Elements of Civil Society Study Notes IGNOU MGPE 13

Elements of Civil Society

Study Notes

INTRODUCTION

Elements of Civil Society, Elements of Civil Society From the eighteenth century onwards the excellence between state and civil society has been drawn by the liberals to undermine the absolutist state. intrinsically the concept of civil society, just like the constitutional state, is actually a liberal innovation though paradoxically the main debates about its proper meaning and importance has been within Marxism, particularly, Western Marxism. Elements of Civil Society, consistent with some, is seen as a mean of reducing the role of politics in society by expanding free markets and individual liberty, while others see it as ‘the single most viable alternative to the authoritarian state and therefore the tyrannical market’ (WSF). Elements of Civil Society there's also a perception that it constitutes the ape-man within the success of political orientation and compassionate conservatism; something that can't be explained is attributed to civil society.

For Adam Seligman, civil society is ‘the new analytic key which will unlock the mysteries of social order’. The United Nations and therefore the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development perceive it as crucial to good governance and poverty reducing growth. Elements of Civil Society The Administration Officials within the Washington DC see kick starting civil society within the Middle East because the real reason for the Iraq War. The Institute for policy , Washington-based think factory observes that ‘the US should emphasize civil society development so as to make sure regional stability in central Asia’.

 Elements of Civil Society Historically, civil society as an idea that features within the writings of thinkers from the center of the eighteenth century onwards in an effort to differentiate it, as an organised society over which the state rules. Some trace the origins of civil society to the writings of Aristotle and Seneca of the classical period. The civil society-state distinction isn't valid because the state is itself a part of society. Formal authority and political control exists with help of stable social institutions that exert considerable influence on, or control individual lives. Elements of Civil Society Many consider voluntary associations because the life breath of civil society as these inculcate values of tolerance and cooperation that are essential prerequisites for democratic life. However, real associational life also harbours all types of various and competing values and beliefs. Elements of Civil Society Moreover, the values of trust, tolerance, reciprocity and cooperation, reiterated by the advocates of social capital, also are fostered in families, schools, workplaces, colleges and universities –places that an individual grows; learns and spends a greater a part of one’s life, quite within the voluntary associations that one may belong to. Elements of Civil Society Within NGOs and other voluntary associations there's such a lot difference of opinion and divergences that securing A level political consensus to secure and enforce broad-based social reforms becomes difficult. Civil society, on the one hand, offers a chance for collective action to counter individualism and on the opposite hand, provides a balance to an overbearing influence of state authority and therefore the allurements of the market.

ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT

In the late eighteenth century the thought of the civil society was formulated by the Scottish Enlightenment with its forceful articulation by Ferguson. However, the first focus of the idea at the time of its inception was mainly within the realm of economics and not in politics apart from restricting state activity which became imperative with the philosophy of individualism and rejection of mercantilism. Elements of Civil Society However, within the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the concept developed into a strong concern mainly due to Hegel’s efforts to include civil society as an important and most dominant element in his ideal of constitutional monarchy.

Hegel divided the lifetime of a standard citizen in three distinctive parts: (1) the family which was stage of affection and affection beyond the strife and turbulence of up to date life; (2) the civil society because the arena of the turbulence and strife and (3) the state with its most vital component, of well trained efficient bureaucracy.

Elements of Civil Society When the Left Hegelians, the foremost important of whom were Marx and Engels rejected Hegel’s classification, that they had to return to terms with handling the complexities of civil society. Within the larger framework of economic determinism, Marx insisted that the rule of the bourgeoisie or the upper class in any order is perpetuated more by controlling the ideological apparatus of the state instead of by the utilization of brute force.

 

GRAMSCI’S SEMINAL CONTRIBUTION

Civil society is that the key concept in Antonio Gramsci’s (1887-1937) political thought. No other Marxist within the twentieth century paid the maximum amount attention to civil society from a Marxist point of deem Gramsci did. Elements of Civil Society Conceiving of a revolutionary strategy to fight fascism within the Italian context, he understood that the Marxist revolutionary strategy has got to be analysed not on a singular note but on a differentiated basis looking to the stages of economic development, political culture, the external influences and therefore the question of relative economic and political independence and identity. Elements of Civil Society Furthermore, Gramsci’s analysis of the method by which the proletariat could gain hegemony within the West led him to look at the connection between the civil society and therefore the state and to match things within the former USSR thereupon of the West. Elements of Civil Society This led Gramsci to use his famous sentence differentiating Western Europe from the Russian situation by dismissing the Leninist strategy as inappropriate as in Russia the ‘state was everything and civil society, nothing’. within the more developed areas of Western Europe, there's a strong and vibrant civil society and any serious Marxist analysis has got to comprehend this as a part of its revolutionary strategy. In formulating this, Croce played a decisive influence on Gramsci.

