long
as the progressive class remains “progressive”.
Lastly, organic intellectuals are very instrumental in a class’ scuffle for hegemony. One of the most important
features of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to integrate and conquer ‘ideologically’
the traditional intellectuals, but their assimilation and conquest is made faster and more effective so that the
group in question will succeed in simultaneously elaborating its own organic intellectuals. It is further stated
that the traditional intellectuals can be supportive agents in the quest for “spontaneous” consent to the social
order. Consequently, it would also seem that the struggle for embracing the traditional intellectuals is yet
another important requisite for a class’ overall struggle for hegemony.
Philosophy of Praxis
“The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and
society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant
groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression
of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in
knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and
even more their own.” – Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebook that his philosophy of praxis is a reformed and developed form of
Hegelianism it is interaction of theory and practice. In Marx’s writings, praxis refers to creative and self-
creative activity through which human beings create and change their historical universe and themselves. It
differentiates human beings from other beings (Marx discussed about praxis in thesis of Feurbach). Gramsci,
argued through historical awareness and understanding of historical circumstances in which man friends
himself that he can remake his surrounding and remake himself.
Part of the problem, as Gramsci saw it, was that Marx’s insights had been subject to misappropriation and
revision from various thinkers, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, rendering them sterile and formulaic.
Approaching the problem through a critique of Italy’s leading liberal philosopher, Corce, he developed the idea
of the “Philosophy of Praxis”, a living unity of ideas and action that arose from the experiences and debates
of counter-hegemonic movements. As Wolfgang Fritz Haug makes clear, the term “Philosophy of Praxis” was a
conscious rejection by Gramsci of any idea that he was simply extending some unbroken chain of “Marxist” theory.
Concept of Historical bloc

One of Gramsci’s very important theoretical concepts is historical bloc. On the one hand, the concept of
historical bloc, in Prison Notebooks, is referred to a unity between the structure and the superstructure. On
the other hand, Gramsci uses the concept as a homogeneous politico-economic alliance which does not have
internal contradictions. Stephen Gill argues that a historical bloc is a process which is initiated by a conscious
social force which intends to establish a new hegemony. In Stephen Gill’s words mentioned in ‘Power and
Resistance in the New World Order’:
“An historical bloc refers to an historical congruence between material forces, institutions and ideologies, or
broadly, an alliance of different class forces politically organized around a set of hegemonic ideas that gave
strategic direction and coherence to its constituent elements. Moreover, for a new historical bloc to emerge, its
leaders must engage in conscious planned struggle. Any new historical bloc must have not only power within
the civil society and economy, it also needs persuasive ideas, arguments and initiatives that build on, catalyze
and develop its political networks and organization – not political parties such.
The concept of historical bloc is important because it refers to a moment during the process of change which
indicates that a political party has been built, and it is seeking to establish hegemony. To do that, Gramsci
argues that this social class, through its political party, has to organize other social classes and political
parties as well to take part in their wider political, economic alliance, which in theory by Gramsci called as
“historical bloc”. In that process, the organic intellectuals of the political party and the social class also play a
fundamental role in producing the persuasive ideas and arguments needed in convincing other classes to be
a part of their historical bloc, thus their upcoming hegemony.
However, as Anne Showstack Sassoon rightly points out, “an historical bloc is not to be reduced to a mere
political alliance since it assumes a complex construction within which there can be sub-blocs such as, for
example, an agrarian bloc, a complex formation of its own right, and an industrial bloc, each of these containing
different elements and potential contradictions. The historical bloc can produce various political blocs made
up of different combinations of political allies which none the less maintain the general configuration of the
fundamental historical bloc.”
As previously mentioned, the political party, the historical bloc and the hegemony are interconnected
instruments in Gramsci’s thought through which a socio-political change can be realized. As Sassoon explains,
“the historical bloc in implying necessarily the existence of hegemony also implies that in order to create a
new historical bloc alternative to the existing one, the new, progressive class must create its own hegemonic
apparatuses. The way in which the working class is able to do this, according to Gramsci, is through the
party.”
Thus, for Gramsci, historic bloc was a situation when both objective and subjective forces
combined to produce a revolutionary situation. It is a situation when older is collapsing and
also there are also people with will and historical insight to take advantage of the situation.
The union of base and superstructure, material condition and ideologies constitute the
historic bloc. In other words, when the material forces has reached a point where a revolution
is possible, its occurrence would depend on correct intellectual analysis, in order to have a
rational reflection of the contradiction of structure it is the moment when super structure or
core (base) interact on each other to produce a historic bloc.
Gramsci’s views on Dialectics

For Gramsci, dialectics means three things:
Interaction between the intellectuals (party leaders) and the masses;
Explanation of historical developments in terms of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis;
The relation between the sub-structure and super-structure
In traditional Marxism, the super-structure i.e., ethics, laws, philosophy, art and the whole
realm of ideas is directly conditioned by the economic system, by means of production and
exchange. Material conditions determine man’s consciousness- Gramsci criticized this view.
Like Lukacs, he argued that revolution and preparations for it would involve profound changes
in the consciousness of masses. Dialectics in the physical world are different from dialectics
in society. In physical nature, it is the backlash of physical forces but in society, it is a moment
in which men contribute to becoming a deliberate force in the dialectical process. Thus, it
is the moment when sub-structure and super-structure interact on each other to produce a
historic bloc.
There is a lot in common between Lukacs and Gramsci. Both emphasized the role of cultural
and philosophical factors in understanding historical materialism of Marx. Both brought out
the element of Hegelian idealism in Marx. Both attached greater importance to consciousness
than to material forces. Both saw the relationship between the base and the super structure
in a new light.
Gramscian view of state

A visualization of the change in the components of society’s superstructures (Bates, 1975).
MARXIST GRAMSCI
Politics Political
(State) society
STATE
Culture
(Ideology) Civil society
Economy
(Base structure) + Economy
Civil societies
Relations between the political, economic and cultural ideological spheres have been transformed since Antonio
Gramsci. From the Gramscian perspective, the base/superstructure model is inverted From Marx’s perspective
the èconomic structure’ is the primary and subordinating one, while the superstructure is the secondary and
subordinate one In Gramsci, it is the opposite. Perry Anderson argues that in “Gramsci hegemony means the
ideological subordination of the working class by the bourgeoisie, which enables it to rule by consent.
In Gramsci, the state is an instrument of socialization and cultural transformation, of passing on, and
disseminating, world views and ideology. Hence he argues that the entire function of the state has been
transformed; the state has become an educator. The Gramscian inversion belief, consensus and agreement
are the basis of state power rather than` state power being the basis of belief and consensus.
Gramsci has been a major source for rediscovering and discussing Marxism, and for arriving at a more acceptable
operative framework of post Marxism. Three fundamental categories from Gramsci’s conceptualization need
to be highlighted:
1. The notion of hegemony
2. The notion of popular-national culture.
3. The notion of the so-called ‘organic intellectual’.
The cultural and political leadership is linked to achieve what Gramsci calls consent. Gramsci noted that
hegemony was anchored in the realm of production. Hegemony as he observed in one of his writings is
political leadership and ìntellectual and moral direction’. To use his own words, “hegemony is born in the
factory”. Hence it arises in the original terrain of production.
Gramsci has cast new light on the role of culture in the social hegemony of the ruling class. Not just the
ideology of the fundamental ruling class is legitimated, so is its culture. Gramsci’s legacy `fosters an incessant
redefinition and denies orthodoxy’. No longer is power and control derived from the dynamics of the base,
from the ownership of the mean of production. In other words, the functions of the state are consumed by
the ideological and sociological processes of civil institutions.
In Gramsci ‘then culture and ideology is no longer a thing to be explained, but is a thing that does the
explaining; no-longer an effect, it is becoming a cause’. ‘Social consciousness, as world views, is becoming
the central factor in both the perpetuation, and change of social relations. In other words, it is not only the
realm of ideas that is the locus of struggle, but that struggle itself is becoming the ideological struggle,
taking precedence over political and class struggle. The Gramscian world view is a mix of a Neo-Marxism
of relations in production, and a future Marxism of relations in ideology. The class struggle becomes the
ideological struggle.
Conclusion
Marx’s ambivalent heritage has provided modern Marxists, or Neo Marxists with considerable scope to
further the analysis of State power. It also encouraged the writings of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci
who emphasized the domination of the ruling class is achieved by ideological manipulation rather than just
open coercion. In this view, bourgeois domination is maintained largely through “hegemony”.
Gramsci’s contribution to Marxist theory is two-fold. On the one hand, with concepts such as “organic ideology,”
“civil society” and “political society,” “organic intellectuals,” “hegemony,” etc., as well as his unique distinction
between political society and civil society, Gramsci brought new theoretical foundations into truly dialectical
Marxist revolutionary theory. Most important, out of these foundations emerged new concepts that have given
Marxism more consistency and relevance vis-a-vis contemporary Capitalist reality.
On the other hand, Gramsci has also contributed to Marxist theory through the major implications which his
most important concepts (those discussed here as well as his concept of the party) entail regarding the true
nature of capitalist crisis and proletarian revolutionary strategy. Novel among these implications is, of course,
Gramsci’s emphasis on the need for the proletariat to gain the loyalty and support of other social classes in
an advanced Capitalist context and, in order to do so, the need to overcome class dogmatism and interest-
based corporatism. No longer has the cataclysmic notion of Capitalist crisis a place in truly revolutionary
Marxist theory, as Gramsci’s concepts have brought a more realistic picture of the class struggle to our eyes.
Indeed, Gramsci deserves much recognition in rectifying Marxist theory after its temporary degeneration
at the hands of the mechanistic Marxists of the Stalin period and the revisionist “Marxists” of the Second
International.
Gramsci’s thought emanates from the organized left, but he has also become an important figure in current
academic discussions within cultural studies and critical theory. Political theorists from the center and the
right have also found insight in his concepts; his idea of hegemony, for example, has become widely cited.
His influence is particularly strong in contemporary political science (Neo-gramscianism). His work also
heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies in whom
many have found the potential for political or ideological resistance to dominant government and business
interests.
Popular comments:
1. “All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks
2. “Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that
one like.”
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks
3. Man is above all else mind, consciousness -- that is, he is a product of history, not of nature.
Antonio Gramsci
4. Every State is a dictatorship.
Antonio Gramsci
5. The abolition of the class struggle does not mean the abolition of the need to struggle as a principle of
development. - Antonio Gramsci
**********
3 NEO-MARXISM
CLASSICAL MARXISM ON STATE

According to Marx and Engels the state was created to safeguard the economic interests (other interests
are also included but economic interests are primary) and ultimately the state (along with its police,
military and bureaucracy) was converted into an instrument used by the owners of property. From this
special role of the state the Marxists have deduced a particular model of Marxist theory of state which
is called the instrumentalist model. The core idea of this model is the state is used as an instrument for
the fulfilment of interests of a particular class or section of society.
The chief spokespersons of this model are Ralph Miliband, Sanderson, and Avineri. There are many
others who have lent their support to this model. Even Lenin accepted this model in his highly eulogised
famous work State and Revolution. In Class Struggle in France, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the
State, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx emphasised this aspect of state. On the eve of
Bolshevik Revolution Lenin published State and Revolution and in this book he has said that the state is
the result of the irreconcilability of class antagonism.
In many of their writings Marx and Engels have elaborated the instrumentalist idea of state but analysts
of Marxism are of opinion that in the Communist Manifesto (full name is Manifest of the Communist
Party) and The German Ideology the concept has prominence. The bourgeois class gradually and steadily
captured political power and finally established its authority over all aspects of governmental affairs.
Robert Owen (1771-1858) was a Utopian socialist and also a great industrialist. He wanted to improve
the economic conditions of the workers through reforms which he wanted to introduce. But due to the
stiff opposition of other industrialists he could not succeed. The three branches of government—the
bureaucracy, the army, police— acted in tandem to exploit the workers and under such circumstances no
particular industrialist could do anything against the combined anti-labour strategy.
It was also the question of survival and death. The capitalists must harvest maximum amount of profit
so that this profit could be converted into capital formation. In the days when Marx wrote his books there
were not enough financial institutions, as they are today, to provide capital. The prime or only source of
capital was savings. The capitalists were determined to augment the quantum of savings/profit at any
cost. So we find that maximisation of profit, capital formation, and exploitation, seeking the help of state
machinery such as army, police and bureaucracy all are interlinked and there is no scope at all to delink
one from the other.
Marx and Engels viewed the entire episode from the standpoint of exploitation inflicting untold miseries
upon the workers and the capitalists overlooked it. Marx gathered from the study of history that the
state had always been used as an instrument of exploitation and he observed that during the epoch
of industrialization this particular role of the state (that is as an instrument of exploitation) had earned
additional momentum and it was so naked that it drew his special attention.
In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx made certain comments which have given rise to
this controversial and much talked concept. A number of Marxists, Ralph Miliband being the champion
of them, have stressed that though instrumentalist model occupied Marx’s mind considerably he thought
of the other model. The relative autonomy model, in simple language, means that though the capitalist
state works as an instrument at the hands of the dominant class that is the bourgeoisie, it very often
exercises its power independently.
That is, the state is not always dictated by the capitalists or it does not discharge its functions at the
behest of the bourgeoisie. The independent functioning of the state away from the influence of the
economically dominant class is interpreted by the renowned Marxists as the relative autonomy of state.
Hence the words relative autonomy do not mean that the state always acts independent of dominating
class.
The recent studies of Marxism have revealed that Marx and Engels did not deny the impartial role of state
and this is evident in many writings. Ralph Miliband is the champion of relative autonomy of state. In
Socialist Registrar (1965) Miliband has said that though the instrumentalist approach is very important,
the relative autonomy model is not less important.
If we fail to realise the relative autonomy model of Marxist theory of state our understanding will remain
incomplete. Elsewhere (Marxism and Politics) Miliband has said that there is powerful reason for
rejecting this, particular formulation as misleading. While the state does act on behalf of the ruling class,
it does not for most part act at its behest. The state does not always act in accordance with the wishes
of the ruling class.
The state has an independent character and image. If anybody says that the bourgeois state is always
dictated by the ruling class that would be vulgar Marxism. Miliband argues that the activities of the state
relate to the process of selections. Different schemes, policies, programmes etc. are placed before the
state, and it selects some of them. It does not blindly follow everything.
The state generally adopts those policies and tries to implement those schemes which will produce
favourable results in the long run and will serve the purpose of the state as well as that of the bourgeoisie
in a better and effective way. The state gives priority to long term interests over short term interests.
Moreover, in a pluralist society, there are a number of elite groups.
The different groups/factions of the ruling class are very powerful and active and of the interests of
some groups are neglected that group will raise hue and cry and disturb the smooth functioning of the
political system. The ‘authority of the state treats it as an unwelcome feature or development and will try
to combat it. So the state tries to make balance among all the potential forces.
Schwarzmantel has offered another reason, “The state in a liberal democratic system must have some
autonomy in order to preserve its legitimacy. If the state was seen to be too closely bound up with and
dominated by one set of interests it would not be able to maintain the belief that it represents the general
interests”. The mere fact is that though the state acts as an instrument, in numerous cases it tries to
maintain its autonomous character and it does so to enhance its image.
Marx and Engels have repeatedly said that the emancipation of the working class is never possible
without the seizure of state power and this can be done through protracted class struggle leading to
revolution. In other words, revolution is the only solution to all the problems that are found in a bourgeois
state. What the revolution will do? First of all, the task of revolution or revolutionaries is to capture the
state power from the hands of the bourgeoisie and to establish the complete authority of the working
class which Marx and Engels have designated as ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
After that the working class will proceed to change the bourgeois structures radically. Thus, we say that
the primary objective of proletarians’ revolution is to seize state power, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin (The
Problems of Leninism) have said repeatedly that launching of a single revolution by the working class
would not be sufficient for achieving the goal.
Revolution should be permanent. Revolution would continue till the communism is achieved. So we
find that Marxist theory of state and the theory of revolution are closely connected concepts. However,
Marx and Marxists have drawn differences between different types of revolution. These differences
may have full relevance in the field of detailed analysis of Marxist theory of revolution and here we are
not concerned with that. Our point is—Marx and Engels did not lay any faith on reforms. Again, they
never thought reforms as alternative to revolution. The capitalists used the state as an instrument of
exploiting the proletarians, and the latter would use revolution along with class struggle as an instrument
of emancipation and they would use it to sustain their power and protect the proletariat form any sort
of counter revolution.
Lenin’s View on End of State

Lenin in his The State and Revolution (written in August-September 1917 and published in 1918) has explained
the unexplained aspects of Marx’s and Engels’ concept of state and many Marxists hold the view that without
Lenin’s The State and Revolution Marxist theory of state would create lot of confusion.
Marx, Engels and Lenin viewed the state absolutely from different angle. They viewed the state not only a
usurper of human liberty but also an instrument of enslaving human beings. Such a state need not be abolished
forcibly. The state power should be seized forcibly and at the same time the supreme authority of working
class (proletarians) should be established. At the same time all classes would be abolished. When these two
objectives are achieved there will be no importance of state because it was only the instrument of exploitation.
According to Lenin the withering away of state is quite different from abolition of state.
Engels also speaks of another phrase. After seizing political power the proletariat “abolishes the state as
state”. This is also a very significant phrase. The phrase ‘state as state” needs interpretation. The phrase
state as state means the bourgeois state. Bourgeois state implies the police, military, bureaucracy, and other
organs/branches of bourgeois state. The proletarians will smash this state. They will not use the police,
military and other repressive machineries of the bourgeois state. It will be performed through class struggle
and revolution.
Commenting upon Engels’ comment Lenin says that abolishing the bourgeois state is the state as state. But
the words withering away refer to the withering away of the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist
revolution. According to Engels the bourgeois class does not wither away but is abolished by the proletariat in
the course of revolution. What withers away after this revolution is semi-state or proletarian state.
CONCEPTUALISING NEO-MARXISM
Neo-Marxism has important implications for the advancement of political theory. The NEO-MARXISTS primarily
target the historicist underpinnings of Marxism, denouncing the inadequacy of a linear philosophy of history.
Some of the recent developments that perhaps necessitated an overhauling of classical Marxism include the
major transformations experienced by capitalist societies the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the democratic
upsurges in Eastern-Europe, and incorporation of the theory of market socialism by the Chinese. The roots of
Neo-Marxism can also be traced to the Euro communist and Euro-socialist developments in the 1970s and 1980s.
Neo-Marxism revolves around a number of direct and indirect critiques of Marxist intellectual thought which
propounded a number of major propositions centering on issues of epistemology, ontology, history and Marxist
practice. Epistemologically (Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, the rationality of belief, and
justification.) there is a deep questioning of historical materialism. In Neo-Marxism, there is clearly a rejection
of essentialism (Essentialism is the view that for any specific entity there is a set of attributes which are
necessary to its identity and function.), especially as if is, implicit in Marxist discourse. Equally, the ontological
imperative (Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well
as the basic categories of being and their relations.) of Marxism reflected in the concept of class struggle as
the necessary path to human progression has also been contested. Moreover, the privileging of the working
class has also been contested. The new class fractions, emerging in capitalist societies highlight issues like
nationalism, ethnicity, religion and feminism.
The well-known Neo-Marxists and Post-Marxists are Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Theodor Adorno,
Terry-Eagleton and Frederic Jameson. NEO-MARXISTS are the result of a multitude of theoretical-political
interventions whose cumulative effect is the deconstruction of the history of Marxism. Ralph Miliband refers
to them as the new revisionists.
MAIN ARGUMENTS OF THE NEO-MARXISTS

