Capitalism, Class, and the State

Capitalism, Class, and the State
Political Sociology Lecture 3 Alice Mah

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”- Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

‘For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit. If successful, this conceptual apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question…’ (Harvey 2007, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 5)

Outline Marxist and Gramscian theories of capitalism, class, and the state Examples for analysis the role of the state (and hegemony) in maintaining and legitimizing consent to dominant political and economic systems and ideologies (neoliberalism, war, US hegemony, disaster capitalism,) the role of counter-hegemony and the ‘war of position’ in counter-movements and protest (social movements, civil society) Criticisms and concluding discussion

Marx and Gramsci: capitalism, class and the state

The state in capitalist society Review: three Marxist models (Dunleavy and O’Leary 1987): Instrumental/instrumentalist (state as a tool for exercising political power; whichever class controls this tool can use it to advance its own interests; domination of ruling class in capitalist society, e.g. Ralph Miliband) Functionalist/structuralist (the state is determined by structure, has a bias towards against and against the ‘subaltern’ classes, e.g. Claus Offe) Arbiter: arena for competing interests but dominated by bourgeoisie, (e.g. Gramsci) Many Marxist and neo-Marxist perspectives across these ‘models’- another tradition we will address in week 9 is the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, which like Gramsci informed ‘Cultural Marxism’ Focus today: a version/extension of the ‘arbiter’ model: ‘Strategic-relational’ (Poulantzas, Jessop): state as a social relation, class-biased, full of contradictions and class struggles, need for continual re-legitimization to maintain hegemony and consent

Marxist approaches to power and its exercise (Jessop) power relations as manifestations of class domination (role of state in securing conditions for economic class domination) links between economic, political, and ideological class domination limitations and contradictions of power that are grounded in the nature of capitalism as a system of social relations the role of strategy and tactics to reproduce, resist or overthrow class domination

Marxist ‘Base’/Superstructure Superstructure legitimates the mode of production Mode of production shapes the superstructure

Close readings of Marx… Reading Marx’s Capital with Prof David Harvey: http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ Famous reading group of Marx’s Capital taught by Harvey for almost 40 years, the inspiration for several of Harvey’s books, available free online (13 lectures)

Marx: the role of ideas ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch its ruling intellectual force’ (Marx 1846, The German Ideology) The ruling class is compelled to represent its own interests as the common interests of all members of society: ‘put in an ideal form [the ruling class] will give its idea the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.’ (Marx 1848, Manifesto of the Communist Party) Bourgeois ideology: the appearance of freedom and equality in the sphere of circulation of commodities conceals what goes on beneath the surface, within the realm of production, where workers are forced to sell through labour-power to owners in order to survive and are neither free nor equal but rather exploited and alienated ‘False consciousness’: a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of their social or economic situation (e.g. class exploitation).

Antonio Gramsci Italian Marxist, writings from prison in the 1930s, fragmentary and scattered vs. sustained writings, situated in the historical and political context of fascist Italy, Europe, and the 1930s A political intellectual and a social activist, rather than an academic or scholarly theorist- his ‘theoretical writing’ was aimed at ‘informing political practice’ Extensively revised Marxist theories and problems to address contemporary social relations in his own society and times, a more ‘open’ form of Marxism. Concept of hegemony, whereby the dominant ideology of the ruling classes becomes take-for-granted common sense within civil society Influential for thinking about the role of civil society and ideas/ideology in relation to politics and struggle Argued for the need in advanced capitalist democracies to engage in a long-term ‘war of position’ of subaltern or subordinate classes based on developing a (counter-)hegemonic ‘collective will’ based on the ‘common sense’ of popular forces.