 

Croce’s Influence

Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) had a decisive influence within the early twentieth century within the Italian intellectual tradition and may be compared to Hegel’s influence within Germany. Croce was well versed with the writings of both Hegel and Marx, learnt tons from them but was also critical of them. He viewed the whole process of history as a record encompassing act , art, economics, philosophy and emphasised like Hegel, on the supreme importance of the human spirit. Croce forsakes Marxism declaring it to be useful only as a ‘simple canon of historical enquiry and research’ and pronounces the ‘death of theoretical Marxism in Italy’. Croce’s secularism and opposition to positivism remains influential among the intellectuals. Politically Croce’s role is ambivalent. He supported Mussolini within the early twenties. He was also an associate of

Croce that endorsed Machiavellian approach to the study of politics and popularised by the Italian elitist thinkers, Pareto (1848-1923) and Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941). He was pleased with this approach because it shared the Marxism distrust for traditional political categories. Both Croce and Gramsci believed during a close relationship between consensus and force, and liberty and authority. In one crucial area of Gramsci’s thought, Croce exerts a unprecedented influence, namely the concept of civil and political societies. In using these terms Gramsci uses the language of Hegel and Marx but gives them novel meanings. For Hegel and Marx, civil society is discovered not within the structure but within the superstructure of society, not in commerce and industry but in ideology and cultural organisations. For both Croce and Gramsci it's within the sphere of ‘Church’ or civil society that the intellectuals operate and “for both men, whatever ‘ethical’ content a state may have is to be found during this sphere, not within the state proper” (Bates 1975, p.157).

 Gramsci

Elements of Civil Society sometimes Gramsci uses the term state to incorporate both civil society and political society: “The general notion of the State includes elements which require to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that state = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion”

Elements of Civil Society, Elsewhere, Gramsci observes that the State equals dictatorship and hegemony which the ‘civil society and State are one and therefore the same’. In 1931, writing about the intellectuals he points out “this study also results in certain determinations of an idea of State, which is typically understood as political society (or dictatorship; or coercive apparatus to bring the mass of individuals into conformity with the precise sort of production and a selected economy at a given moment) and not as an equilibrium between political society and civil society or the hegemony of a group over the whole national society exercised through the so-called private organizations (like the church, the trade unions, the faculties , etc.); it's precisely in civil society that intellectuals operate specially” (Gramsci, 1966, p.481).

 

Theory of the State

Gramsci’s theory of the state develops out of his notion of the right relationship between the state and therefore the civil society. Whereas Marx’s most vital emphasis is on the totality of all the economic relations, in Gramsci there's a huge emphasis on the superstructure. The hegemony of the dominant class is exercised through the civil society, culturally, and not through coercion. Elements of Civil Society But this hegemony of the civil society doesn't exist equally altogether societies. as an example , making a categorical distinction between Russia and therefore the West European countries he asserts that “in Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; within the West, there was a correct balance relationship between State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was directly revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a strong system of fortresses and earth works” (Gramsci cited in McLellan 1979, p.189). From this, Gramsci lays down different revolutionary strategies. In primitive societies, the thing of the frontal attack is that the state while in additional developed societies it's the civil society. Using military vocabulary, the frontal attack is characterised by Gramsci as ‘a war of movement or manoeuvre’ and therefore the other a ‘war of position’. For a well developed capitalist state, the second course is that the correct one. Elements of Civil Society Gramsci believes that Lenin, before his death, had accepted this fact whereas Trotsky continued to be “the political theorist of frontal attack during a period during which it only results in defeats” (Kiernan 1972, p.25). Gramsci’s position is analogous thereto of Kautsky’s polemics against Lenin, an edge that enjoyed considerable support among the Marxist theoreticians of that point .

 

Relative Autonomy of Politics

Elements of Civil Society , Gramsci dissects the vital relationship between economics and politics and therefore the nature of the state so as to answer the pertinent question about the causes that led to the survival of fascism, in spite of the latter’s inability to unravel basic contradictions of the Italian society. within the process, he discovers that the art of politics features a dynamics and autonomy of its own which might be clearly distinguished from the realms of economics, morality and religion. For him, because it is for Machiavelli, political activity is that the act par excellence. Elements of Civil Society one among his major unfulfilled ambitions was to deal specifically with this political aspect in a book significantly titled the fashionable Prince. aside from Gramsci’s interest within the period of Italian unity, Risorgimento, he put tons of efforts in comprehending the political orientation of the Italian Renaissance generally and of Machiavelli especially . Elements of Civil Society Following Croce’s description of Marx because the ‘Machiavelli of the Proletariat’, Gramsci tries to analyse the contemporary situation. Many pages of the Prison Notebooks are dedicated to notes on Machiavelli and for Gramsci, Machiavelli’s greatness consists in his distinction of politics from ethics. Elements of Civil Society the fashionable Prince, for him, has got to be the Party. the fashionable Prince, the Prince-myth, can't be a true person, a concrete individual: it can only be an organism, a posh element of society, during which a collective will... begins to require concrete form. Elements of Civil Society Such an organism had already been provided by historical development and it's the party , the primary cell during which germs of a collective will close and have a tendency to become universal and total (Gramsci cited in Hoare and Nowell Smith, 1971, p.129). Gramsci accepts the very fact that the economic and therefore the political factors are inter-linked which the politicians might be relatively autonomous. But he also asserts that the political developments have their own independent characteristics. The degree and extent of this autonomy depends on variety of variables. within the case of Italian fascism Gramsci perceives that it enjoys an excellent deal of autonomy both internally and externally and intrinsically any immediate collapse of it couldn't be expected.