Traditional schools of neo-Marxist thought like Hegelian Marxism critical theory and structural Marxism appear
to be receding. Neo-Marxists as a whole seem to be drawing less on the Marxist tradition generally. Over the
years, many former protagonists and adherents of the various schools of neo-Marxism are now proclaiming
a ‘post-Marxist’ beyond-class stance. Major changes have been taking place in neo-Marxist thought. Three
major perspectives can be identified:
1. Analytic Marxism which bring mainstream state-or the-art me philosophy and social science to bear on
traditional Marxist issues.
2. Developments in mainstream academic disciplines such as post structuralism and postmodernism
have impacted on neo-Marxist theory.
3. Larger societal changes have also affected post-Marxist theory. These include the general shift to the
right during the Reagan-Thatcher years for example, and the collapse of world communism has forced
the Marxists to reconsider and reconstruct their theories.
It also seems that Marx’s ideas have also been declining in significance in relation to post-Marxist theory,
without denigrating Marx’s works. In other words, the importance of the traditional Marxist tradition has
witnessed a decline. Over the years, several trends and variations of neo-Marxism developed: Hence the
perception that Marxian pluralism is possible. At the same time, the emergence of neo-Marxism represented
criticism of the conventional/official Marxist theory and practice. George Luckas had in the sixties termed it
the Renaissance of Marxism. The mid-1960s and early 1970s witnessed the renaissance of serious Marxist
theorizing, all within the Marxist tradition. They tackled many classical Marxist issues like the theory of the
state, of classes, of ideology and of the capitalist economy Right since the beginning, the challenge the neo-
Marxists faced has been their right to exist and the possibility for different Marxist trends to exist. Since the
1980’s the Neo-Marxists are not universally, anti-Marxist.
The thesis advanced by the Neo-Marxists is that the “contradiction between productive forces and relations
of production is a contradiction without antagonism”, while “class struggle, for its part, is an antagonism
without contradiction”. The contention here is that instead of analyzing the changing historical conditions of
capitalist development, Marxists simply assert the necessity of a general law of capitalism. Hence there is
an extended discussion of the Marxist method.
The first generation of neo-Marxists asserted three major theses:
1. They claimed that political power, even in democratic capitalist societies, was not in the hands of the
electorate with its parties and interest groups. Instead, power and politics were dominated by a
capitalist class, exerting its, power through a variety of Mechanisms. Ralph Miliband’s works largely
dwelt on these issues.
2. Western democratic states were, capitalist-bourgeois states in a structural sense. Their organisation,
internal functioning, and relationship to society were shaped by social and primarily if not exclusively,
class relations of the capitalist societies they governed. Nicos Poulantzas pioneered this perception.
3. Not only the capitalist class but, also the structural features of the bourgeois states imposed certain
fundamental constraints to what even the best-intentioned governments could actually achieve,
constraints surmountable only by revolution or by quasi revolutionary popular mobilization. Here too
Poulantzas was the forerunner. In the first phase of neo-Marxism, the obsession was with the problem
of the transition from capitalism, to socialism.
The notion of Neo-Marxism implies transition from the contradictions of the bourgeois order,’ the class
struggle, and dilemmas of capitalism to a newly emerging order devoid of ideology and conflict. Hence the
thesis of postindustrial society for example envisioned better’ living standards, and bridging the gap between
social classes through mass education, mass production and mass consumption. The main arguments of
the Neo-Marxists are the following:
The working class has not evolved: into a revolutionary movement.
Economic class interests are relatively autonomous from ideology and politics
The working class holds no basic position within socialism
A political force may form out of `popular’ political and ideological elements independent of class ties
so that feminist, ecological peace and other forces become effective in a changing society
A socialist movement may evolve independent of class.
The objectives of socialism transcend class interests; and
The struggle from socialism comprises a plurality of resistances to inequality and oppression.
Hence classes and class struggles are displaced by an-emphasis on political pluralism, political organisation
and interest groups. The argument being made is that change not only emanates from the working class or
a peasant-worker alliance, but also from a third force of middle-class intellectuals, the urban poor, the petty
bourgeoisie, and ethnic and social movements.
NEO MARXIST’S VIEW ON STATE: MAIN FEATURES

Marx’s ambivalent heritage has provided modern Marxists, or Neo Marxists with considerable scope to
further the analysis of State power. This was also encouraged by the writings of the Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci who emphasized the domination of the ruling class is achieved by ideological manipulation rather
than just open coercion. In this view, bourgeois domination is maintained largely through “hegemony”: that
is, intellectual leadership or cultural control, with the state playing an important role in the process. In the
1960’s and early 1970’s, Marxist theorizing about the state was dominated by the rival positions adopted by
Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas. Although this debate moved through a number of phases each author
revised his position, at the heart of it lay contrasting instrumentalist and structuralism views of the state.
In the state in Capitalist Society Miliband portrayed the state as an agent or instrument of the ruling class,
stressing the extent to which the state elite is disproportionately drawn from the ranks of the privileged and
propertied. The bias of the state in capitalism is therefore derived from the overlap of the social backgrounds
between, on the one hand, civil servants and other public officials, and, on the other bankers, business leaders
and captains of industry. Both groups are representatives of the capitalist class. Poulantzas, in Political Power
and Social Classes, dismissed this sociological approach, and emphasized instead the degree to which the
structure of economic and social power exerts a constraint upon state autonomy. This view suggests that the
state cannot but act to perpetuate the social system in which it operates. In the case of the capitalist state,
its role is to serve the long term interests of capitalism, even though these actions may be resisted by same
sections of the capitalist class itself. Examples of this are the extension of democratic rights and welfare
reforms, both of which are concessions to the working class that nevertheless bind them to the capitalist
system.
Developments within the modern Marxism have brought about a significant convergence between the
pluralist and Marxist theories. Just as pluralists have increasingly recognized the importance of corporate
power, neo Marxists have been forced to abandon the idea that the state is merely a reflection of the class
system. For one thing, neo-Marxists have recognized that in modern circumstances, the classical two class
model based on the bourgeoisie and the proletariats is simplistic and unhelpful. Following Poulantzas, neo
Marxists usually recognize that there are significant divisions within the ruling class and that the emergence
of electoral democracy has empowered interest and groups outside the ruling class. In addition, they have
increasingly seen the state as the terrain upon which the struggle amongst interests, groups and classes is
conducted. In this view, the state is therefore not an instrument wielded by a dominant group or ruling class.
Rather, it is a dynamic entity that reflects the balance of power within society at any given time, and thus
reflects the outcome of an ongoing hegemonic struggle. Neo-Marxists have tried to provide an alternative to
the mechanistic and deterministic ideas of orthodox Marxism, refusing to accept the primacy of economics,
or assign the proletariat a privileged role. Second they have been concerned to explain the failure of Marx’s
predictions, looking in particular, to the analysis of ideology and state power.
GENERAL NEO- MARXIST VIEWS ON THE STATE

In the Marxist scheme of things, the state is the handmaiden of the ruling class. Marx’s theory was specifically
a critique of capitalism and the capitalist state. The contemporary reconceptualization of the state is a
reasonable accommodation to the experience of post-modernity. This has been an important and enlightened
development in the evolution of Marxist thought. While it is, pertinent to an analytic of class struggle, it does
not require or imply a Marxist focus of inquiry, nor does it preclude a non-Marxist orientation.
Pierson idenƟfies certain important post-Marxist proposiƟons about the nature of the state from the following
perspecƟves:
1. The state does not (either instrumentally or relatively autonomously) function unambiguously in the
interests of a single class.
2. The state is not a centralized-unified political actor. It is an àrena of struggle’ constituted/divided by
quite opposing interests.
3. There can be no satisfactory general analysis of the (capitalist) state. The proper subject of study in
given nation-states is their historical and international particularity.
4. The state cannot be overcome and will not wither away. It is essential to any developed society.
5. The state is not an instrument that can be ‘occupied’. State power is not such that it can be seized.
Transformation of the state may be profound, but it will also be gradual, and, at least in part, internal.
NEO MARXIST’S VIEW ON STATE: NICOS POULANITZAS

Nicos Poulantzas is perhaps one of the greatest neo-Marxist political theoreticians Poulantzas is explicit
in his theoretical merging of the ideological, political and ‘the economic spheres, He argues, that “the
political field of the state (as well as the sphere of ideology) has always in different forms, been resent in the
constitution and reproduction of the relations of production”. Hence he argues that the spheres are separate,
yet intertwined and realizable only vis-a-vis each other There is the presence of the political (and ideological)
relations within the relations of production.
Hence from the Poulantizian perspective the economic sphere cannot come into being without the political
sphere, and the political sphere is dominated by the ideological sphere. This makes the ideological sphere
central to the very formation of the economic sphere. All three spheres become one. The three tripartite
division of society into economic, political and ideological spheres is now reduced to three interdependent
branches of the state apparatus, the Ideological `State Apparatus, the Repressive. State Apparatus and the,
Economic State Apparatus. For him, all the three spheres are mutually co-determinate. The state does not
have an existence of its own, nor is it something used by the classes. Rather, it is the means, whereby class
forces appear, so that classes exist, as forces, only within the limits and relations of the state.
At a deeper level of theoretical logic, the economic base only exists or expresses itself through the political
base, viz, the superstructure. The state is neither the instrumental depository (object) of a `power-essence
held by the dominant classes’. Class smuggles traverse and constitute the state. For Poulantzas, political
differences are economic or class differences. To quote:
The establishment of the State’s policy must be seen as the result of the class contradictions inscribed in
the very structure of the State (the state as a relationship). The State is the consideration of a relationship
of forces between classes and class fractions, such as these express’s themselves in a necessarily specific
form, within the State-itself.’ In other words, The State is through and through constituted divided by class
contradictions.
The poulantzian merger of the ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ is evident. In the whole process, he denies and
independent existence for either. Hence, when the ideological, political and economic spheres merge, the
sphere-to-sphere causal analysis is all, but gone. The path is clear to theorize a causal-free social formation,
where there is little or no determination, and where the patterns that emerge are perceived to be the by-product
of struggle, conflict, coalition, bloc and hegemonic formation. In the sense, the Marxian social formation is
renamed discursive formation. It is not just the culture or ideology that determines social relations, but that
ideology/culture, in the form of ‘discourse’ are social relations,
NEO MARXIST’S VIEW ON STATE: THE GRAMSCIAN PERSPECTIVE

Relations between the political, economic and cultural ideological spheres have been transformed since
Antonio Gramsci. From the Gramscian perspective, the base/superstructure model is inverted From Marx’s
perspective the èconomic structure’ is the primary and subordinating one, while the superstructure is
the secondary and subordinate one In Gramsci, it is the opposite. Perry Anderson argues that in “Gramsci
hegemony means the ideological subordination of the working class by the bourgeoisie, which enables it to
rule by consent.
In Gramsci, the state is an instrument of socialization and cultural transformation, of passing on, and
disseminating, world views and ideology. Hence he argues that the entire function of the state has been
transformed; the state has become an educator. The Gramscian inversion belief, consensus and agreement
are the basis of state power rather than` state power being the basis of belief and consensus.
Gramsci has been a major source for rediscovering and discussing Marxism, and for arriving at a more acceptable
operative framework of post Marxism. Three fundamental categories from Gramsci’s conceptualization need
to be highlighted:
1. The notion of hegemony
2. The notion of popular-national culture.
3. The notion of the so-called ‘organic intellectual’.
The cultural and political leadership is linked to achieve what Gramsci calls consent. Gramsci noted that
hegemony was anchored in the realm of production. Hegemony as he observed in one of his writings is
political leadership and ìntellectual and moral direction’. To use his own words, “hegemony is born in the
factory”. Hence it arises in the original terrain of production.
Gramsci has cast new light on the role of culture in the social hegemony of the ruling class. Not just the
ideology of the fundamental ruling class is legitimated, so is its culture. Gramsci’s legacy `fosters an incessant
redefinition and denies orthodoxy’. No longer is power and control derived from the dynamics of the base,
from the ownership of the mean of production. In other words, the functions of the state are consumed by the
ideological and sociological processes of civil institutions.
In Gramsci ‘then culture and ideology is no longer a thing to be explained, but is a thing that does the explaining;
no-longer an effect, it is becoming a cause’. ‘Social consciousness, as world views, is becoming the central
factor in both the perpetuation, and change of social relations. In other words, it is not only the realm of ideas
that is the locus of struggle, but that struggle itself is becoming the ideological struggle, taking precedence over
political and class struggle. The Gramscian world view is a mix of a Neo-Marxism of relations in production,
and a future Marxism of relations in ideology. The class struggle becomes the ideological struggle.
NEO-MARXISM AND CLASS

The neo-Marxists maintain that by breaking capitalism into the capital-labor dichotomy, other important non-
economic determinants are marginalized, if not altogether ignored. Hence the post Marxists argue that people’s
‘identities emanate from a variety of sources. The Neo-Marxists argue that the search for an explanation of the
lack of class consciousness is-not a problem of false consciousness. Thus, there is a class identity crisis within
post-Marxist literature. Though there is an identity crisis in capitalism, it cannot be due to false consciousness.
In a globalized world today, the perception is that the working class has no particular consciousness, but in the
contemporary times, there is .no particular working class.
NEO-MARXISM AND DECONSTRUCTIONISM

The postmodern condition has created a decentering of the human subject. Foucault also makes a strong
case for demoralizing historical theory. The broad developments in Neo-Marxism as mentioned earlier can
be linked to post structuralism and postmodernism. He makes an attempt to unmask the hegemonies, which
are not necessarily found on capital logic, but on `cultural logic’. In this sense, Neo-Marxism is the radicalizing
of the Gramscian project, and this is broadly the stand of Ernesto Laclou and Chantal Mouffe. They consider
Marx’s pronouncement unfortunate since “if social existence determines consciousness cannot be part of
social existence”.
Anthony Giddens brings out some of the grains of ambiguity and. utopianism in orthodox Marxism. To quote:
Few recognize that certain forms of exploitation do not originate in capitalism, or even with class divisions
more generally, we are freed from trying conceptually to squeeze them within standard Marxist analyses. There
are three main axes of exploitation of this sort. These are the exploitative relations between states, particularly
to do with the control of the means of violence; the, nature of the exploitative relations between ethnic groups;
and exploitative relations between the sexes.
Theorists like Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer attempted to reconstruct the `logic’ and ‘method’ of `Marxism,
in order to develop a Marxism relevant to the contemporary capitalism Frankfurt School theorists following the
Hungarian Marxist George Luckas attempted to link economic and ideological analyses in explaining why the
revolution expected by Marx did not occur.
NEO-MARXISTS AND THE NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

The post- Marxists have turned to new social movements as topics for discourse and objects of hope. The
new social movements undoubtedly raise fundamental theoretical challenges to orthodox Marxism. Laclau
and Mouffe argue that class reductionism, economism and assumptions of one-why determination leave the
core of Marxism in shambles. Their critiques of Marxism emanate from the social movements, Iaclou’ s and
Mouffe’ s insights remain a ‘strategy of opposition’. This is because they are not integrated into a ‘strategy of
constructions’ of a new theory. However, the propensities to deconstruct by making forays into indeterminacy
do not necessarily help address the issues. The alternative social theories are focused on that of the particular
concerns of the social movements. The argument being made here by the Neo-Marxists is that the Marxist
parties had failed to adequately account for the social movements of gender, race, ecology/environment,
which also is a reflections of the process of human social structuring.
NEO-MARXISTS AND ‘SOCIAL PLURALISM’

Neo-Marxists advocate the concept of socialist pluralism which can be summarized as follows:
1. Any form of socialism which is to realize the aspirations for both liberty and equality must be based
not only upon the overcoming of the division between the state and civil society, but rather, upon their
increasingly clear and formalized differentiation.
2. Rather than fostering socialist morality, civil society must be the site of a legally guaranteed plurality of
aspirations, ways of life and ideologies.
3. Anticipations of the ‘end of politics’ and the ‘end of conflict’ over the distributions of means and
resources (even under circumstances of abundance) are utopian, as is the corresponding expectation
of the overcoming of the necessity of law. Under these circumstances, the need for a set of civil and
political rights, and the role of the state as a legal guarantor of these right is indispensable.
4. All forms of emancipator struggles under late capitalism are not reducible to forms of class struggle
an emancipator politics must therefore recognize the need of alliances of liberating forces within a
popular-democratic, rather than exclusively class-based struggle.
MARXIAN PERCEPTION OF ALIENATION