Gramsci: key concepts 1/3 Superstructure/State: ‘political society + civil society’; state power rests on ‘hegemony armoured by coercion’; ‘the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules’ Hegemony: A social group manifests its hegemony through both ‘domination’ and ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. ‘A social group can, and indeed must, already ‘lead’ [i.e. be hegemonic] before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power.’ ‘Hegemony involves the successful mobilization and reproduction of the ‘active consent’ of dominated groups by the ruling class through the exercise of political, intellectual, and moral leadership.’ (Jessop 2012: 13) Organic Crisis: when the ruling class loses its consensus and is only dominant through coercive force (weak hegemony)

Gramsci: Key Concepts 2/3 Passive Revolution: a revolution without mass participation (e.g. 19th C. Risorgimento [Italian unification]), or social transformation which takes place beneath the surface of society, in situations where the ‘progressive’ class cannot advance openly’, condemned by Gramsci, who instead advocated a War of Position (related but less passive) War of Position: a counter-hegemonic strategy for social change, a constant manoeuvring in spheres of culture, ideology and politics while keeping in mind ‘that in political struggle one should not ape the methods of the ruling classes, or one will fall into easy ambushes’ War of Manoeuvre: frontal attack, open conflict

Gramsci: Key Concepts 3/3 Intellectuals: ‘traditional’ vs. ‘organic’ intellectuals counters myth that an ‘intellectual’ is a distinct social category independent of class all men are potentially intellectuals in the sense of having an intellect and using it ‘traditional’ professional intellectuals have an inter-class aura but this derives from past and present class relations ‘organic’ intellectuals are ‘the thinking and organising element of a particular fundamental social class’: the question remains: how to develop the organic intellectuals linked to the working-class (counter-hegemonic)

Neo-Gramscian perspectives Ideas revived in the 1970s and 1980s by three schools of thought: Cultural studies: ideas of hegemony and the role of culture and ideology within Marxism, applied to study of race and ethnicity (e.g. Stuart Hall 1986; 1990) the ‘Regulation School’: Fordism, post-Fordism and the regulation of capitalist crises; capital-labour-state consensus, (e.g. Jessop 1991; Aglietta 1979; Amin 1994; Lipietz 1992) Critical theory and international relations (Cox 1981; Gill 1988)

Cultural Studies According to Hall, Gramsci’s work does not offer a general social science which can be applied to the analysis of social phenomena across a wide range of historical societies. His work is more of a ‘sophisticating’ kind, a way of informing questions. The development of cultural studies in the 1970s was: ‘….a Gramscian project. That is to say, our intention was to address the problems of what Gramsci called ‘the national popular’: how it was constituted; how it was being transformed, why it mattered in the play and negotiation of hegemonic practices… We took to heart the Gramscianinjunction that the practice of an organic intellectual would have to be to engage with the philosophical end of the enterprise, with knowledge at its most testing. Because it mattered, we had to know more than they knew about our subject at the same time as we took responsibility for translating that knowledge back into practice– the latter operation was what Gramsci calls ‘common sense’. (Stuart Hall, 1990 ‘The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanties’, The Humanities as Social Technology, p. 17-18)

The Regulation School Influenced by Gramsci’s writings on Fordism, coined by Gramsci in the 1930s as a critical observation of capitalist regulation in America (essay ‘Americanism and Fordism’) Idea that when capitalism enters crisis (eg. 1930s, 1970s, could also argue post-2008), it finds a way of regulating itself or adapting to secure consent of masses. Two examples of regulation of capitalism: Fordism and Post-Fordism 1) Fordism: emerged in response to the Depression and the threat of political instability (Communism/Fascism), as a dominant system of economic and social coordination based on industrial mass production ‘mass assembly-line production of standardized products (e.g. Ford’s Model T)routinized, deskilled, intensified labour, top-down control (Taylorist theory of scientific management) high wages, stability, and benefits so the worker could also become a ‘consumer’ (basis of mass consumer society model of capitalism) a male workforce, regular hours , monotonous work, expectations re: regulation of family, morality and family life became the dominant model of post-war, male manufacturing work in the UK, the US and the industrialized ‘west’, linked to post WWII labour-capital Keynesian welfare state consensus