 

Hegemony and Role of Intellectuals

Gramsci points out that folks aren't ruled by force alone but by ideas, summed up by the word Hegemony, a key and unifying concept within the Prison Notebooks and of his entire theoretical edifice. Hegemonic crises arise when the rule is by force and not primarily of the ideological apparatus of civil society. Hegemony is made within the civil society by intellectuals and if successfully done, then the upper class rules by controlling the apparatus of the civil society and if unsuccessful, then the rule is thru coercion. Distinguishing between traditional and organic intellectuals, Gramsci observes that traditional intellectuals thought themselves together and performed the functions therein role independently.

The organic ones are however closely linked to the category to which they belong. An example of traditional intellectuals was the clergy and their relation with the feudal upper class within the Middle Ages, which was organic but subsequently became autonomous. Elements of Civil Society Gramsci argues that the thought of independence is an illusion because the intellectuals are linked to the category structure during which they live. 

An independent class of intellectuals don't exist, but rather every group has its own intellectuals. However, the intellectuals of the historically progressive class... exercise such an influence of attraction that they end... by subordinating the intellectual of other social groups and thus create a system of solidarity among intellectuals, with links of a psychological (vanity) or caste nature.

This fact is realized spontaneously in historical periods during which the given group is actually progressive (Bates, 1975, p.353). The shift from traditional to organic intellectualism takes place when the revolutionary class itself produces its intellectuals. The role of the intellectuals may be a practical one. The mode of being of the new intellectuals can not consist in eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, ‘permanent persuader’ and not just an easy orator (Gramsci cited in Hoare and Nowell Smith, 1971, p.10). Elements of Civil Society Again emphasizing the necessity for a linkage between the intellectuals and therefore the masses, Gramsci states, The position of the philosophy of praxis is that the antithesis of that of Catholicism. It doesn't tend to go away the ‘simple’ in their primitive philosophy of sense , but rather to steer them to a better conception of life.

If it affirms the necessity for contact between intellectuals and ‘simple’ it's not so as to limit scientific activity and preserve unity at the low level of the masses, but precisely so as to construct an intellectual-moral bloc which may make politically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only of small intellectual groups Elements of Civil Society (Gramsci, Ibid, pp.332-33).

 

Analysis of Fascism

Gramsci characterises fascism as a passive revolution which is congenial to things of Italy as that permits it to modernise and restructure the economy within capitalism with massive state support, a situation that was just the other of the

Fascism could contain but not solve the Italian crisis and therefore the consequent static equilibrium could inaugurate true hegemony. Elements of Civil Society Gramsci predicts a ‘long life’ for the fascist regime but denies that it constitutes an epoch. His analysis is vindicated by subsequent history when within eight years of his death fascism was exhausted not only from Italy, but also from entire Europe. within the process of analysing Fascism, Gramsci develops three general concepts: Caesarism, War of attrition and passive revolution.

Caesarism refers to a situation when some previously dormant or unknown forces capable of asserting domination intervene politically and restores a static equilibrium during a hegemonic crisis situation. Elements of Civil Society There could also be variants during this intervention, progressive (Caesar and Napoleon I) and reactionary (Napoleon III and Bismarck). Such a struggle, for Gramsci, represents a

 

CONCLUSION

Like Marx’s concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, both in content and emphasis, the concept of civil society has become one among the foremost contested concepts within the twentieth century Marxism. the rationale for this extraordinary attention to the doctrine in Marxism is that unlike Liberalism, Marxism never formulates a well developed theory of the state nor details the institutions that might be essential during a socialist society. Elements of Civil Society The liberals, always being aware of human deficiencies and cautious about the dynamics of power, develop a well formulated institutional basis of a constitutional and limited state.

However, of these remain elusive in Marxism and to seek out how out of

Civil society refers to those aspects of human existence that are outside the purview of political authority or the state and government, namely, economic relationships, family and kinship structures, religious institutions, cultural organisations then on. Elements of Civil Society it's an analytical concept because it doesn't exist independently of political authority and the other way around . Elements of Civil Society it's generally believed that neither can continue without the opposite which no clear boundary are often drawn between the 2 . From the 18th century onwards the excellence between state and civil society has been drawn by the liberals to undermine the absolutist state. intrinsically the concept of civil society, just like the constitutional state is actually a liberal innovation though paradoxically the main debates about its proper meaning and importance has been within Marxism, particularly, Western Marxism.

Civil society is that the key concept in Antonio Gramsci’s (1887-1937) political thought. No other Marxist within the twentieth century paid the maximum amount attention to civil society from a Marxist point of deem Gramsci did.

He differentiated Western Europe from the Russian situation by dismissing the Leninist strategy as inappropriate as in Russia the ‘state was everything and civil society, nothing’. Elements of Civil Society within the more developed areas of Western Europe, there's a strong and vibrant civil society and any serious Marxist analysis has got to comprehend this as a part of its revolutionary strategy.