Karl Marx has, a theory of alienation, a specific type of alienation which he calls àlienated labor’. In many
passages of Paris Manuscripts, Marx explained the concept. Alienated labor has four meanings for Marx:
1. Alienation from the product: He writes ‘the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien
object’. Because what he produces is not his and it furthers the domination to which he is subjected.
His product does not give him the pleasure of creativity, which he would have got in the ordinary course.
In the long run, the product increases his poverty.
2. Alienation from the process: The worker is alienated from the process of production itself because
what he does is independent of him. Work for him is necessary to satisfy his needs and Marx writes:
ìt is an activity directed against him that is, independent of him and does not belong to him’. In the
ordinary course, the worker would have punned the process, and the processes of planning would have
given him the pleasure of involvement. Nothing of this sort happens, and he has no control over the
process, and he cannot make it friendly or easy with his contribution.
3. Alienation from species: Marx writes: àlienated labor alienates man from his species. Species life;
productive life, life creating life turns into a mere means of sustaining the worker’s individual existence
and man is alienated from his fellow being’. Due to, this alienation from the fellow workers, man
becomes a part of the inanimate machine, and he becomes just another instrument operating the
machine. This is a very serious effect of alienation.
4. Alienation from nature: Marx writes: `nature itself is alienated from man, who thus loses his own
inorganic body’. Thus the final aspect of alienation is man’s alienation from nature. He is no longer a
part of nature, cannot appreciate its working, the fruits it gives, and the bounties it confers on him.
Thus perceived, alienation will have many results on the life of the worker. He becomes poorer and poorer,
his frustration increases. Another aspect to be noted is that it is not only the working class but others also
are subjected to this self-alienation. In another work of his Holy Family, Karl Marx speaks about the two
opposing effects of alienation. On the worker, it pushes him down and down into, the deep well of poverty and
on the propertied class’, it pushes it up and up, until the gap between the poor class and the propertied class
becomes so wide that it cannot be bridged anymore.
CONCEPT OF ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN

One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society is a 1964 book by philosopher
Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the
Communist society of the Soviet Union, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in
both these societies, as well as the decline of revolutionary potential in the West. He argues that "advanced
industrial society" created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production
and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought.
This results in a "one-dimensional" universe of thought and behaviour, in which aptitude and ability for critical
thought and oppositional behaviour wither away.
Marcuse strongly criticizes consumerism and capitalism, arguing that it is a form of social control. He
suggests that the system we live in may claim to be democratic, but it is actually authoritarian in that a few
individuals dictate our perceptions of freedom by only allowing us choices to buy for happiness. In this state
of "unfreedom", consumers act irrationally by working more than they are required to in order to fulfil actual
basic needs, by ignoring the psychologically destructive effects, by ignoring the waste and environmental
damage it causes, and by searching for social connection through material items.
It is even more irrational in the sense that the creation of new products, calling for the disposal of old
products, fuels the economy and encourages the need to work more to buy more. An individual loses his or
her humanity and becomes a tool in the industrial machine and a cog in the consumer machine. Additionally,
advertising sustains consumerism, which disintegrates societal demeanour, delivered in bulk and informing
the masses that happiness can be bought, an idea that is psychologically damaging.
There are other alternatives to counter the consumer lifestyle. Anti-consumerism is a lifestyle that demotes
any unnecessary consumption, as well as unnecessary work, waste, etc. But even this alternative is
complicated by the extreme interpenetration of advertising and commodification because everything is a
commodity, even those things that are actual needs.
SEEMANS’S REFERENCE OF ALIENATION

Many meanings were there to the term àlienation’ before Melvin Seeman gave his theory of alienation where
he identified five elements of alienation. His theory, one can say, is a culmination of the insights of the
earlier thinkers who had tried to conceptualize alienation as a part of their general theory. He explained
alienation in terms of powerlessness, meaning lessens, normlessness, isolation and self-estrangement.
Seeman later added a sixth element (cultural estrangement). But the earlier five remained constant in his
later discourses.
Powerlessness is what Marx called alienation of labor where the worker is not the master of his destiny,
and he feels powerless and get alienated. Weber extended it to other classes in industrial societies like
professors, civil servants, scientists all get separated from their work because they feel they are powerless.
This feeling is the consequence of being subjected to control by the external system, person or institution.
The alienation occurs due to the controlling body not being sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the
controlled body.
In a mass society, the ordinary person feels that it is meaningless to go against the system, one person
cannot make any impact on the system this realization makes one feel that all his actions and efforts will be
meaningless and, hence, they get alienated. In political alienation, this element is visible. The success of the
system, however big, can be measured by whether it can make an ordinary participant in it feel as if he is a
part of it.
Normlessness has many aspects. Durkheim had used the term anomie to explain the feeling of separation
from group standards. Sometimes, even the conflict of norms also may cause normlessness. Another
dimension of normlessness as described by Maclver is purpose- lessens, he explains `the absence of values
that might give purpose or direction to life, the loss of intrinsic and socialized values, the insecurity of the
hopelessly disoriented. Under extreme circumstances when the individual lose the purpose or value for living,
they alienate from the situation and, sometimes, in the extreme circumstances from self. Social isolation
refers to a feeling of separation from the group. A sheep that strays away from the herd violates the norm
of the herd. In the process, it brings danger to itself, and also to the herd indirectly. Hence its isolation is the
result of normlessness.
Even though Seeman’s framework of alienation is very popular and is adopted in political science research,
the other traditions also have come into being. Cedric Herring notes that there are three traditions of
subjective approach: the, Seeman tradition, the Easton/ Gamson tradition, and the Michigan Survey Research
Centre tradition. Each one of these traditions provide a different, index to measure and understand political
alienation.
FORMS OF ALIENATION
Marvin E. Olsen categorizes political alienation into two categories political incapability and discontentment’s.
The first refers to alienation that is the result of naturalness powerlessness and meaning lessens. The
person feels that is the politically incapable because the external system stops or hinders him from effective
participation. Thus the reason for political alienation is in the external factor that creates a feeling of
incapability. In discontent, lies, the cause of political alienation and the reason for alienation lies within the
person.
Marvin E. Olsen defines the discontent alienation as, it is voluntarily chosen by the individual as an attitude
towards the social system, as he realizes that the system does not provide worthwhile activities or goals
in social life’. The discontent can be expressed as disgust or as some thinkers call political cynicism’.
Persons who do not see any good in the system develop dislike for the system and are alienated. He
writes discontent may be due to dissimilarity, where the feeling of being an outsider or being out of place
dominates. For example, if one is not familiar with the political system, government or the social ethos,
naturally he has nothing similar with which to identify therefore gets alienated. Dissatisfaction leading to ‘do
not care’ attitude and disillusionment about the system also may result in discontent leading to alienation.
Anne Statham Macke notes that there are two types of alienation and, correspondingly, there are two sets
of reasons for political alienation. The two types are: Aggregate alienation and individual alienation. The
reasons for individual alienation vary from person to person. But in case of aggregate political alienation, the
reasons apply to a large number of people. The reasons for individual alienation vary from person to person,
Burin case of aggregate political alienation, the reasons apply to a large number of people. Converse in
1972 argued that the increased educational level will lead to aggregate alienation. Due to education political
awareness increases and the educated assess the functioning of the government, and when found wanting,
feel disappointed and this leads to alienation.
McDill and Ridley, and House and Mason are of the opinion that the main reason for political alienation is due
to the personal level causes. They are:
The social position in the society.
Dissatisfaction about certain specific issue.
The low level of social competence.
The studies on political alienation suggest multidimensionality of it by the causes of alienation. Arthur, G.Neal
and Salomon Rettig in their study list about nine causes for political alienation. They are:
1. Powerlessness
2. Inevitability of war
3. Political normlessness
4. Economic normlessness
5. Anomie {Srole’s Scale}
6. Personal freedom
7. Communal values
8. Competitive mobility-orientation
9. Intrinsic values
This indicates that there is no single list of causes or the variables that cause political alienation. Since it is
a state of mind and each society, each state, each culture has its own peculiarities and the mental make-up
of the people varies, the reasons are peculiar to each society. This plurality comes on the way of building
a common theory of alienation. Hence each study comes out with a set of different variables even though
some core factors appear in every study. In a nutshell, one can say that political alienation is a result of
objective conditions and subjective response to it.
MASS SOCIETY AND ALIENATION

Mass society theories developed to explain why totalitarian regime movements came into being, why people
support totalitarian systems. The theorists analyzed and found a reason in the breakdown of societal groups
that give identity and the sense of belongingness to members of the groups. When these groups lose their
hold, the other groups which are guided by elite come to prominence.
Many sociologists of the early 20th century argued that the emergence of totalitarians movements in the
west was due to two factors-one, the huge bureaucratized structures which made individual helpless as
regards influencing the system, and second, the alienated people gathered behind an irrational leader. As
Merton puts it:
The very same society that produces this sense of alienation estrangement generates in many a craving for
reassurance, an acute need to believe, and a flight into faith.’
Mass society theorists Harton and Wohl (1956) explain the new type of relationship that characterizes a
mass society, which they call `parasocial interaction’, where people do not come in contact face-to-face, but
interact at distance.
Durkheim, while explaining alienation, uses the notion of ànomie’ which has a Greek root anomia, meaning
“lawlessness”. It is a condition where the social norms disintegrate resulting in some kind of lawlessness.
Individuals get disconnected and the relationship that controls their behavior collapses. In the same vein,
Weber speaks about bureaucratization that is based on rationalism resulting in impersonal relations. George
Simmel (1858-1915), a pioneer, of urban sociology, known for his concept of `stranger’, noticed the drift,
between the subjective and objective. When the relations lose their subjectivity, it paves way for anonymity
which alienates a person from the relationship. Writing about the stranger, he defines the characteristic of a
stranger as:
The stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel between him and ourselves common features of a national,
social, occupational, or generally human, nature. He is far from us, insofar as these common features extend
beyond him or us, and connect us only because they connect a great many peoples.
Mass society theories have explained alienation in terms of the state of mind, i.e. the results of massification’
is responsible for alienation. The theorists argue that in a mass society individual relations get weakened;
the intermediary groups that join people with the macro system are lost and therefore isolation results. This
in turn produces political alienation. Pollock Kornhauser and Lipset feel that the absence of intermediary
groups allows the individuals who are alienated remain isolated.
Secondly, in mass society, the problems, processes and solutions will be such that an ordinary man neither
can comprehend nor can participate, therefore he feels that he is too small and goes into a shell and gets
alienated. Thus, the mass society alienates men due to its size inapproachability. It creates a special man
who feels that he, is too small aril powerless and gets alienated.
In the early 20th century, many scholars like Hadley Cantril in. his book The Politics of Despair (1958), Robert
Nisbet in Community and Power (1962) and David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd (1953) have identified this
feature of a mass society. In mass society the ordinary people are alienated because they feel that their
presence or activity will not make any difference and they have a strong feeling of powerlessness. As Kris and
Leites puts it:
Individuals in the mass societies of the twentieth, century are to an ever-increasing extent involved in public
affairs; it becomes increasingly difficult ‘to ignore them. But, òrdinary’ individuals have ever less the feeling
that they can understand or influence the very events upon’ which their life and happiness is known to
depend.
The empirical studies on mass society and its impact on the individuals are full of dismal facts and
figures. They sound at siren of danger, his danger signal of man’s alienation from his surroundings. William
Kornhauser in his book The Politics of Mass Society gives us a glimpse of how the mass movements in a
mass, society bring together the people who are alienated from the system resulting in danger to democracy.
Mass movements for him are manifestations of loss of legitimacy by the existing political order. He wrote:
Mass movements mobilize people who are alienated from the going system, who do not believe in the legitimacy
of the established order, and who therefore are ready to engage in efforts to destroy it; Further, he continued:
The greatest number of people available to mass movements will be found in those sections of society that
have the fewest ties to the social order.
Thus social alienation and political alienation are connected with mass movements. All the three are linked
together and social and political alienation provide the fuel for the mass movement.
Another issue to be noted is whether, all the alienated behave in the same way. The study of political behavior
of the alienated conducted by Cedric Hemi makes an interesting observation. He notices two types of
differences one between the alienated and non-alienated, and the second among the Alienated lie notes
‘substantial differences’, He identifies four categories among the alienated depending on the objective
condition of availability and non-availability of organizational affiliations and the trust in others: Bawd on
these two criteria, he classifies the politically alienated as protestors, less likely political dropouts’, less
likely political ritualists those who engage in conventional and unconventional modes of participation. Thus
political alienation leads to either action or inaction depending on other variables.
SOCIALISM
The term ‘socialism’ is variously understood and defined by various thinkers and schools of thought. In short,
socialism stands for an economic system under which the major instruments of social production (that is
the instruments by which production is carried out for consumption by the larger society) are placed under
the ownership and control of public authority in order to ensure that they are properly utilized to secure the
public interest. It is based on the view that liberty and equality granted to citizens in the political sphere will
remain an empty form unless they are accompanied by a reorganization of the economic life of society so
as to convert them into substantive rights for citizens. It is interesting to note that the varieties of socialism
differ from each other on their different answers to the question – “how can socialism be established in the
society”. The distinction between them will help us understand the true character of socialism.
There are different types of socialism. They differ on how capitalism can best be turned into socialism. They
also emphasize different aspects of socialism. Here are the major branches, according to “Socialism by
Branch.”
DemocraƟc Socialism: The means of producƟon are managed by the working people, and there is a
democraƟcally elected government. Central planning distributes common goods, such as mass transit,
housing, and energy, while the free market is allowed to distribute consumer goods.
RevoluƟonary Socialism: Socialism will emerge only aŌer capitalism has been destroyed. “There is no peaceful
road to socialism.” The factors of producƟon are owned by the workers and managed by them through central
planning.
Libertarian Socialism: Libertarianism assumes that the basic nature of people is raƟonal, autonomous, and
self-determining. Once the strictures of capitalism have been removed, people will naturally seek a socialist
society that takes care of all, free of economic, poliƟcal, or social hierarchies. They see it is the best for their
own self-interest.
Market Socialism: ProducƟon is owned by the workers. They decide how to distribute among themselves.
They would sell excess producƟon on the free market. AlternaƟvely, it could be turned over to society, which
would distribute it according to the free market.
Green Socialism: This type of socialisƟc economy highly values the maintenance of natural resources. Public
ownership of large corporaƟons achieves this. It also emphasizes public transit and locally sourced food.
ProducƟon focuses on making sure everyone has enough of the basics instead of consumer products one
doesn’t really need. This kind of economy guarantees a livable wage for everyone.
Utopian Socialism: This was more a vision of equality than a concrete plan. It arose in the early 19th century,
before industrializaƟon. It would be achieved peacefully through a series of experimental socieƟes.
Fabian Socialism: This type of socialism was extolled by a BriƟsh organizaƟon in the late 1900s. It advocated
a gradual change to socialism through laws, elecƟons, and other peaceful means.
Guild Socialism: Guild socialism is a poliƟcal movement advocaƟng workers’ control of industry through the
medium of trade-related guilds “in an implied contractual relaƟonship with the public”. It originated in the
United Kingdom and was at its most influenƟal in the first quarter of the 20th century. Guild socialism is a
compromise between syndicalism and collecƟvism.
**********
4
FEMINISM
Feminism: Nature and Evolution

In modern usage, feminism is invariably linked to the women's movement and the attempt to advance the
social role of women. As such, it is associated with two basic beliefs:
That women are disadvantaged because of their sex;
That this disadvantage can and should be overthrown.
In this way, feminists have highlighted what they see as a political relationship between the sexes, the
supremacy of men and the subjection of women in most, if not all, societies. Nevertheless, feminism has
also been characterized by a diversity of views and political positions. The women's movement, for instance,
has pursued goals that range from the achievement of female suffrage, the establishment of equal access
to education and an increase in the number of women in elite positions in public life, to the legalization
of abortion, the ending of female circumcision and the abolition of restrictive or demeaning dress codes.
Similarly, feminists have embraced both revolutionary and reformist political strategies, and feminist theory
has at times drawn upon quite different political traditions and values.
Until the 1960s, gender divisions were rarely considered to be politically interesting or important. If the very
different social, economic and political roles of men and women were considered at all, they were usually
regarded as ‘natural’ and therefore inevitable. Conventional political theory played its part in upholding such
beliefs, usually by ignoring gender divisions altogether. Indeed, feminism can be said to have exposed a
‘mobilization of bias’ that traditionally operated within political theory, by which generations of male thinkers,
unwilling to examine the privileges and power that their sex had enjoyed, succeeded in keeping the role of
women off the political agenda.
The first text of modern feminism is usually taken to be Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of
Women [1792], written against the backdrop of the French Revolution. This period is usually referred to as the
‘first wave’ of feminism, and was characterized by the demand that women should enjoy the same legal and
political rights as men. Female suffrage was its principal goal because it was believed that if women could
vote all other forms of sexual discrimination or prejudice would quickly disappear.
The women's movement was strongest in those countries where political democracy was most advanced;
women demanded rights that in many cases were already enjoyed by their husbands and sons.
Some of the notable women’s movements were:
Seneca Falls convention, held in 1848, marked the birth of the US women's rights movement.
The National Women's Suffrage Association, led by Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Women's Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst in Britain
‘First-wave’ feminism ended with the achievement of female suffrage, introduced first in New Zealand in
1893. The Nineteenth Amendment of the US Constitution granted the vote to American women in 1920. The
franchise was extended to women in the UK in 1918, but they did not achieve equal voting rights with men for
a further decade. Ironically, in many ways, winning the right to vote weakened and undermined the women's
movement. The struggle for female suffrage had united and inspired the movement, giving it a clear goal and
a coherent structure. Furthermore, many activists naïvely believed that in winning suffrage rights, women
had achieved full emancipation. It was not until the 1960s that the women's movement was regenerated with
the emergence of feminism's ‘second wave’.
‘Second-wave’ feminism acknowledged that the achievement of political and legal rights had not solved
the ‘women's question’. Indeed, feminist ideas and arguments became increasingly radical, and at times
revolutionary. Books such as Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch
(1970) pushed back the borders of what had previously been considered to be ‘political’ by focusing attention
upon the personal, psychological and sexual aspects of female oppression. The goal of ‘second-wave’ feminism
was not merely political emancipation but ‘women's liberation’, reflected in the ideas of the growing Women's
Liberation Movement. Such a goal could not be achieved by political reforms or legal changes alone, but
demanded, modern feminists argued, a radical and perhaps revolutionary process of social change.
Radical feminists proclaimed the central political importance of gender divisions, something that no
conventional ideology could accept. Conventional ideologies were therefore viewed as inadequate vehicles
for advancing the social role of women, and even, at times, criticized for harbouring patriarchal attitudes and
assumptions. In spite of having difference of opinion on issues of concern and strategies to handle them
among the dominant streams, a range of ‘common ground’ themes can nevertheless be identified within
feminism.
The most important of these are the following:
The public/private divide
Patriarchy
Sex and gender
Equality and difference
THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIVIDE

Traditional notions of what is ‘political’ locate politics in the arena of public rather than private life. Politics has
usually been understood as an activity that takes place within a ‘public sphere’ of government institutions,
political parties, pressure groups and public debate. Family life and personal relationships have normally
been thought to be part of a ‘private sphere’, and therefore to be ‘non-political’. Modern feminist, on the other
hand, insist that politics is an activity that takes place within all social groups and is not merely confined
to the affairs of government or other public bodies. Politics exists whenever and wherever social conflict is
found. Millett (1970), for example, defined politics as ‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby
one group of persons is controlled by another’. The relationship between government and its citizens is
therefore clearly political, but so is the relationship between employers and workers within a firm, and also
relationships in the family, between husbands and wives, and between parents and children.
The definition of what is ‘political’ is not merely of academic interest. Feminists argue that sexual inequality has
been preserved precisely because the sexual division of labour that runs through society has been thought of as
‘natural’ rather than ‘political’. This is highlighted in the title of Jean B. Elshtain's Public Man, Private Woman (1981).
Traditionally, the public sphere of life, encompassing politics, work, art and literature, has been the preserve of
men, while women have been confined to an essentially private existence, centred upon the family and domestic
responsibilities. If politics takes place only within the public sphere, the role of women and the question
of sexual equality are issues of little or no political importance. Women, restricted to the private role of
housewife and mother, are in effect excluded from politics. Feminists have therefore sought to break
down the divide between ‘public man’ and ‘private woman’. However, they have not always agreed about
what it means to break down the public/private divide, about how it can be achieved, or about how far it is
desirable. Radical feminists have been the keenest opponents of the idea that politics stops at the front
door, proclaiming, instead, that ‘the personal is the political’. Female oppression is thus thought to operate
in all walks of life and in many respects originates in the family itself. Radical feminists have therefore
been concerned to analyse what can be called ‘the politics of everyday life’. This includes the process of
conditioning in the family, the distribution of housework and other domestic responsibilities, and the politics
of personal and sexual conduct. For some feminists, breaking down the pubic/private divide implies
transferring the responsibilities of private life to the state or other public bodies. For example, the burden of
child-rearing upon women could be relieved by more generous welfare support for families or the provision
of nursery schools or crèches at work. Liberal feminists, however, object to the public/private divide on
the grounds that it restricts women's access to the public sphere of education, work and political life, but
warn against the dangers of politicizing the private sphere, which, according to liberal theory, is a realm of
personal choice and individual freedom.
PATRIARCHY
Feminists use the concept of ‘patriarchy’ to describe the power relationship between men and women.
The term literally means ‘rule by the father’ (pater meaning father in Latin), and can refer narrowly to
the supremacy of the husband–father within the family, and therefore to the subordination of his wife
and his children.
Some feminists employ patriarchy only in this specific and limited sense, to describe the structure
of the family and the dominance of the father within it, preferring to use broader terms such as ‘male
supremacy’ or ‘male dominance’ to describe gender relations in society at large. However, feminists
believe that the dominance of the father within the family symbolizes male supremacy in all other
institutions. Many would argue, moreover, that the patriarchal family lies at the heart of a systematic
process of male domination, in that it reproduces male dominance in all other walks of life: in education,
at work and in politics. Patriarchy is therefore commonly used in a broader sense to mean quite simply
‘rule by men’, both within the family and outside.
Millett for instance, described ‘patriarchal government’ as an institution whereby ‘that half of the
populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male’. She suggested that patriarchy
contains two principles: ‘male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger’. A patriarchy
is therefore a hierarchic society, characterized by both sexual and generational oppression.
The concept of patriarchy is nevertheless broad. Feminists may believe that men have dominated
women in all societies, but accept that the form and degree of oppression has varied considerably in
different cultures and at different times. At least in western countries, the social position of women
significantly improved during the twentieth century as a result of the achievement of the vote and
broader access to education, changes in marriage and divorce law, the legalization of abortion and so
on. However, in parts of the developing world patriarchy still assumes a cruel, even gruesome form: 80
million women, mainly in Africa, are subject to the practice of circumcision; bride murders still occur in
India, and the persistence of the dowry system ensures that female children are often unwanted and
sometimes allowed to die. Feminists do not therefore have a single or simple analysis of patriarchy.
Liberal feminists, to the extent that they use the term, use it to draw attention to the unequal distribution
to rights and entitlements in society at large. The face of patriarchy they highlight is therefore the
under-representation of women in senior positions in politics, business, the professions and public
life.
Socialist feminists tend to emphasize the economic aspects of patriarchy. In their view, patriarchy
operates in tandem with capitalism, gender subordination and class inequality being interlinked
systems of oppression. Some socialist feminists, indeed, reject the term altogether, on the grounds
that gender inequality is merely a consequence of the class system: capitalism not patriarchy is the
issue.
Radical feminists, on the other hand, place considerable stress upon patriarchy. They see it as a
systematic, institutionalized and pervasive form of male power that is rooted in the family. Patriarchy
thus expresses the belief that the pattern of male domination and female subordination that
characterizes society at large is, essentially, a reflection of the power structures that operate within
domestic life.
Sex and Gender

The most common of all anti-feminist arguments, most commonly advanced by conservatives, asserts that
gender divisions in society are ‘natural’: women and men merely fulfil the social roles that nature designed them
for. A woman's physical and anatomical make-up thus suits her to a subordinate and domestic role in society; in
short, ‘biology is destiny’. In practice, all such biological arguments are hollow. A woman's brain may be, as male
chauvinists point out, smaller than a man's, but in proportion to her body it is relatively larger, which is usually
a more accurate indication of intelligence. Women are generally physically less powerful than men, with less
developed musculatures.
To some extent, this simply reflects social factors: men have been encouraged to undertake physical and
outdoor work, to participate in sport and to conform to a stereotypical ‘masculine’ physique. However, although
physical strength is important in agricultural or industrializing societies, it has little value in developed
societies where tools and machinery are far more efficient than human strength. Indeed, the heavily muscled
male may simply be redundant in a technological world of robots and microchips. In any case, physical
hard work, for which the male body may be better suited, has traditionally been undertaken by people of low
status, not by those in authority.
The biological factor that is most frequently linked to women's social position is their capacity to bear
children. Without doubt, childbearing is unique to the female sex, together with the fact that women
menstruate and have the capacity to suckle babies. However, in no way do such biological facts necessarily
disadvantage women nor determine their social destiny. Women may be mothers, but they need not accept
the responsibilities of motherhood: nurturing, educating and raising children by devoting themselves to
home and family. The link between childbearing and child-rearing is cultural rather than biological: women
are expected to stay at home, bring up their children and look after the house because of the structure
of traditional family life. Domestic responsibilities could be undertaken by the husband, or they could be
shared equally between husband and wife in so-called ‘symmetrical families’. Moreover, child-rearing could
be carried out by the community or the state, or it could be undertaken by relatives, as in ‘extended families’.
Feminists have traditionally challenged the idea that biology is destiny by drawing a sharp distinction between
sex and gender. ‘Sex’, in this sense, refers to biological differences between females and males; these
differences are natural and therefore are unalterable. The most important sex differences are those that are
linked to reproduction. ‘Gender’, on the other hand, is a cultural term; it refers to the different roles that society
ascribes to men and women. Gender differences are typically imposed through contrasting stereotypes of
‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. As Simone de Beauvoir pointed out, ‘Women are made, they are not born’.
Patriarchal ideas blur the distinction between sex and gender, and assume that all social distinctions between men
and women are rooted in biology or anatomy. Feminists, in contrast, usually deny that there is a necessary or logical
link between sex and gender, and emphasize that gender differences are socially, or even politically, constructed.
Most feminists believe that sex differences between men and women are relatively minor and neither explain
nor justify gender distinctions. As a result, human nature is thought to be and rogynous, incorporating the
characteristics of both sexes. All human beings, regardless of sex, possess the genetic inheritance of a
mother and a father, and therefore embody a blend of either female and male attributes or traits. Such a
view accepts that sex differences are biological facts of life but insists that they have no social, political or
economic significance. Women and men should not be judged by their sex, but as individuals, as ‘persons’.
The goal of feminism is therefore the achievement of genderless ‘personhood’. Establishing a concept
of gender that is divorced from biological sex had crucial significance for feminist theory. Not only did it
highlight the possibility of social change – socially constructed identities can be reconstructed or even
demolished – but it also drew attention to the processes through which women had been ‘engendered’ and
therefore oppressed.
Although most feminists have regarded the sex/gender distinction as empowering, others have attacked
it. These attacks have been launched from two main directions. The first, advanced by so-called ‘difference
feminists’, suggests that there are essential differences between women and men. From this ‘essentialist’
perspective, social and cultural characteristics are seen to reflect deeper biological differences.
The second attack on the sex/gender distinction challenges the categories themselves. Postmodern feminists
have questioned whether ‘sex’ is as clear-cut a biological distinction as is usually assumed. For example,
the features of ‘biological womanhood’ do not apply to many who are classified as women: some women
cannot bear children, some women are not sexually attracted to men, and so on. If there is a biology–culture
continuum rather than a fixed biological/cultural divide, the categories ‘female’ and ‘male’ become more or less
arbitrary, and the concepts of sex and gender become hopelessly entangled.
EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE

Traditionally, women have demanded equality with men, even to the extent that feminism is often
characterized as a movement for the achievement of sexual equality. However, the issue of equality
has also exposed major fault lines within feminism: feminists have embraced contrasting notions of
equality and some have entirely rejected equality in favour of the idea of difference.
Liberal feminists champion legal and political equality with men. They have supported an equal rights
agenda, which would enable women to compete in public life on equal terms with men, regardless of
sex. Equality thus means equal access to the public realm.
Socialist feminists, in contrast, argue that equal rights may be meaningless unless women also enjoy
social equality. Equality, in this sense, has to apply in terms of economic power, and so must address
issues such as the ownership of wealth, pay differentials and the distinction between waged and
unwaged labour.
Radical feminists, for their part, are primarily concerned about equality in family and personal life.
Equality must therefore operate, for example, in terms of childcare and other domestic responsibilities,
the control of one's own body, and sexual expression and fulfilment.
Difference feminists regard the very notion of equality as either misguided or simply undesirable. To
want to be equal to a man implies that women are ‘male identified’, in that they define their goals in terms
of what men are or what men have. The demand for equality thus embodies a desire to be ‘like men’.
Although feminists seek to overthrow patriarchy, many warn against the danger of modelling themselves
upon men, which would require them, for example, to adopt the competitive and aggressive behaviour
that characterizes male society. For many feminists, liberation means the desire to develop and achieve
fulfilment as women; in other words, to be ‘woman identified’.
Difference feminists thus subscribe to a ‘pro-woman’ position, which holds that sex differences do have
political and social importance. This is based upon the essentialist belief that women and men are
fundamentally different at a psycho-biological level. The aggressive and competitive nature of men and
the creative and empathetic character of women are thought to reflect hormonal and other genetic
differences, rather than simply the structure of society. To idealize androgyny or personhood and
ignore sex differences is therefore a mistake. Women should recognize and celebrate the distinctive
characteristics of the female sex; they should seek liberation not as sexless ‘persons’ but as developed
and fulfilled women. In the form of cultural feminism, this has led to an emphasis upon women's crafts,
art and literature, and upon experiences that are unique to women and promote a sense of ‘sisterhood’,
such as childbirth, motherhood and menstruation.
Forms of reactionary feminism have also developed in certain circumstances. This has occurred when
the traditional status and position of women has been threatened by rapid social or cultural change.
So-called Islamic feminism has this character. In Islamic states, such as Iran, Pakistan and Sudan, the
imposition of sharia law and the return to traditional moral and religious principles have sometimes been
portrayed as a means of enhancing the status of women, threatened by the spread of western attitudes
and values. From this perspective, the veil and of other dress codes and the exclusion of women from
public life have been viewed by some Moslem women as symbols of liberation.
However, from the perspective of conventional feminism, reactionary feminism is simply a contradiction
in terms, reflecting the misguided belief that traditional public/private divide genuinely afforded women
status and protection. Indeed, it provides evidence of the cultural strength of patriarchy and its capacity
to recruit women into their own oppression.
The major traditions within feminism are the following:
Liberal
Socialist
Radical
New feminist traditions
LIBERAL FEMINISM: SALIENT FEATURES

Liberal feminism is essentially reformist: it seeks to open up public life to equal competition between
women and men, rather than to challenge what many feminists see as the patriarchal structure of society
itself. In particular, liberal feminists generally do not wish to abolish the distinction between the public
and private spheres of life.
Reform is necessary, they argue, but only to ensure the establishment of equal rights in the public sphere:
the right to education, the right to vote, the right to pursue a career and so on.
Significant reforms have undoubtedly been achieved in the industrialized West, notably the extension of
the franchise, the ‘liberalization’ of divorce law and abortion, equal pay and so forth.
Far less attention has been given to the private sphere, the sexual division of labour and distribution of
power within the family.
Liberal feminists have usually assumed that men and women have different natures and inclinations,
and therefore accept that, at least in part, women's leaning towards family and domestic life is influenced
by natural impulses and so reflects a willing choice. In The Second Stage (1983) Friedan discussed
the problem of reconciling the achievement of ‘personhood’, made possible by opening up broader
opportunities for women in work and public life, with the need for love, represented by children, home
and the family.
RADICAL CRITICISMS OF LIBERAL FEMINISM

Friedan's emphasis upon the continuing and central importance of the family in women's life has been
criticized by more radical feminists as contributing to a ‘mystique of motherhood’.
At a deeper level, radical feminists have drawn attention to the limitations of individualism as the basis
for gender politics. In the first place, an individualist perspective draws attention away from the structural
character of patriarchy, in which women are subordinated not as individuals who happen to be denied
rights or opportunities, but as a sex that is subject to systematic and pervasive oppression.
Second, the stress in individualism upon ‘personhood’ may make it more difficult for women to think and
act collectively on the basis of their common gender identity, their ‘sisterhood’.
Third, liberal individualism may only appear to rise above gender differences. In viewing human beings
as individuals, liberalism seems to transcend gender and other social identities, enabling people to be
valued on the basis of personal talents and achievements. However, this may at best depoliticize sexual
relations by, in effect, making gender invisible, and at worst it may foist male attributes and aspirations
on women, because the allegedly sexless ‘individual’ invariably embodies concealed male norms.
Finally, the demand for equal rights, which lies at the core of liberal feminism, has principally attracted
those women whose education and social background equip them to take advantage of wider educational
and career opportunities. In reality, women are judged not only by their talents and abilities, but also
by social and economic factors. If emancipation simply means the achievement of equal rights and
opportunities for women and men, other forms of social disadvantage – for example, those linked to
social class and race – are ignored.
Liberal feminism may therefore reflect the interests of white, middle-class women in developed societies,
but fail to address the problems of working-class women, black women and women in the developing
world.
SOCIALIST FEMINISM: SALIENT FEATURES