The Regulation School 2) Post-Fordism: emerged in response to the economic ‘crisis’ in the early 1970s (the oil crisis, stagflation): a shift away from Fordism as the primary form of capitalist ‘regulation’ towards flexible or ‘batch’ production of diversified products (‘just-in-time’ production-‘Toyotization’) A move away from Keynesian principles of full employment, social spending and welfare, towards free market principles of ‘neoliberalism’ Linked to globalisation of markets, polarisation of skills in the labour market (high and low skills), technological change (computers) Jessop argues that the ‘hollowed-out Schumpeterian workfare state’ is the ‘best possible political shell for post-Fordism’ Post-Fordism is widely debated as a concept (unevenness, co-existence with Fordist modes of production, universality, global relevance)

Critical theory and international relations Neo-Gramscian theory broadens the domain of hegemony as ‘domination’ within IR argues that hegemony is a form of dominance but is based on consent ‘manifested in the acceptances of ideas and supported by material resources and institutions, which is initially established by social forces occupying a leading role within a state, but is then project outwards on a world scale.’ (Bieler and Morton 2004) For example: Cox (1992) argues that a US-led hegemonic world order labelled pax Americana was dominant until the 1970s, maintained through the IMF and World Bank and based on ‘embedded liberalism’, the Keynesian welfare state, and Fordist accumulation regime, and Cox: thepax Americana was eroded in the 1970s, with a shift to the transnational restructuring of capitalism in globalisation and the emergence of new social forces of capital and labour which have become fractionalized into transnational and national social forces.

Examples for analysis

Neoliberalism ‘The founding fathers of neoliberal thought took political ideals of human dignity and individual freedom as fundamental, as the “central values of civilization.” In so doing they chose wisely, for these are indeed compelling and seductive ideals. These values, they held, were threatened not only by fascism, dictatorships, and communism, but by all forms of state intervention that substituted collectives judgements for those of individuals free to choose.’ (Harvey 2007, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 5)

Neoliberal consensus Emerged in the 1970s to challenge postwar Keynesianism Commitment to free market principles, strict separation between market and state Neoliberal rationale for this shift: to overcome problems of an over-extended state (rather than crises in capitalist production and consumption) Deregulated markets to make them more ‘flexible’ Irony/contradiction: strong role of state intervention to oversee marketization of the state (re-regulation, according to Peck and Tickell) New conception of the citizen as individualistic, self-governing, free and entrepreneurial, conflation of ‘free market’ with individual freedoms Moral discourse of ‘dependency’ and ‘entitlement’ vs. ‘responsibility’ and ‘obligations’

Further references: Globalisation, Neoliberalism and Gramsci Birchfield, V. (1999) ‘Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci’s “good sense” and Polanyi’s “Double Movement,”’Review of International Political Economy 6:1. Gill, S. (1995), ‘Globalisation, market civilisation, and disciplinary neoliberalism,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies 24:3 Gill, S. (ed) (2010) Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rupert, M. (2000) Ideologies of Globalization: Contending Visions of a New World Order, London: Routledge. Rupert, M (1995) Producing Hegemony: The Politics of Mass Production and American Global Power, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

The Iraq War and Neoliberalism “What the US evidently sough to impose on Iraq was a state apparatus whose fundamental mission was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital. The freedoms it embodies reflect the interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations, and financial capital.” (Harvey 2007, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p. 7)

Naomi Klein, disaster capitalism and Iraq How American neoliberal policies have come to dominate the world, and the rise of ‘disaster capitalism’, exploiting disaster-shocked people and places, culminating in the Iraq War Journalistic vs. ‘sociological’ and highly controversial, but very interesting and provocative exploration of ‘hegemony’, closely linked to Harvey’s ideas and well-researched Traces ideological, psychological, economic, political and military dimensions of (hegemonic ) disaster capitalism across: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973 the Falklands War in 1982 the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 Hurricane Mitch in 1998 Hurricane Katrina in 2005 the Iraq War (2003-present) Klein, N (2008) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Penguin