In contrast to their liberal counterparts, socialist feminists do not believe that women simply face
political or legal disadvantages that can be remedied by equal legal rights or the achievement of equal
opportunities. Rather, socialist feminists argue that the relationship between the sexes is rooted in the
social and economic structure itself, and that nothing short of profound social change, some would say
a social revolution, can offer women the prospect of genuine emancipation. As a United Nations report
pointed out in 1980: ‘While women represent 50 per cent of the world population, they perform nearly
two thirds of all working hours, receive one-tenth of world income and own less than 1 per cent of world
property.’
The classic statement of this argument was developed in Friedrich Engels' The Origins of the Family,
Private Property and the State ([1884] 1976. He suggested that the position of women in society had
fundamentally changed with the development of capitalism and the institution of private property. In pre-
capitalist societies, family life had been communistic, and ‘mother right’ – the inheritance of property
and social position through the female line – was widely observed.
Capitalism, however, being based upon the ownership of private property by men, had overthrown ‘mother
right’ and brought about what Engels called ‘the world historica defeat of the female sex’.
Female oppression operates through the institution of the family. The ‘bourgeois family’ is patriarchal
and oppressive because men wish to ensure that their property will be passed on only to their sons. Men
achieve undisputed paternity by insisting upon monogamous marriage, a restriction that is rigorously
applied to wives, depriving them of other sexual partners.
Women are compensated for this repression by the development of a ‘cult of femininity’, which extols the
attractions of romantic love but in reality is an organized hypocrisy designed to protect male privileges
and property.
Socialist feminists have proposed that the traditional, patriarchal family should be replaced by a system
of communal living and ‘free love’, as advocated by early utopian socialists such as Fourier and Owen.
Most socialist feminists agree that the confinement of women to a domestic sphere of housework and
motherhood serves the economic interests of capitalism. Some have argued that women constitute
a ‘reserve army of labour’, which can be recruited into the workforce when there is a need to increase
production, but easily shed and returned to domestic life during a depression, without imposing a burden
upon employers or the state.
In addition, as temporary workers women are conditioned to accept poorly paid, low-status jobs, which
has the advantage of helping to depress wage rates without posing a threat to ‘men's jobs’.
At the same time, women's domestic labour is vital to the health and efficiency of the economy. In bearing
and rearing children, women are producing labour power for the next generation and thus guaranteeing
future production. Women are also responsible for socializing, conditioning and even educating children,
thereby ensuring that they develop into disciplined and obedient workers.
Similarly, in their role as housewives, women relieve men of the burden of housework and childrearing,
allowing them to concentrate their time and energy upon paid and productive employment. In that sense,
the sexual division of labour between men, who undertake waged labour in factories or offices, and
women, who carry out unwaged domestic work, promotes economic efficiency.
Some feminists have argued that it is the unwaged nature of domestic work that accounts for its low
social status and leaves women financially dependent upon their husbands, thus establishing systematic
social inequality. The campaign for ‘wages for housework’, associated in the UK with Costa and James
(1972), suggested that women would gain economic independence and enjoy enhanced social status if
their labour, like that of men, is recognized as productive and worthwhile by being paid. This argument
has also been used to suggest that prostitution should be accepted as legal and waged employment.
However, most socialist feminists argue that emancipation requires that women be afforded a broader
range of social and economic opportunities, rather than merely being paid for fulfilling their traditional
social roles as housewives or sex objects.
However, modern socialist feminists have found it increasingly difficult to accept the primacy of class
politics over sexual politics. In part, this was a consequence of the disappointing progress made by
women in state-socialist societies such as the Soviet Union, suggesting that socialism does not, in itself,
end patriarchy.
For modern socialist feminists, sexual oppression is every bit as important as class exploitation. Many
of them subscribe to modern Marxism, which accepts the interplay of economic, social, political and
cultural forces in society, rather than orthodox Marxism, which insists upon the primacy of material or
economic factors. They therefore refuse to analyse the position of women in simple economic terms
and have, instead, given attention to the cultural and ideological roots of patriarchy.
the UK socialist feminist, Juliet Mitchell (1971), suggested that women fulfil four social functions:
1. they are members of the workforce and are active in production;
2. they bear children and thus reproduce the human species;
3. they are responsible for socializing children; and
4. They are sex objects.
From this perspective, liberation requires that women achieve emancipation in each of these areas, and not
merely that the capitalist class system is replaced by socialism.
Radical Feminism
During the 1960s and 1970s, however, the feminist movement sought to uncover the influence of
patriarchy not only in politics, public life and the economy, but in all aspects of social, personal and
sexual existence.
This trend was evident in the pioneering work of Simone de Beauvoir, and was developed by early radical
feminists such as Eva Figes and Germaine Greer.
However, it was with the work of activists such as the US writer, Kate Millett, and the Canadian author,
Shulamith Firestone, that radical feminism developed a systematic theory of sexual oppression that
clearly stood apart from established liberal and socialist traditions.
The central feature of radical feminism is the belief that sexual oppression is the most fundamental
feature of society and that other forms of injustice – class exploitation, racial hatred and so on – are
merely secondary.
Gender is thought to be the deepest social cleavage and the most politically significant; more important,
for example, than social class, race or nation.
Radical feminists have therefore insisted that society be understood and described as ‘patriarchal’ to
highlight the central role of sex oppression, just as socialists use the term ‘capitalist’ to draw attention
to the significance of economic exploitation.
In Sexual Politics (1970) Millett described patriarchy as a ‘social constant’ running through all
political, social and economic structures and found in every historical and contemporary society, as
well as in all major religions.
The different roles of men and women have their origin in a process of ‘conditioning’: from a very early
age boys and girls are encouraged to conform to very specific gender identities. This process takes
place largely within the family, ‘patriarchy's chief institution’, but it is also evident in literature, art,
public life and the economy.
Millett proposed that patriarchy should be challenged through a process of ‘consciousness raising’, an
idea influenced by the Black Power movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Through discussion and education women would become increasingly aware of the sexism that
pervades and structures their society, and would therefore be better able to challenge it. Women's
liberation thus required a revolutionary change: the institution of the family would have to be destroyed
and the psychological and sexual oppression of women that operates at all levels of society would
have to be overthrown.
Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex attempted a still more ambitious explanation of social and historical
processes in terms of sexual divisions. Firestone adapted Marxist theory to the analysis of the role of
women by substituting the category of sex for that of social class.
According to Firestone, sex differences do not merely arise from social conditioning, but from biology.
The basic fact that women bear babies has led to a ‘natural division of labour’ within what she called
‘the biological family’. In bearing children, women are constantly at the mercy of biology, and therefore,
like children, are dependent upon men for their physical survival.
Nevertheless, Firestone did not accept that patriarchy is either natural or inevitable. Women, she
argued, can achieve emancipation by transcending their biological nature and escaping from the ‘curse
of Eve’. Firestone believed that modern technology had opened up the prospect of genuine sexual
equality by relieving women of the burden of pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnancy can be avoided by
contraception or be terminated by abortion, but new technology also creates the possibility of avoiding
pregnancy by artificial reproduction in test tubes and the transfer of childrearing responsibilities to
social institutions. In other words, the biological process of first time in history, to escape from the
biological family and enter society as the true equals of men.
Although Millett saw the roots of patriarchy in social conditioning, while Firestone located them in
biology, they agreed that liberation requires that gender differences between men and women be
diminished and eventually abolished. They both believed that the true nature of the sexes is equal and
identical, a fact presently concealed either by the influence of patriarchal culture or the misfortune that
women are born with wombs.
However, radical feminism encompasses a number of divergent elements, some of which emphasize
the fundamental and unalterable difference between women and men. An example of this is the ‘pro-
woman’ position, particularly strong in France and the United States.
In sharp contrast to Firestone's belief that women need to be liberated from the curse of childbirth and
child-rearing, this position extols the positive virtues of fertility and motherhood. Women should not
try to be ‘more like men’. Instead, they should recognize and embrace their sisterhood, the bonds that
link them to all other women. The pro-woman position therefore accepts that women's attitudes and
values are different from men's, but implies that in certain respects women are superior, possessing
the qualities of creativity, sensitivity and caring, which men can never fully appreciate or develop.
POST MODERN/ POST STRUCTURAL FEMINISM

A more recent feminist position takes the opposite view from that of radical feminists. While radical feminists
argue that sex/gender distinction underplays sex differences, a school of post ‘modern feminist thought holds
that it over emphasizes the biological body. Judith Barker argues that “gender” is not the cultural inscription
of meaning on to a pre given “sex”; rather , gender as a way of thinking and as a concept, produces the
category of biological sex. In this understanding, “sex” does not precede “gender” but “gender” precedes sex.
Butler thus suggests a “radical discontinuity” between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders.
Gender is something that is constructed through relations of power, and through a series of norms and
constraints that regulate what will be recognised as a “male body” and a “female” body. Through such
norms a wide range of bodies are rendered invisible or illegitimate. For instance infants born with no clear
determining sexual characteristics or eunuchs, or men and women who choose not to follow the dress norms
prescribed for their gender. All these are either marginalised, criminalised or forced to fit into the existing
two sex model in some way or the other. Most modern languages have no way of speaking of a human who
does not fit either sexes. What this means is that language forces “reality” into certain pre-given patterns and
prevents certain possibilities from being realised.
Feminist Scientists such as Ruth Bleier and Evelyn Fox Keller have argues that a rigid sex/gender distinction
restricts “biological sex”- that is sex defined as anatomical , hormonal or chromosomal –as something to be
studied by the bio-medical sciences, “gender” being studied by the social science. Such an understanding,
they argue, mistakenly assumes that while cultural notions of gender may change, the body remains as an
unchanging biological reality that needs no further explanation. These feminist scientists argue that on the
contrary, our perceptions and interpretations of the body are mediated through language, and the bio-medical
science function as a major provider of this language.
Such a feminist position rejects the idea that scientific facts about the body simply exist to be discovered
Rather, scientific “facts “are deeply embedded in society and culture. Thus “sex” is constructed by human
practices.
BLACK FEMINISM
Black feminism has challenged the tendency within feminism to ignore racial differences and to suggest that
women endure a common oppression by virtue of their sex. Particularly strong in the USA, black feminism
portrays sexism and racism as interlinked systems of oppression and highlights the particular and complex
range of gender, racial and economic disadvantages that confront ‘women of colour’.
GENDER IDENTITY INTERFACE

A new kind of rethinking of the sex/gender distinction comes from locating “gender” in a grid of identities
–caste, class, race, religion. This would mean that the biological category of “women” does not necessarily
have shared interests, life situations or goals. This kind of understanding has arisen from the political practice
of women’s movements all over the world which has increasingly shown up the fact that “women “do not
exist as a pre-existing subject which can simply be mobilized by the women’s movement. That is women
identify themselves not only, and not even necessarily primarily, in terms of their gender, but as black, or
Muslim or Dalit, or peasant. So in many cases, women may be easier mobilized in terms of their religion then
by the women’s movement.
Further, all politically active women do not necessarily act as feminists – they may well be representing
interests and structures of power which feminist politics in India has sought to struggle against. Thus, we
find women active in Hindu-right wing politics and in anti-lower caste movements like the agitation against
the Mandal Commission. In other words, in this understanding, the feminist sex/gender distinction must take
into account other modes of constituting identity. Depending on the context, even as feminists , one may
have to privilege caste or class identity over gender in some cases, just as it can be expected or Dalit activists
to privilege gender over calls and caste in some contexts.
CHALLENGES BEING FACED BY FEMINISM

In the first place, the women's movement has become increasingly fragmented and incoherent; indeed,
some question whether the notion of a women's movement is any longer meaningful.
Although united by a common desire to advance the role of women, feminists disagree about how this
can be achieved and about what it means in practice. Divisions have long existed – between reformist
and revolutionary feminists, between radical and socialist feminists, and over highly controversial
issues such as separatism and lesbianism. However, these have now proliferated, with divisions
emerging over issues such as prostitution, pornography and censorship, abortion, motherhood, race
and ethnicity, the welfare state, and so on.
However, such a broad range of concerns and interests be more an indication of feminist strength than
a source of feminist weakness. Indeed, it may merely serve to highlight the fact that feminism has
developed from a political movement into a political ideology that, like other ideologies, encompasses
a range of often-competing traditions.
A further problem is that, particularly in the 1980s and 1980ss, feminism operated in a hostile political
environment. In Islamic countries, the advance of fundamentalism was reflected in pressure for the
exclusion of women from politics and public life, the abolition of their legal rights and a return to the veil.
A conservative backlash against feminism was also evident in the industrialized West. Both the
Thatcher and the Reagan administrations in the 1980s, for instance, were openly anti-feminist in
their call for the restoration of ‘family values’ and in their emphasis upon women's traditional role as
mother and housewife. The new right tried to reassert ‘profamily’ patriarchal values and ideas, not only
because they are seen to be ‘natural’ but also because they are viewed as a guarantee of social order
and stability.
Feminism in the twenty-first century also faces the problem that many of its original goals have been
achieved or are being achieved, which is the basis of the post-feminism critique. Just as the right
to vote was won in the early years of the twentieth century, so ‘second wave’ feminism successfully
campaigned in many countries for the legalization of abortion, equal pay legislation, anti-discrimination
laws and wider access to education and political and professional life. Some have even suggested the
victory of feminism can be seen in the emergence of a new breed of man, no longer the chauvinist bigot
of old, but the ‘new man’, who has come to terms with the ‘feminine’ elements of his make-up and is
prepared to share domestic and family responsibilities within the ‘symmetrical family’.
The so-called men's movement has in fact argued that matters have gone further still, that men have
become the victims of gender politics and is no longer its beneficiaries. This perspective suggests
that the advance of feminism has simply gone ‘too far’. Confronted by the decline of traditional ‘male’
occupations, faced with growing competition from women in the workplace and at home, and deprived
of their status as ‘breadwinners’, there is a danger that men, particularly young men, will retreat into a
culture of non-achievement, unable to cope with a future that is female.
**********
5 HANNAH ARENDT
Hannah Arendt is a twentieth century political philosopher whose writings do not easily come together into a
systematic philosophy that explains and expands upon a single argument over a sequence of works.
Instead, her thoughts span on four major topics
Totalitarianism,
Revolution,
The Nature Of Freedom and
Civic Republicanism.
Her work focuses mostly on participation of public in political affairs and dangers associated with lack
BOOKS BY HANNAH ARENDT

Origins of Totalitarianism- Her Political views
Human Condition- Her Philosophical views
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil –she tries to identify how most evil acts are
accepted and perpetuated by those in power without understanding the consequences.
ARENDT’S THOUGHT: CONTEXT & INFLUENCES

Hannah Arendt is a most challenging figure for anyone wishing to understand the body of her work in
political philosophy.
She never wrote anything that would represent a systematic political philosophy.
Rather, her writings cover many and diverse topics, spanning issues such as totalitarianism, revolution,
the nature of freedom.
Arendt’s writings draw inspiration from Heidegger, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Nietzscheand others.
HER THOUGHTS ON NATURE OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY

The most important questions for her are
What is the exact nature of politics?
What is the ideal political life for a citizen?
How is the political life different from other domains of activity like economic or social life?
What are the forces that have historically threatened the political freedom of citizens?
What role has political philosophy played in decline of the political realm of action?
THE HUMAN CONDITION

Arendt introduces the term vita activa (life of action) by distinguishing it from vita contemplativa
(contemplative life or life of philosophical thinking).
Ancient philosophers insisted upon the superiority of the vita contemplativa, for which the vita activa
merely provided necessities. A life of thinking was simply better than a life of just doing things.
Plato was the pioneer of this direction of thinking since he gives the philopsher king much more
importance in comparison to the average producer class.
Marx reversed the hierarchy, claiming that the vita contemplativa is merely a superstructure on the
fundamental basic life-processes of a society. For him production which involved action comes before
thinking and philophical contemplation.
Arendt’s thesis is that the concerns of the vita activa are neither superior nor inferior to those of the
vita contemplativa, nor are they the same.
The ‘vita activa’ may be divided into three sorts of activities: labor, work and action.
THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE REALM
According to Arendt, ancient Greek life was divided between two realms: the public realm in which
“action” was performed, and the private realm, site of the household ruled by its head.
In the private realm, heads of households took care of needs for food, shelter, and sex.
By contrast, the public realm was a realm of freedom from these biological necessitie. Basically the
public realm was of political activity.
Property requirements for citizenship reflected the understanding that unless one was able to take
care of one’s biological necessities, one could not be free from them and hence could not participate
in the public realm as a free person among equals. This ideas was most profoundly advocated by
Aristotle in his theory of Citizenship.
Slaves and subordinated women were confined to the private realm where they met the biological
necessities of the head of the household. The public realm naturally was accorded higher status than
the private.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the church took over the role of the public realm.
Modern period saw the rise of a third realm, the social realm. The social realm is concerned with
providing for biological needs, but it does so at the level of the state.
Arendt views the social realm as a threat to both the private and the public realm because it invades the
personal sphere of citizens on the grounds of fulfilling their basic needs. For e.g. Welfare states trying
to regulate the choices of both rich and poor.
ARENDT’S IDEA OF VITA ACTIVA IS DIVIDED INTO THREE PHASES, AND SHE DOES THIS CLASSIFICATION
SIMPLY TO PROVE THAT LIFE OF ACTION IS BETTER THAN THE MATERIAL AND SOCIAL LIFE, IN ORDER TO
CONVINCE INDIVIDUALS TO BE MORE POLITICALLY ACTIVE.
FIRST PHASE: LABOR (THE BIOLOGICAL & MATERIAL PHASE)

Labor is human activity directed at meeting biological (and perhaps other) necessities for self-
preservation and the reproduction of the species.
Because these needs cannot be satisfied once and for all, labor never really reaches an end.
Its fruits do not last long; they are quickly consumed, and more must always be produced. ( A person
has to always keep on doing something or the other to keep himself alive)
Labor is thus a cyclical, repeated process that carries with it a sense of futility.
In the ancient world, Arendt declares, labor was disgraceful not because it was what slaves did; rather,
slaves were disgraceful because they performed labor, a futile but necessary activity.
In the modern world, not just slaves, but everyone has come to be defined by their labor: We are job-
holders, and we must perform our jobs to meet our needs.
Marx registers this modern idea in his assertion that man is Animal laborans, a species that sets itself
apart from the animals not by its thinking, but by its labor.
But Marx then contradicts himself in foreseeing a day when production allows the proletariat to throw
off the shackles of their oppressors and be free from labor entirely.
By Marx’s own argument, this would mean they cease to be human.
SECOND PHASE: WORK ( THE CREATIVE & SOCIAL PHASE)

Work, unlike labor, has a clearly defined beginning and end. It leaves behind a durable object, such as
a tool, rather than an object for consumption.These durable objects become part of the world we live
in.
Work comprises the whole process, from the original idea for the object, to the obtaining of raw
materials, to the finished product.
It should be clear that work stands in clear distinction from labor in a number of ways. Firstly, whereas
labor is bound to the demands of body, biology and nature, work violates the realm of nature by shaping
and transforming it according to the plans and needs of humans; this makes work a distinctly human
(i.e. non-animal) activity.
Secondly, because work is governed by human ends and intentions it is under humans’ sovereignty and
control, it exhibits a certain quality of freedom, unlike labor which is subject to nature and necessity.
Thirdly, whereas labor is concerned with satisfying the individual’s life-needs and so remains essentially
a private affair, work is inherently public; it creates an objective and common world which both stands
between humans and unites them. While work is not the mode of human activity which corresponds to
politics, it creates a world which will eventually develop into the political sphere of life.
THIRD PHASE: ACTION (THE POLITICAL PHASE)

The third type of activity, action (which includes both speech and action), is the means by which
humans disclose themselves to others. This phase determines our unique identity.
Action is the means by which we distinguish ourselves from others as unique and unexchangeable
beings.
With humans, unlike with other beings, there is not just a generic question of what we are, but of who
each is individually.
Action and speech are always between humans and directed toward them, and it generates human
relationships.
The Greeks thought of the polis as a place where free people could live together so as to act.
The fundamental defining quality of action is it’s unquestionable freedom.
Freedom is “an accessory of doing and acting;”- Arendt
“Men are free...as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same.” -
Arendt
This capacity for initia1tion gives actions the character of originality and uniqueness, as “it is in the
nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever happened
before.” - Arendt
The definition of human action in terms of freedom and originality places it outside the realm of
necessity or predictability. Herein lies the basis of Arendt’s quarrel with Hegel and Marx, for to define
politics or the events of history in terms of any inherent or objective process is to deny what is central
to authentic human action, namely, its capacity to initiate the wholly new, unanticipated, unexpected,
unconditioned activities.
WHY DOES ARENDT EMPHASIZE SO MUCH ON

ACTING TOGETHER OR “ACTING IN CONCERT”?
Another way of understanding the importance of publicity and plurality for action is to appreciate that
action would be meaningless unless there were others present to see it and so give meaning to it.
The meaning of the action and the identity of the actor can only be established in the context of human
plurality. There is no meaning to human action if others are not present to understand the uniqueness
of the action and appreciate it.
This communicative and disclosure quality of action is clear in the way that Arendt connects action most
centrally to speech. It is through action as speech that individuals come to disclose their distinctive
identity: “Action is the public disclosure of the agent in the speech deed.”-Arendt.
Action of this character requires a public space in which it can be realized, a context in which individuals
can encounter one another as members of a community.
Arendt considers the Athenian political system as the ideal space for such communication.
Political action is the best example for Arendt. Politics is the ongoing activity of citizens coming
together so as to exercise their capacity for action, to conduct their lives together by means of free
speech and persuasion.
Politics and the exercise of freedom-as-action are one and the same: “Freedom...is actually the reason that
men live together in political organisations at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The
raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action.”-Arendt.
ARENDT’S VIEWS ON TOTALITARIANISM

Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism she analysed the Nazi and Stalinist regimes of
Germany and USSR and attempted to define the nature of Totalitarianism based on the functioning of
these regimes.
She describes Totalitarianism as a new form of government.
She describes that it “differs essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as
despotism, tyranny and dictatorship” in that it applied terror to subjugate mass populations rather than
just political adversaries.
Earlier violence was just a means to gain, consolidate or preserve a regime’s power, but in case of
totalitarianism, violence become an end in itself, an objective in itself. Totalitarian regimes perform
violence for the sake of violence.
Other regimes try to control the speech and power of expression of citizens, but totalitarianism tries to
control our thoughts and feelings also e.g. Nazi propaganda manipulated Germans into thinking that
Jews were their real enemy and therefore need to be terminated at all costs.
What were the reasons for rise of such regimes?
Arendt provides many reasons and circumstances which allow Totalitarian regimes to rise and democracy
to decline:
Use of Racial superiority as means to fuel hatred and violence towards other communities.
Expansion of Capitalism: More focus on Material sphere than the political sphere by the masses.
Rise of the Bureaucratic State: Quality of Public life declines and people become over dependent on
bureaucrats and technocrats and barely act by themselves.
Conversion of classes into masses: no one is truly aware of their exploitation. People behave like sheep
in herd led by wolves as leaders.
The state is controlled by the bourgeoisie: Vested powers do not allow the public space to expand.
Decline in citizen’s participation and deliberation.
ARENDT’S VIEWS ON BANALITY OF EVIL

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a book by political theorist Hannah Arendt.
Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann’s trial
for The New Yorker.Arendt’s subtitle famously introduced the phrase “the banality of evil,” which also
serves as the final words of the book.
Adolf Eichmann was one of the most pivotal actors in the implementation of the “Final Solution.”
Charged with managing and facilitating the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and killing centers in
the German-occupied East, he was among the major organizers of the Holocaust.
In part, at least, the phrase refers to Eichmann’s behaviour at the trial as the man displayed neither
guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was
simply “doing his job”. His response was “Duty is Duty”.
He did not have any hatred for Jews and he was just simply following orders from his superior officers.
Arendt argues that the most of such crimes are committed by normal people and not psychopaths
because normal people have stopped using their imaginative capacities. Eichmann made no effort to
understand the moral and human consequences of his actions against the Jews. He simply chose not
to use his thinking capacity, else he would have understood the pain of his victims.
As per Arendt, ‘ Evil becomes banal (Ordinary) when ordinary people participate in it, build distance
from it and justify it in countless ways. Evil does not look like evil when it becomes faceless’. Any act
no matter how gruesome or evil can be justified on the grounds that the masses were ready for it. Evil
eventually becomes a part of daily life if it is not named and opposed.
ARENDT’S VIEWS ON POWER

She distinguishes Power from violence. Political Power as Arendt insists arises not from violence, but
from individuals, acting in concert. Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act, but to act in
concert. In other words, politics is the sphere of persuasion, not force.
She considered all forms of political absolutism, despotism and sovereignty as perversion of politics.
Arendt’s normative perspective on Power differs from the Weberian empirical perspective, to the extent
that the focus is less on carrying out of one’s will, and more on ‘Power’ in the sense of self-empowerment
as a community.
All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of Power; they petrify and decay
as soon as the living Power of the people ceases to uphold them.-Arendt
ARENDT’S VIEWS ON REVOLUTION

Arendt has disagreement with both liberal and Marxist interpretations of modern political revolutions
(such as the French and American).
Against liberals, she disputes the claim that these revolutions were primarily concerned with the
establishment of a limited government that would make space for individual liberty beyond the reach
of the state.
Against Marxist interpretations of the French Revolution, she disputes the claim that it was driven by
the “social question,” a popular attempt to overcome poverty and exclusion by the many against the
few who monopolized wealth in the ancient regime.
Rather, Arendt claims, what distinguishes these modern revolutions is that they exhibit the exercise
of fundamental political capacities - that of individuals acting together, on the basis of their mutually
agreed common purposes, in order to establish a real public space of freedom.
Yet Arendt sees both the French and American revolutions as ultimately failing to establish a permanent
political space in which the on-going activities of shared deliberation, decision and coordinated action
could be exercised.
In the case of the French Revolution, the subordination of political freedom to matters of managing
welfare (the “social question”) reduces political institutions to administering the distribution of goods
and resources.
The American Revolution evaded this fate, and by means of the Constitution managed to found a
political society on the basis of common assent. Yet she saw it only as a partial and limited success.
America failed to create an institutional space in which citizens could participate in government, in
which they could exercise in common those capacities of free expression, persuasion and judgement
that defined political existence.
The average citizen, while protected from arbitrary exercise of authority by constitutional checks
and balances, was no longer a participant “in judgement and authority,” and so became denied the
possibility of exercising his/her political capacities.
SIGNIFICANCE OF HANNAH ARENDT
We may note the importance that her studies have had for the theory and analysis of totalitarianism
and the nature and origins of political violence.
Similarly, her reflections on the distinctiveness of modern democratic revolutions have been important
in the development of republican thought, and for the recent revival of interest in civic mobilizations
and social movements
Her model of action as public, communicative, persuasive and consensual reappears in Habermas’
thought in concepts such as that of “communicative power”.
CRITICISMS AND CONTROVERSIES

Primary amongst these is her reliance upon a rigid distinction between the “private” and “public.
Feminists have pointed out that the confinement of the political to the realm outside the household
has been part and parcel of the domination of politics by men, and the corresponding exclusion of
women’s experiences of subjection from legitimate politics.
Marxists have likewise criticised the consequences of confining matters of material distribution and
economic management to the extra-political realm , thereby delegitimizing or negating questions of
material social justice, poverty, and exploitation from political discussion and contestation.
It may be said that Arendt’s preference to a fundamental and original understanding of political life
precisely misses the fact that politics is intrinsically concerned with the contestation and debate on
what counts as a legitimate public concern, with the practice of politics attempting to introduce new,
evolving ‘non-political’ issues, into realm of legitimate political concern.
Arendt has also come under criticism for her overly enthusiastic endorsement of the Athenian or Greek
political systems as an ideal of political freedom, to the detriment of modern political regimes and
institutions.
Likewise, the emphasis she places upon direct citizen deliberation as synonymous with the exercise of
political freedom excludes representative models, and might be seen as unworkable in the context of
modern mass societies, with the delegation, specialization, expertise and extensive divisions of labor
needed to deal with their complexity.
Her elevation of politics to the apex of human good and goals has also been challenged, on the grounds
that it places other spheres of human activity as sub-ordinate and non- relevant.
All these, and other criticisms notwithstanding, Arendt remains one of the most original, challenging and
influential political thinkers of the 20th century, and her work will no doubt continue to provide inspiration for
political philosophy as we enter the 21st.
STATEMENT BY ARENDT
1. All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of Power; they petrify and decay as
soon as the living Power of the people ceases to uphold them.
2. Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act, but to act in concert.
3. Freedom...is actually the reason that men live together in political organisations at all. Without it,
political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of
experience is action.
4. Action is the public disclosure of the agent in the speech deed.
5. Men are free...as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same.
6. Evil becomes banal (Ordinary) when ordinary people participate in it, build distance from it and justify it
in countless ways. Evil does not look like evil when it becomes faceless’
POWER
Power is normally understood as the possession of control, authority, or influence over others, a
relationship in which an individual or a group is able to exert influence over the minds and actions of
others.
According to Arnold Woofers, it is defined as the ability “to move others or to get them to do what one
wants them to do and not to do, what one does not want them to do.” Authority is closely connected
with power. It might take various forms such as political, economic and ideological.
A definition in “A Dictionary of Social Sciences” says: “Power in its most general sense denotes (a) the
ability (exercised or not) to produce a certain occurrence or (b) the influence exerted by man or group,
through whatever means, over the conduct of others in intended ways.”
Lenin said, “The question of power cannot be evaded or brushed aside, because it is the key question
determining everything in a revolution’s development, and in its foreign and domestic politics”. In the
Marxist approach and terminology, the concept of power is identified with the control of state power
through revolutions
The concept of power, one must not forget, is multidimensional. Often power and influence criss-
cross each other’s area of operation. Some people talk about “intentionalist” and “Structuralist”
understanding of power. According to the intentionalist, power is an attribute of an identifiable object
such as political party, social grouping or any interest group. The structuralists understand power as a
form of social system. Sociologists like Talcott Parsons and neo-Marxists such as Althusser belong to
the Structuralist school of thought.
Another dimension of power is its capacity to influence the thought process of an individual
or group. The ideas and views of individuals or groups are mostly influenced and structured by
factors such as family, peer groups, schools, churches, mass media, political parties, and the overall
environment at the work place.
In his book One Dimensional Man (1964), Herbert Marcuse, the leading neoleft theorist, talks about this
aspect of power in advanced industrial societies in which the needs of the society could be manipulated
through modern technology.
CONCEPT OF POWER
'Power' may be regarded as one of the central concepts of political science. It is said that the concept of
power holds the same status in the realm of political science as held by the concept of money in the realm
of economics. The focus on power emancipates the study of politics from the status of an appendage to the
study of philosophy or history or law. It also transcends the realm of formal institutions to focus on the real
motives and objectives of human beings which lie behind all political activity and institution-building.
Bertrand Russell (Power: A New Social Analysis; 1938) has defined power as 'the production of intended
effects'. In other words, power denotes the ability of a person to fulfil his desires or to achieve his objectives.
Most of the theorists of power, including Russell, prefer to restrict its use to 'power over human beings'. Thus
Robert Dahl (Modern Political Analysis; 1991) defines power as a kind of influence; it is exercised 'when
compliance is attained by creating the prospect of severe sanctions for non-compliance'. H.V. Wiseman
(Political Systems: Some Sociological Approaches; 1966) defines power as 'the ability to get one's wishes
carried out despite opposition'. Stephen L. Wasby (Political Science—The Discipline and its Dimensions;
1972) has similarly observed: "Power is generally thought to involve bringing about of an action by someone
against the will or desire of another."
All these definitions give prominence to that aspect of power which is exercised by a man or a group over an
'unwilling' lot. They are, therefore, one-sided. Power, to be effective and stable, often takes the character of
'authority' which also comprehends legitimacy; that is the capacity to secure willing obedience. Use Of force
or coercion or sanctions may be resorted to only when legitimacy fails to work. It is authority which ensures
social acceptance and effective implementation of rules, policies and decisions.
It is, therefore, necessary to understand the precise relationship between power, authority and legitimacy.
POWER, AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY

Authority = Power + LegiƟmacy
Authority consists of two important components: Power and Legitimacy. Legitimacy of a rule or decision
implies that the members of society treat that rule or decision as beneficial to society as well as to themselves.
So they willingly tend to abide by it. Power alone involves capacity to get a decision obeyed by others against
their will. Robert M. Maclver (The Web of Government) has aptly defined power as 'the capacity in any
relationship to command the service or compliance of others'. Power may involve use of 'force', but service
or compliance of others will best be obtained when they regard the command as 'right', 'good' or 'beneficial'.
Power, to be effective and stable, must be accompanied by the capacity to secure willing obedience. Use of
force or coercion or sanctions may be resorted to only when legitimacy fails to work. If we think of power
a naked sword, authority may be envisaged as a sword in its scabbard. If power is based on fear or force,
legitimacy is based on respect and willing compliance. Authority is, therefore, the most effective instrument
of exercising power in the sphere of politics.
Max Weber identified three types of authority prevalent in the modern state. Firstly, traditional authority
involves the right to rule as established by tradition, such as hereditary or dynastic rule. Secondly, charismatic
authority results from exceptional personal characteristics of the political leader, or his magnetic personality,
as exemplified by Hitler. Finally, legal-rational authority emanates from the political office held by an individual,
where he is appointed through the prescribed procedure, such as merit-based selection, promotion, election,
rotation or nomination, and not from the personal characteristics of the individual holding an office. Weber
recognized that none of these categories existed in pure form. In any case, legal-rational authority, which is
the chief characteristic of bureaucracy, is the outstanding attribute of the modern state.
APPROACHES AND TYPES OF POWER

Political Power: David Easton defines Political power as ‘the relationship in which one person or group is
able to determine the actions of another in the directions of the formers own ends. Power seldom exits
without being exercised.
Weber viewed both power and authority in terms of ‘probability’. The core of Weber’s concept of power
is the ability to maximise objectives despite resistance.
David Held states that Power is the facility of the agents to act within institutions and collectivities, to
apply the resources of these institutions and collectivities to their own ends, even when institutional
arrangements narrow the scope of their activities.
Eric. R Wolf distinguishes between four modalities of Power :
Power that is ‘inherent in an individual,
Power ‘as capacity of ego to impose one’s will on another’.
Power as ‘control over the contexts’ in which power interact. This is a reference particularly to tactical
or organizational power, its reach and influence.
‘Structural Power’ i.e. the power manifest in relationship that only operates within settings and
domains, but also organizes and orchestrates the settings themselves.
In the liberal world, the place of power has been legitimised through the social contract, whereas
in the radical political philosophies, power has been perceived as an oppressive and illegitimate
arrangement.
According to Mann, there are two expressions of State power:
1. Despotic Power: Actions are taken without prior negotiations with the masses, as in the case of
totalitarian regimes.
2. Infrastructural Power: where consent plays an important role.
John Kenneth Galbraith (Anatomy of Power) distinguishes three types of power:
Condign Power: which emanates from threat
Compensatory Power: Which is based on reward
Conditioned Power: which is exercised by changing belief.
POLITICAL POWER: TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE POWER

Political Power can be best perceived by making a distinction between Transitive Power and Intransitive
Power
Transitive Power: it consists of subordination of one person’s will, by the will of another. In this sense power
is not possible without ‘counter power’ in both symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships. Max Weber’s
formulation reflects transitive power.
Intransitive Power: it is not a zero sum game, but has a positive pay off. It refers to the subordination of one
person’s will to the will of another, within a community. It takes into account the ‘commonalities’ that exist
within the members of the community. Community is taken to be an effective unit in the form of a common
space of action which is symbolically present. Intransitive power is tied closely together with the process of
integration, viz. with social and normative integration.
ECONOMIC POWER
Economic power is the power emanating from the possession of material things especially the major means
of production and distribution. It is a potent factor behind politics. For instance, big landlords, industrial
tycoons and business magnates are able to influence public decisions regarding the fixation of priority in
economic development in a liberal democracy. In India itself the organized economic interests have been
able to secure priority of colour TV for the urban rich, over drinking water for the rural poor.
The possessors of economic power in a liberal democracy exercise their influence on politics in several
ways. Their pressure groups are stronger, more organized and more vocal. For instance, in India, the
chambers of Commerce and industry are very strong, the workers' unions are not as strong, Peasants, unions
are less strong and consumers' organizations are the weakest lot. The major newspapers are owned by a
handful of big business houses who take full advantage of this medium to promote opinion which suits their
interests. Besides the big business houses extend a large amount of financial help to political parties, often
clandestinely, and to the candidates seeking elections. The recipients of such help play a dual game—they
pay lip-service to the interests of the masses but are secretly committed to safeguarding the interests of
their financiers.
IDEOLOGICAL POWER
Ideological power provides a more subtle base of political power. The ideas upheld and promoted by the ruling
class in a given society regarding the 'best system of government' constitute political ideology. Ideology
may be defined as 'a systematic set of arguments and beliefs used to justify an existing or desired social
order' (Joseph Dunner, Dictionary of Political Science). An outstanding feature of political ideology is that
it provides legitimacy to the ruling classes and helps them maintain their stronghold on political power.
When people are made to believe that a particular system of government is the best system, they will not be
inclined to challenge the authority of the ruling classes. When have learnt to respect their laws, the need for
coercion to secure their obedience would be eliminated or at any rate, minimized.
Political involves not only a set of beliefs, it is always action-oriented. It puts forward a 'cause' for which people
are prepared not only to fight but to make a lot of sacrifices. As Alan Ball (Modern Politics and Government)
noted, “Individuals are prepared to fight for causes, often realistically hopeless causes, or to undergo ill-
treatment and torture in the belief that some political values are superior to others." Ideology is often devoid
of reason. It picks certain convenient formulae and elevates them to the level of 'absolute truth’ by exploiting
people's sentiments. Thus, some ideas are held sacrosanct by a group while others remain indifferent or even
disdainful toward those very ideas.
IDEOLOGIES
The realm of political theory the term ‘ideology’ is applied in two contexts: (a) a set of ideas which are
accepted to be true by a particular group, party or nation without further examination; and (b) the science of
ideas which examines as to how different ideas are formed, how truth is distorted, and how we can overcome
distortions to discover true knowledge.
IDEOLOGY AS A SET OF IDEAS