The Iraq War and Gramsci But was the Iraq War a failure as a hegemonic project? In the Shock Doctrine Klein discusses the ‘ideological blowback’ of the Iraq war in failing to win hearts and minds. Further Gramscian analyses of Iraq: Dodge, T. (2006) ‘The Sardinian, the Texan and the Tikriti: Gramsci, the comparative autonomy of the Middle Eastern state and regime change in Iraq,’ International Politics 43, pp. 453-473. Dodge, T. (2009) ‘Coming face to face with bloody reality: Liberal common sense and the ideological failure of the Bush doctrine in Iraq,’ International Politics 46, pp. 253-275. Bridoux, J. (2011) ‘Postwar reconstruction, the Reverse Course and the New Way Forward: bis repetitas?’ Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 5 (1): 43-66.

Social Movements, Civil Society and Gramsci A way of thinking about strategies and tactics for political resistance (e.g. anti-globalisation movements, Occupy, Zapitista movement in Mexico) Dilemma: risk of co-option within ‘war of position’ and counter-hegemonic strategies Some Gramscian analyses of social movements and civil society: Butko, T. (2006) Gramsci and the 'anti-globalization' movement: think before you act Socialism and Democracy 20 (2): 79-102. Katz, H. (2006) ‘Gramsci, hegemony, and global civil society networks,’ Voluntas 17(4): 333-348. Stephen, M. (2011) ‘Globalisation and resistance: struggles over common sense in the global political economy’ Review of International Studies 37(1): 209-288.

Criticisms Ignores other forms of social domination- patriarchical, ethnic, heteronormative, inter-state, et al Risk of overemphasising structural coherence of class domination Consideration variation within ‘capitalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’: alternative (liberal political economic) views ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice 2001) and ‘worlds of welfare capitalism’ (Esping-Anderson 1990) Too simplistic: Fordist and post-Fordist forms of economic and social regulation overlap considerably (e.g. McDonald’s is a service-sector global chain based on a system of mass production), are uneven geographically and globally (Western-centric analysis), and ignore other forms of production and economy Capitalism itself is ‘hegemonic’ as a discourse (feminist geographers Gibson-Graham 1996, The End of Capitalism and Postcapitalist Politics 2006)

Conclusion Gramsci is an influential Marxist intellectual whose writings- particularly on hegemony- have inspired neo-Gramscian perspectives on the role of civil society and ideology within politics and struggle. Can think of Gramsci’s insights as a provocation, or a way of thinking about deep questions of political struggle, action, and power in particular political contexts. For further thinking: what are some similarities and differences between Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony and Foucault’s analysis of power/discourse/knowledge?

Seminar Questions: Part I Close Reading: Focus on the following key passages: ‘Philosophy of the Epoch’ (p. 228-229), ‘Political Struggle and Military War’ (p. 229-238) ‘The transition from the War of Manoeuvre (Frontal Attack) to the War of Position’ (p. 238-239) ‘Sociological and Political Science’ (p. 243-245) ‘The State (p. 257-264) ‘Organisation of National Societies’ (p. 264-265) Define and discuss the following key concepts: Hegemony, State, Civil Society, Organic Crisis, Passive Revolution, War of Position, War of Manoeuvre

Seminar Questions: Part II How useful is the concept of hegemony (and related Gramscian concepts) in thinking about the role of ideology and the importance of ‘consent’ within contemporary capitalist societies? For example: How is consent to capitalist exploitation secured under contemporary conditions, particularly democratic ones? (Lukes) Why did the ‘neoliberal turn’ occur in the 1970s, and what were the forces that made it so hegemonic within global capitalism? (Harvey’s question in A Brief History of Neoliberalism) How was the Iraq war justified by Bush and Blair, and how far did this succeed or fail as a ‘hegemonic project? Can you think of examples within politics, media, or the news in which these analytical insights would be relevant? Compare and contrast Gramscian and Foucauldian perspectives on power and the modern state.

Capitalism, Class, and the State