Ideology can be explained to be a set of those ideas which are accepted to be true by a particular group
without further examination. These ideas are invoked in order to justify or denounce a particular way of
social, economic or political organization. In this sense, ideology is a matter of faith; it has no scientific basis.
A group will invoke its ideology to determine the best form of government, the basis of right to rule and the
procedure of selection of rulers.
Ideology, politics and political theory:
If theory is loaded by an ideology, it is bound to be distorted. Political philosophy or political

theory calls for a disinterested search for best form of state and society. Ideology seeks
to justify an existing or a future political and social arrangement. Political science calls for
impartial observation of political and social reality. Ideology focuses on selected parts of
political and social reality, and gives its distorted description as well as explanation. On the
contrary, absolute impartiality is the keynote of genuine political theory.
An ideology is action-oriented. It presents a cause before its adherents and induces them to fight for that
cause, and to make sacrifices for its realization. For example, nationalism may inspire people to sacrifice
their wealth or life for defending the freedom of their nation. But communalism may induce hatred among
people towards members of another community and prompt them to destroy life and property of innocent
persons. One stream of fundamentalism, based on obscurantism, has given rise to worldwide terrorism.
Obscurantism
A policy or tendency involving deliberate effort at making things obscure so as to prevent
people from knowing the truth.
In the sphere of politics, conflicting ideologies may be invoked to defend conflicting norms or ideals. Of these,
some ideals may be designed to serve some vested interests, and some ideals may seek to challenge irrational
beliefs and conventions, and thus pave the way for progress. For example, ideology of imperialism may be
invoked to facilitate the exploitation of colonial territories and their people, while environmentalism may be
invoked to save humanity from the curse of atmospheric pollution and depletion of valuable natural resources.
Coming to political theory, it may be observed that in many cases political theories and political ideologies
are described by the same terminology. For instance, the terms ‘liberalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘communism’, etc. are
applied to describe certain political ideologies as well as political theories. At times a political theory seems
to justify and prescribe a course of action as if it were a political ideology. The genesis of a political theory
may be sought to be explained in the light of stresses and strains emanating from actual politics. Sometimes,
clash of some political theories may be explained in the light of a clash in a political situation.
Political theories may arise from different political situations yet the study of political theory also includes a
critical evaluation of these theories. This critical evaluation involves segregation of truth embodied in these
theories those elements which are the product of political considerations, e.g. Machiavelli’s advice to the
Prince to set aside all moral considerations cannot be accepted, but his insights regarding human behaviour
can be profitably used in the sphere of diplomacy and statecraft.
Political Theory vs. Political Ideology

Andrew Hacker, in his Political Theorv: Philosophy, Ideologv, Science (1961) has observed
that whether we look at the philosophical side of political theory or its scientific side, it is
always dispassionate and disinterested. In other words, the theorist has no fascination for a
particular political arrangement. His image of a good life is not affected by any prejudice. He
does not favour or oppose any particular arrangement without examining its rightness. On
the contrary, an ideology is designed to defend the existing system, or to condemn it in order
to prove the superiority of a different system.
IDEOLOGY AS THE SCIENCE OF IDEAS

The term ‘ideology’ was originally devised to describe the science of ideas. In this sense, it seeks to determine
how ideas are formed, how they are distorted, and how true ideas could be segregated from false ideas. It
was Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), a French scholar, who first used the word ‘ideology’ during 1801-15 in his
writings on the Enlightenment. He defined it as a study of the process of forming ideas—a science of ideas.
Tracy observed that ideas are stimulated by the physical environment; hence empirical learning (gained
through sense-experience) is the only source of knowledge. Supernatural or spiritual phenomena have no
role to play in the formation of real ideas.
Although Tracy was the first to use the term ‘ideology’ in this sense, he was not the first to study the process
of formaƟon of ideas. Francis Bacon (1561 1626), an English philosopher, before him, insisted that knowledge
should come from careful and accurate observaƟon and experience. He held that the knowledge deduced
from less scienƟfic methods of inquiry was distorted by false impressions or ‘idols’. In short, Bacon and Tracy
focused on the validity of knowledge obtained by scienƟfic method, and cauƟoned us against distorted forms
of knowledge.
All colours will agree in the dark – Francis Bacon
In contemporary literature, the term ‘ideology’ is applied to the set of ideas which are adopted
by a group in order to motivate it for the achievement of predetermined goals. Science of
ideas is described by different terms, like ‘sociology of knowledge’ (the term introduced by Karl
Mannheim), or ‘critical theory’ (the term popularized by the Frankfurt School).
Sociology of Knowledge: A systematic attempt to inquire as to how our knowledge is
determined, conditioned or distorted by our social background. The term was introduced
by Karl Mannheim in Ideology and Utopia (1929) although earlier sociologists also made a
significant beginning in this direction.
Critical Theory: A stream of philosophical thought which maintains that human society has
-not yet evolved a rational form of existence, which is still to be achieved. Hence it cannot
be analysed by the paradigm of natural sciences. All social institutions and behavior should,
therefore, be analysed from the perspective of their deviation from a rational form. This theory
was popularized by the Frankfurt School (which was originally set up in 1923).
Set of Ideas (on best form of society and government): A matter of faith - Characterized by Closed Mind -
Interested Search for Better Society - Instrument of Politics - Demands Subordination to Authority
Science of ideas (on how ideas are formed and distorted): A matter of critical examination - Characterized
by Open Mind - Disinterested Search for Better Society - Instrument of Political Theory - Allows Individual to
Question Authority
MARX ON IDEOLOGY
Karl Marx (1818—83) in German Ideology (1845—46) and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
(1859) dwelled on the nature of ideology. According to him, ideology is a manifestation of ‘false consciousness’.
According to Marx, dominant class at any stage of social development makes use of ideology to maintain
its authority. For example, makers of the French Revolution (1789) raised the slogan of ‘Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity’ to enlist support of the masses. But they settled for liberty which served their interest, i.e. the
interest of the new entrepreneurial class of those days.
Marx and Engels (1820-95) held that ideology is an instrument for protecting the interests of the dominant
class. Thus bourgeoisie (the capitalist class) needs ideology to maintain itself in power. On the contrary,
when proletariat (the working class) comes to power after the socialist revolution, it has no vested interests
in maintaining itself in power. It strives to create such conditions where the state will ‘wither away’. It does
not want to continue as the dominant class but works for the creation of a classless society. However, V.I.
Lenin (1870—1924) in his ‘What is to be Done?’ (1902) held that ideology is not necessarily a distortion of
truth to conceal the prevailing contradictions, but it has become a neutral concept which refers to the political
consciousness of different classes, including the proletarian class. He argued that the class struggle will
continue for a very long time during the socialist phase. So proletariat also need an ideology—the ideology of
scientific socialism for their guidance, lest they are overpowered by the bourgeois ideology.
LUKACS ON IDEOLOGY
Georg Lukacs (1885—1971), a Hungarian Marxist, in History and Class Consciousness (1923) proposed a
theory of the dependence of thought on social life, which primarily consisted of class relations of material
production. He held that consciousness was always class consciousness. The proletariat, by virtue of its
increasing estrangement within the socio-economic sphere, occupied a unique historical position from which
it could achieve universal consciousness.
On the nature of ideology Lukacs maintained that it refers both to bourgeois and proletarian consciousness,
without implying a necessary negative connotation. Marxism itself is the ideological expression of the
proletariat. Lukacs held that bourgeois ideology is false, not because ideology itself is ‘false consciousness’,
but because bourgeois class situation is structurally limited. In other words, bourgeoisie (the capitalist class)
cannot stand on its own. It must exploit proletariat (the working class) to maintain itself. Bourgeois ideology
is deplorable because it dominates and contaminates the psychological consciousness of proletariat.
However, Lukacs has warned that ideological struggle should not become a substitute for class struggle.
MANNHEIM ON IDEOLOGY
Karl Mannheim (1893—1947), a German sociologist, in his famous work Ideology and Utopia (1929) rejects
Marx’s theory of ideology on three grounds: (a) ‘style of thought’ of any group is only indirectly related to
its interests; there is no direct correlation between its consciousness and its economic interests; (b) all
thought is shaped by its social background; hence Marxism itself is the ideology of a class; and (c) apart from
classes, other social groups, like different generations, also have a significant influence upon consciousness.
Mannheim introduced the term ‘sociology of knowledge’ to focus on social determination of knowledge. He
sought to generalize Marxist framework as a tool of analysis.
He held that the false consciousness may be manifested in two forms: ideology and utopia. Ideology represents
the tendency of conservation. It relies on false consciousness to muster support for the maintenance of
status quo. On the other hand, utopia represents the impetus to change. It relies on false consciousness by
projecting unrealizable principles to muster support for the forces of change. A ruling class makes use of
ideology; the opposition may project a utopia. Mannheim declared that Marxist vision of a classless society
was nothing short of utopia. Hence it also makes false consciousness its tool.
Utopia: Vision of a perfect society where everyone is happy. In social sciences, this term is
applied to designate a set of fascinating but unrealizable principles.
Mannheim hinges on the possibility of a ‘free floating stratum’ of intellectuals (social scientists) between
the contending classes to achieve disinterested knowledge. Such enlightened individuals from both sides
will come together with an open mind; they will enter into a dialogue and incessantly strive to arrive at
the objective truth (synthetic common knowledge of the prevailing historical situation offering a realistic
assessment of actual possibilities). In other words, they will be able to grasp a realistic vision between
ideology and utopia.
Ideology and Totalitarianism

When ideology is conceived as an instrument of motivating people for the achievement of
predetermined goals, it comes close to totalitarianism. Some writers therefore, assert that
ideology in this sense is found only in totalitarian systems; it has no place in an open society.
Totalitarianism: A system of governance in which the state seeks to regulate and control all
aspects of life of its citizens—whether public or private. In other words, it seeks to direct alt
political, economic, social-cultural and intellectual activities of people towards fulfilling certain
aims which are determined by the state itself. No citizen has the right or opportunity to oppose
or criticize the state, or to propose any new aim.
Open Society: A social and political system where there is a free flow of information regarding
public affairs and matters of public importance. Public policy in such a system represents a
reconciliation of diverse interests. Power-holders under this systern do not claim that they
have found the truth. Hence it encourages freedom of expression among citizens; it shows
readiness to adopt new ideas; and permits the citizens to criticize the government.
KARL POPPER AND HANNAH ARENDT ON IDEOLOGY

Famous Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902—94) in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) argued
that ideology is the characteristic of totalitarianism; it has nothing to do in an open society. He maintained
that science and freedom flourish together in a society which is open in the sense that it is willing to accept
new ideas. In contrast, a totalitarian society claims that it has already found the absolute truth, and strives
to implement it ruthlessly. Ideology is the tool which enables the state to mobilize its manpower and other
resources for a goal which is declared to embody the absolute truth. It does not allow anyone to oppose
or criticize the public policy which is exclusively determined by the ruling group. In Popper’s view, Western
liberal-democratic societies are open societies; hence they do not need an ideology for working smoothly.
Citizens of these societies are absolutely free to criticize the existing institutions and structures of power
Then Hannah Arendt (1906—75), a German Jew philosopher, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) defined
totalitarianism as a system of total domination, characterized by ideology and terror. It was made possible
in recent Europe by three factors: (a) the specific political and social position of the Jews which had given
anti-semitism (the tendency of hatred toward Jews) a new force; (b) imperialism which generated racist
movements and worldwide expansion of power; and (c) dissolution of European society into uprooted
masses, so lonely and disoriented that they could be mobilized behind ideologies.
Thus Popper and Arendt focused on the role of ideology as a tool of totalitarianism. It is interesting to recall
that Marx had evolved the concept of ideology in late nineteenth century in order to expose capitalism.
Concept of totalitarianism was evolved in early twentieth century to describe the dictatorial way of working
of communist regime of the Soviet Union till the end of Stalin era (1953) and fascist regime of Italy (under
Mussolini) and Germany (under Hitler) till the end of Second World War (1945). Both communist and fascist
regimes made ample use of their respective ideologies for the mobilization of their citizens toward the
achievement of their respective goals. Popper largely focused on the communist regime, and Arendt on the
fascist regime to bring out the close con-elation between ideology and totalitarianism.
END OF IDEOLOGY DEBATE

The current status of ideology in the world was reviewed in mid-1950s and in 1960s. In Western liberal-
democratic countries, it was declared that the age of ideology had come to an end. These countries looked at
ideology as a tool of totalitarianism which had no place in open societies. ‘End of ideology’ also implied that
at the advanced stage of industrial development, a country’s social-economic organization is determined
by the level of its development, and not by its political ideology. In other words, capitalist and communist
countries were bound to evolve similar characteristics at the advanced stage of their industrial development,
irrespective of their ideological differences. Early indications of this view may be found in the proceedings of
a conference on ‘The Future of Freedom’ held in Milan, Italy, in 1955. The conference urged its participants to
forget their minor differences and discover common grounds to face the danger of Communism.
This view was confirmed and further elaborated by several Western writers. Ralph Dahrendorf in Class and
Class Conflict in Industrial Society (1957) argued that the Western societies had entered a new phase of
development. They were no longer capitalist societies; they had become ‘post-capitalist societies’. The
coincidence of economic conflict and political conflict, which was the foundation of Marx’s theory, had
ceased to exist in the post-capitalist societies. In a capitalist society, the lines of industrial and political
conflict were superimposed. The opponents within the industrial sphere—capitalists and workers—met again
as bourgeoisie and proletariat, in the political arena. In contrast, industry and society have been dissociated
in the post-capitalist society. The social relations of the industrial sphere, including industrial conflict, no
longer dominate the whole society but remain confined in their patterns and problems to the sphere of
industry. In post-capitalist society, industry and industrial conflicts are institutionally isolated and remain
confined within the borders of their proper realm without influencing politics and other spheres of social life.
Thus in Dahrendorf’s view, the framework of Marxian ideology was no longer suitable for the analysis of the
Western societies.
Daniel Bell, in his noted work The End of Ideology (1960) asserted that postindustrial societies are prone to
similar development irrespective of their ideological differences. They have lesser proportion of workers in
industry than in services. In other words, at the advanced stage of industrial development in any country
the services sector expands at a faster rate than the manufacturing sector. Besides, it is also characterized
by the increasing dominance of technical elites. The change in this direction is not affected by its political
ideology.
Then Seymour M. Lipset, in Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (1960) significantly observed that
in the Western democracies the differences between the left and the right are no longer profound; the only
issues before politics are concerned with marginal increase in wages, marginal rise in prices, and extension
of old-age pensions, etc. He maintained that the fundamental political problems of the industrial revolution
have been solved: the workers have achieved industrial and political citizenship; the conservatives have
accepted the welfare state; and the democratic left has recognized that an increase in overall state power
carries with it more dangers to freedom than solutions for economic problems. The triumph of democracy in
the West has made the intellectuals realize that they no longer need ideologies or utopias to motivate them
to political action.
W.W Rostow, in The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto (1960) built a unidimensional
model of economic growth which was applicable to all countries irrespective of their political ideologies.
He suggested that all societies pass through five stages of growth: traditional society, preconditions for
take-off, take-off, road to maturity and the age of high mass consumption. He believed that the process of
development going on at that time in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East was analogous to the
stages of preconditions for take-off and take-off which prevailed in the Western societies in late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Rostow asserted that the adoption of different political ideologies played no role
in determining the course of economic develomnent in different countries.
J.K. Galbraith, in The New Industrial State (1967) identified certain characteristics of advanced industrial
societies which correspond to the end of ideology thesis. Galbraith observed that all industrialized societies are
destined to similar development. This involves greater centralization, bureaucratization, professionalization
and technocratization. These characteristics were visible in the Russian as well as American systems
although they had adopted as divergent ideologies as communism and capitalism respectively. It means that
a country’s techno-economic structure is shaped by the level of its industrialization, and not by its distinctive
political ideology. Galbraith claimed that a new ruling class consisting of the bureaucratic and technocratic
elite had emerged in all advanced industrial societies. This class belonged neither to the working class nor to
the capitalists. Galbraith comes to the conclusion that in the contemporary world, emancipation of humanity
should be sought in anti-bureaucratism rather than in anti-capitalism.
The end of ideology thesis had a message for the new nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It implied
that they should focus on their industrial development, and should not run after the mirage of communism
as a remedy of their ills. With the collapse of communist systems in East European countries in 1989 (which
was followed by a similar collapse in the then Soviet Union in 1991), this view got a new impetus in the form
of the ‘End of History ‘ thesis.
Francis Fukuyama in his paper entitled ‘The End of History’ (1989), argued that the failure of socialism (i.e.
communism in the present context) meant an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism. It
marked the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy
as the final form of human government. Fukuyama maintained that the liberal democracy contains no basic
contradictions and that it is capable of fulfilling deepest aspirations of mankind. Its victory has heralded an
end to the long historical struggle which had obstructed its expansion in the past. This thesis was given wide
publicity in the Western press and academic circles as it was suited to their mode of thought.
However, Richard Titmuss, C. Wright Mills, C.B. Macpherson and Alasdair MacIntyre serverly criticized the
end of ideology thesis. Titmuss observed that the champions of the end of ideology thesis overlook the
problems of monopolistic concentration of economic power, social disorganization and cultural deprivation
within the capitalist system. C. Wright Mills dubbed the upholders of end of ideology thesis the advocates
of status quo. In his view, it is an ideology of political complacency which appears to be the only way
now available for many social scientists to acquiesce in or to justify the established social structure. C.B.
Macpherson asserted that the champions of the end of ideology thesis make a futile attempt to solve the
problem of equitable distribution within the market society. Alasdair MacIntyre (Against the Self-Images
of the Age; 1971) significantly observed that the ‘end of ideology’ theorists “failed to entertain one crucial
alternative possibility: namely that the end-of ideology, far from marking the end-of-ideology, was itself a key
expression of the ideology of the time and place where it arose.”
In short, the end of ideology debate, and its latest version are designed to project the supremacy of liberal-
democratic system in theory as well as practice.
**********
6 FASCISM
The term ‘fascism’ derives from the Italian word fasces, meaning a bundle of rods with an axe blade protruding
that signified the authority of magistrates in Imperial Rome. By the 1890s, the word fascia was being used
in Italy to refer to a political group or band, usually of revolutionary socialists. It was not until Mussolini
employed the term to describe the paramilitary armed squads he formed during and after the First World War
that fascismo acquired a clearly ideological meaning.
‘Fascist’ and ‘dictator’, for example, are commonly used as if they are interchangeable, to refer to anyone
who possesses or expresses intolerant or illiberal views. However, fascism should not be equated with mere
repression. Fascist thinkers have been inspired by a specific range of theories and values, and the fascist
that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s developed historically new forms of political rule.
Whereas liberalism, conservatism and socialism are nineteenth-century ideologies, fascism is a child of the
twentieth century, some would say specifically of the period between the two world wars. Indeed, fascism
emerged very much as a revolt against modernity, against the ideas and values of the Enlightenment and the
political creeds that it spawned. The Nazis in Germany, for instance, proclaimed that ‘1789 is abolished’. In
Fascist Italy slogans such as ‘Believe, Obey, Fight’ and ‘Order, Authority, Justice’ replaced the more familiar
principles of the French Revolution, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’.
Although the major ideas and doctrines of fascism can be traced back to the nineteenth century, they were
fused together and shaped by the First World War and its aftermath, in particular by a potent mixture of
war and revolution. Fascism emerged most dramatically in Italy and Germany. In Italy a Fascist Party was
formed in 1919, its leader, Benito Mussolini, was appointed prime minister in 1922, and by 1926 a one-party
Fascist state had been established. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, known as the Nazis, was
also formed in 1919, and under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (see p. 221) it consciously adopted the style
of Mussolini’s Fascists. Hitler was appointed German chancellor in 1933 and in little over a year had turned
Germany into a Nazi dictatorship. During the same period, democracy collapsed or was overthrown in much
of Europe, often being supplanted by right-wing, authoritarian or openly fascist regimes
Factors Responsible for the Rise of Fascism

No single factor can, on its own, account for the rise of fascism; rather, fascism emerged out of a complex
range of historical forces that were present during the interwar period.
In the first place, democratic government had only recently been established in many parts of Europe, and
democratic political values had not replaced older, autocratic ones. Moreover, democratic governments,
representing a coalition of interests or parties, often appeared weak and unstable when confronted by
economic or political crises. In this context, the prospect of strong leadership brought about by personal rule
cast a powerful appeal.
Second, European society had been disrupted by the experience of industrialization, which had particularly
threatened a lower middle class of shopkeepers, small businessmen, farmers and craftsmen, who were
squeezed between the growing might of big business, on the one hand, and the rising power of organized
labour, on the other. Fascist movements drew their membership and support largely from such lower middle
class elements. In a sense, fascism was an ‘extremism of the centre’, a revolt of the lower middle classes, a
fact that helps to explain the hostility of fascism to both capitalism and communism.
Third, the period after the First World War was deeply affected by the Russian Revolution and the fear
amongst the propertied classes that social revolution was about to spread throughout Europe. Fascist
groups undoubtedly drew both financial and political support from business interests. As a result, Marxist
historians have interpreted fascism as a form of counter-revolution, an attempt by the bourgeoisie to cling
on to power by lending support to fascist dictators.
Fourth, the world economic crisis of the 1930s often provided a final blow to already fragile democracies.
Rising unemployment and economic failure produced an atmosphere of crisis and pessimism that could
be exploited by political extremists and demagogues. Finally, the First World War had failed to resolve
international conflicts and rivalries, leaving a bitter inheritance of frustrated nationalism and the desire
for revenge. Nationalist tensions were strongest in those ‘have not’ nations that had either, like Germany,
been defeated in war, or had been deeply disappointed by the terms of the Versailles peace settlement, for
example Italy and Japan. In addition, the experience of war itself had generated a particularly militant form
of nationalism and imbued it with militaristic values.
Fascism is a difficult ideology to analyse, for at least two reasons. First, it is sometimes doubted if fascism
can be regarded, in any meaningful sense, as an ideology. Lacking a rational and coherent core, fascism
appears to be, as Hugh Trevor-Roper put it, ‘an ill-assorted hodgepodge of ideas’ Hitler, for instance, preferred
to describe his ideas as a Weltanschauung, or ‘world view’, rather than a systematic ideology. In this sense,
a world view is a complete, almost religious set of attitudes that demand commitment and faith, rather than
invite reasoned analysis and debate. Fascists were drawn to ideas and theories less because they helped
to make sense of the world, in an intellectual sense, but more because they had the capacity to stimulate
political activism. Fascism may thus be better described as a political movement or even political religion,
rather than an ideology.
Perhaps the best we can hope to do is identify a collection of themes that, when taken together, constitute
fascism’s structural core. The most significant of these include the following:
Anti-rationalism
Leadership and elitism
Ultra nationalism
ANTI-RATIONALISM
Although anti-rationalism does not necessarily a right-wing or proto-fascist character, fascism gave political
expression to the most radical and extreme forms of counter-Enlightenment thinking. Anti-rationalism has
influenced fascism in a number of ways. In the first place, it gave fascism a marked anti-intellectualism,
reflected in a tendency to despise abstract thinking and revere action. For example, Mussolini’s favourite
slogans included ‘Action not Talk’ and ‘Inactivity is Death’. Intellectual life was devalued, even despised: it is
cold, dry and lifeless. Fascism, instead, addresses the soul, the emotions and the instincts. Its ideas possess
little coherence or rigour, but seek to exert a mythic appeal. Its major ideologists, in particular Hitler and
Mussolini, were essentially propagandists, interested in ideas and theories very largely because of their power
to elicit an emotional response and spur the masses into action. Fascism thus practises the ‘politics of the
will’.
Second, the rejection of the Enlightenment gave fascism a predominantly negative or destructive character.
Fascists, in other words, have often been clearer about what they oppose than what they support. Fascism thus
appears to be ‘anti-philosophy’ – it is anti-rational, anti-liberal, anticonservative, anti-capitalist, anti bourgeois,
and anti-communist and so on. In this light, some have portrayed fascism as an example of nihilism, literally
a belief in nothing, a rejection of established moral and political principles. Nazism, in particular, has been
described as a ‘revolution of nihilism’. However, fascism is not merely the negation of established beliefs and
principles. Rather, it is an attempt to reverse the heritage of the Enlightenment.
For example, in fascism, ‘freedom’ came to mean unquestioning submission, ‘democracy’ was equated with
absolute dictatorship, and ‘progresses implied constant struggle and war. Moreover, despite an undoubted
inclination towards nihilism, war and even death, fascism saw itself as a creative force, a means of constructing
a new civilization through ‘creative destruction’.
Third, by abandoning the standard of universal reason, fascism has placed its faith entirely in history, culture
and the idea of organic community. For example, the counter-Enlightenment German philosopher, Johann
Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), had rejected universalism as ahistorical: each nation is animated by its
collective spirit, its Volksgeist, a product of its unique history, culture and particularly language. Communities
are therefore organic or natural entities, shaped not by the calculations and interests of rational individuals but
by innate loyalties and bonds forged by a common past. In fascism, this idea of organic unity is taken to its
extreme. The national community, as the Nazis called it, the Volksgemeinschaft, was viewed as an indivisible
whole, all rivalries and conflicts being subordinated to a higher, collective purpose. The strength of the nation
or race is therefore a reflection of its moral and cultural unity. This prospect of unqualified social cohesion was
expressed in the Nazi slogan, ‘Strength through Unity.’
LEADERSHIP AND ELITISM

Fascism also stands apart from conventional political thought in its radical rejection of equality. Fascism
is deeply elitist and fiercely patriarchal; its ideas were founded upon the belief that absolute leadership and
elite rule are natural and desirable. Human beings are born with radically different abilities and attributes, a
fact that emerges as those with the rare quality of leadership rise, through struggle, above those capable
only of following. Fascists believe that society is composed, broadly, of three kinds of people. First and most
importantly, there is a supreme, all-seeing leader who possesses unrivalled authority. Second, there is a ‘warrior’
elite, exclusively male and distinguished, unlike traditional elites, by its heroism, vision and the capacity for self-
sacrifice. In Germany, this role was ascribed to the SS, which originated as a bodyguard but developed during
Nazi rule into a state within a state. Third, there are the masses, who are weak, inert and ignorant, and whose
destiny is unquestioning obedience. Such a pessimistic view of the capabilities of ordinary people put fascism
starkly at odds with the ideas of liberal democracy (despite, at times, an opportunistic willingness to exploit
electoral politics for their own purposes). Nevertheless, the idea of supreme leadership was also associated
with a distinctively fascist, if inverted, notion of democratic rule.
Fascist leaders styled themselves simply as ‘the Leader’ – Mussolini proclaimed himself to be Il Duce, while
Hitler adopted the title Der Führer – precisely in order to emancipate themselves from any constitutionally
defined notion of leadership. In this way, leadership became exclusively an expression of charismatic authority
emanating for the leader himself. While constitutional, or, in Max Weber’s term, legal-rational authority operates
within a framework of laws or rules, charismatic authority is potentially unlimited. As the leader was viewed as
a uniquely gifted individual, his authority is absolute. At the Nuremburg Rallies the Nazi faithful thus chanted
‘Adolf Hitler is Germany, Germany is Adolf Hitler.’ In Italy the principle that ‘Mussolini is always right’ became
the core of fascist dogma. The ‘leader principle’ (in German, the Führerprinzip), the principle that all authority
emanates from the leader personally, thus became the guiding principle of the fascist state. Intermediate
institutions such as elections, parliaments and parties were either abolished or weakened to prevent them
from challenging or distorting the leader’s will.
Fascists regard authority as a manifestation of personal leadership or charisma, a quality possessed
by unusually gifted (if not unique) individuals. Such charismatic authority is, and should be, absolute and
unquestionable, and is thus implicitly, and possibly explicitly, totalitarian in character.
ULTRA NATIONALISM
Fascism embraced an extreme version of a tradition of chauvinistic and expansionist nationalism that had
developed before the First World War, expressed in European imperialism and forms of pan-nationalism.
This tradition regarded nations not as equal and interdependent entities, but as natural rivals in a struggle
for dominance. Fascist nationalism did not preach respect for distinctive cultures or national traditions, but
asserted the superiority of one nation over all others. In the explicitly racial nationalism of Nazism this was
reflected in the ideas of Aryanism, the belief that the German people are a ‘master race’. Between the wars such
militant nationalism was fuelled by a sense of bitterness and frustration. Italy, a victor in the First World War, had
failed to achieve territorial gains at Versailles. Germany had been both defeated in war and, Germans believed,
humiliated at Versailles by reparations, the loss of territory and the deeply resented ‘war guilt clause’.
While fascism may be a revolt against modernity, it does not succumb to reaction or the allure of tradition.
Instead, it fuses myths about a glorious past with the image of a future characterized by renewal and
reawakening, hence the idea of the ‘new’ man. In Italy, this was reflected in attempts to recapture the glories of
Imperial Rome; in Germany, the Nazi regime was portrayed as the ‘Third Reich’, in succession to Charlemagne’s
‘First Reich’ and Bismarck’s ‘Second Reich’. However, in practice, national regeneration invariably meant the
assertion of power over other nations through expansionism, war and conquest. Influenced by social Darwinism
and a belief in national and sometimes racial superiority, fascist nationalism became inextricably linked to
militarism and imperialism.
Nazi Germany looked to construct a ‘Greater Germany’ and build an empire stretching into the Soviet Union –
‘Lebensraum in the East’. Fascist Italy sought to found an African empire though the invasion of Abyssinia in
1934. Imperial Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931 in order to found a ‘co-prosperity’ sphere in a new Japanese-
led Asia. These empires were to be autarkic, based upon strict self-sufficiency. In contrast to the liberal belief
that economic progress results from international trade and interdependence, fascists held that economic
strength is based upon the capacity of the nation to rely solely upon resources and energies it directly controls.
Conquest and expansionism are therefore a means of gaining economic security; an autarkic empire will
contain vital raw materials, guaranteed markets and a plentiful supply of cheap labour. National regeneration
and economic progress were therefore intimately tied up with military power. The logic of this was most clearly
understood in Germany, where Hitler ensured that rearmament and preparation for war were a consistent
political priority throughout the lifetime of the Nazi regime.
FASCISM AND RACIALISM

Not all forms of fascism involve overt racialism, and not all racialists are necessarily fascists. Italian fascism,
for example, was based primarily upon the supremacy of the Fascist state over the individual and submission
to the will of Mussolini. It was therefore a voluntaristic form of fascism, in that, at least in theory, it could
embrace all people regardless of race, colour or indeed country of birth. When Mussolini passed anti-Semitic
laws after 1937, he did so largely to placate Hitler and the Germans, rather than for any ideological purpose.
Nevertheless, fascism has often coincided with, and bred from, racialist ideas. Indeed, some argue that
its emphasis on militant nationalism means that all forms of fascism are either hospitable to racialism, or
harbour implicit or explicit racialist doctrines (Griffin, 1993). Nowhere has this link between race and fascism
been as evident as in Nazi Germany, where official ideology at times amounted to little more than hysterical,
pseudo-scientific anti-Semitism.
PERCEPTIONS OF POWER
PERCEPTION OF POWER: HANNAH ARENDT
Hannah Arendt provides a basic model of intransitive Power. She employs two dichotomic contrasts, that
of ‘Public’ vs ‘Private’. Politics to her is the most important aspect of the public sphere. She views politics
as the supreme embodiment of human action and of human plurality. It is only in the public realm or the
political that ‘humans can realise their humanity’. In that sense, humans are basically communitarian beings.
Power refers here to a generation of collective capabilities. It is understood as an end in itself, rather than
instrumentally as directed towards the attainment of external ends. Hence Arendt contends that it is only in
such social relationships that the inner nature of human beings can be fully constituted and experienced.
Arendt’s concept of Power is inherently normative in character. In the whole process, she distinguishes
Power from violence. Political Power as Arendt insists arises not from violence, but from individuals, acting
in concert. Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act, but to act in concert. In other words,
politics is the sphere of persuasion, not force. Given her disillusion with orthodox Zionism, she considered
all forms of political absolutism, despotism and sovereignty as perversion of politics. Arendt’s normative
perspective on Power differs from the Weberian empirical perspective, to the extent that the focus is less on
carrying out of one’s will, and more on ‘Power’ in the sense of self-empowerment as a community.
All political institutions are manifestations and materializations pf Power; they petrify and decay
as soon as the living Power of the people ceases to uphold them.
PERCEPTION OF POWER: MICHEL FOUCAULT

Michel Foucault empirically applies the concept of intransitive Power. He does not raise the question of
how citizens constitute a political unity. Rather, he focuses on what holds a society together, given all its
heterogeneity. This task is achieved according to him by a multiplicity of ‘force relations’, extending from
indirect domination and discursive forms of knowledge, to relations of direct repression. Taken together as
multiplicity of force relationships, they yield intransitive Power. Some writers argue that ‘anti-humanism’ was
endorsed by Foucault throughout his works, perhaps modified a bit towards the end of his life.
He consistently stressed the role of Power in the society, and became an inspiration for radicals who took up
the cause of the oppressed. Power in the society according to him can be creative as well as oppressive. In
democracies nobody owns Power, rather it flows among a variety of individuals, groups and institutions. States
and societies cannot function without Power, since Power inheres more in the system and less at the level of the
individuals. However, since individuals are at the centre of the debate, they are shaped, influenced, manipulated,
restricted and oppressed by the webs of Power relations. Foucault identifies three main dimensions of Power,
via:
That Power relationships are pervasive throughout the society. He argues that Power is coextensive
with the social body.
That Power is productive, i.e. it is Power- knowledge. It produces conversational formations.
That modern Power is characteristically termed ‘bio-Power’, i.e. individuals in their physical aspect are
the characteristic targets of modern, large scale Power.
Power, as Foucault argues, does not only consist of the possibility of influencing the actions of others, against
their wills. It is also produced by the ‘dominant’ and the ‘dominated ‘, through ‘identity-constituting discursive
practices’. Hence Power is always exercised in an environment of free will. This implies that individuals are not
coerced to subject themselves to the technologies of Power, but at some level choose to do so. Power takes
the form of anonymous network and hence is not necessarily subordinate to relationships, as in a scenario of
actor an exercising Power over actor B. Hence, it is not a question of the agents/actors and their interests, but
also one of how the ‘discursive practice’ are formed.
**********

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1. KARL MARX .....................................................................1

2. ANTONIO GRAMSCI ......................................................... 14

5. HANNAH ARENDT ........................................................... 46

UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 1

EVOLUTIONARY & REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM

2 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

WHAT IS DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM?

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 3

THE MATERIALISM IN MARX

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THE DIFFERENT HISTORICAL STAGES AS EXPLAINED BY MARX:

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 5

BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

THEORY OF SURPLUS VALUE

6 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

MARX’S THEORY OF CLASS

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 7

8 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

Theory of the State

Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 9

10 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL AND AN OVERVIEW

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 11

12 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 13

Gramsci as Journalist, Socialist Activist and Political Prisoner

14 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

An Overview of the Context in which Gramsci developed his theory

Concept of Power and Hegemony

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 15

brute force, forced Cultural hegemony

Society accepts these

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF STRUCTURES OF LEGITIMATION?

16 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

Abstract Model of Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

HEGEMONY Sanctioned Discourse

Status quo maintenance up

WHAT IS THIS ‘WAR OF POSITION’& Superstructure

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18 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

describing the role of intellectuals.

ROLE OF TRADITIONAL INTELLECTUALS VS. ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS:

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 19

Concept of Historical bloc

20 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

Gramsci’s views on Dialectics

Gramscian view of state

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22 www.iasscore.in Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey

Dr. Piyush Kr. Chaubey www.iasscore.in 23

CLASSICAL MARXISM ON STATE

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Lenin’s View on End of State

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MAIN ARGUMENTS OF THE NEO-MARXISTS

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NEO MARXIST’S VIEW ON STATE: MAIN FEATURES

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GENERAL NEO- MARXIST VIEWS ON THE STATE