WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT II

MA [Political Science]
First Semester
IV(POLS 704C)

[English Edition]

Directorate of Distance Education

TRIPURA UNIVERSITY
 Reviewer
Dr Nivedita Giri
Assistant Professor, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi

Authors:
Dr Biswaranjan Mohanty Units (1.2-1.2.1, 2.4.4, 3.4.2-3.4.3, 4.2, 4.4-4.9) © Dr Biswaranjan Mohanty, 2015
Dr Madhusmita Giri Units (1.4, 2.3-2.4.3, 2.5-2.9, 4.3) © Dr Madhusmita Giri, 2015
Vikas Publishing House Units (1.0-1.1, 1.2.2-1.2.3, 1.3, 1.5-1.9, 2.0-2.2, 3.0-3.4.1, 3.5-3.9, 4.0-4.1) © Reserved, 2015
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 SYLLABI-BOOK MAPPING TABLE
Western Political Thought II
Syll ab i Mapping in Book

Unit-I
Hume : Conception of Reason, Fact and Value; Human Unit 1: Hume, Bentham and Mill
Psychology, Idea of Government & Legitimacy. (Pages: 3-38)
Bentham : Theory of Utilitarianism, Modern State, Notion of
Liberty.
J.S. Mill : Critique of Utilitarianism, Gender Equality,
Democracy and Representative Government.

Unit-II
Kant : Political Ideas, Philosophy of History, Notion of Unit 2: Kant, Hegel and Green
Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitanism (Pages: 39-78)
Hegel : State and Freedom, Dialectics
Green : State, Political Obligation, Concept of Moral
Freedom

Unit-III
Burke : Critique of French Revolution, Political Ideas. Unit 3: Burke, Marx and Lenin
Marx : Theory ofAlienation, Dialectics, State and Revolution. (Pages:79-103)
Lenin : State and Revolution, Party as Vanguard, Dictatorship
of the Proletariat.

Unit-IV
Mao : On Contradictions, On Practice, New Democracy, Unit 4: Mao and Gramsci
Cultural Revolution. (Pages: 105-142)
Gramsci : Hegemony, State and Civil Society.
Socialism : Utopian Socialism, Anarchist Socialism, Fabian
Socialism, Guild Socialism, Syndicalism.
 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1

UNIT 1 HUME, BENTHAM AND MILL 3-38

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Unit Objectives
1.2 David Hume
1.2.1 Conception of Reason
1.2.2 Fact and Value
1.2.3 Idea of Government and Legitimacy
1.3 Jeremy Bentham
1.3.1 Utilitarianism
1.3.2 Political and Legal Philosophy
1.3.3 The Panopticon
1.4 John Stuart Mill
1.4.1 Equal Rights for Women
1.4.2 Individual Liberty
1.4.3 Representative Government
1.5 Summary
1.6 Key Terms
1.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
1.8 Questions and Exercises
1.9 Further Reading

UNIT 2 KANT, HEGEL AND GREEN 39-78

2.0 Introduction
2.1 Unit Objectives
2.2 Immanuel Kant
2.2.1 Kant’s Theory of Perception
2.2.2 Categories of the Faculty of Judgement
2.2.3 Kant’s Moral Philosophy
2.2.4 Kant’s Idea of Freedom
2.2.5 Political Philosophy: Notion of Perpetual Peace
2.2.6 History and Cosmopolitism
2.3 Friedrich Hegel
2.3.1 Idealism of Hegel
2.3.2 Dialectical Method
2.3.3 Theory of State and Freedom of Individual
2.3.4 Freedom of the Individual
2.4 Thomas Green
2.4.1 Notion of Social Contract Theory and State
2.4.2 Punishment
2.4.3 Political Obligation
2.4.4 Concept of Moral Freedom
2.5 Summary
2.6 Key Terms
 2.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
2.8 Questions and Exercises
2.9 Further Reading

UNIT 3 BURKE, MARX AND LENIN 79-103

3.0 Introduction
3.1 Unit Objectives
3.2 Edmund Burke
3.2.1 Critique of the French Revolution
3.2.2 Political Ideas
3.3 Karl Marx
3.3.1 Brief Life Sketch
3.3.2 Dialectical Materialism
3.3.3 Historical Materialism
3.3.4 The State and Revolution
3.3.5 Social Revolution
3.4 Vladimir Lenin
3.4.1 Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
3.4.2 Theory of Party
3.4.3 Socialism in One Country
3.5 Summary
3.6 Key Terms
3.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
3.8 Questions and Exercises
3.9 Further Reading

UNIT 4 MAO AND GRAMSCI 105-142

4.0 Introduction
4.1 Unit Objectives
4.2 Mao Tse-tung
4.2.1 The Political Thoughts of Mao
4.2.2 Historical Background: The Struggle for Socialism
4.2.3 New Democracy or New Socialism
4.2.4 The Cultural Revolution
4.3 Antonio Gramsci
4.3.1 State and Civil Society
4.3.2 Gramsci on Hegemony
4.4 Socialism
4.4.1 Utopian Socialism: Robert Owen
4.4.2 Anarchist Socialism
4.4.3 Fabian Socialism
4.4.4 Guild Socialism and Syndicalism
4.5 Summary
4.6 Key Terms
4.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
4.8 Questions and Exercises
4.9 Further Reading
 Introduction

INTRODUCTION
Every single individual, at one point or another, in his or her life, has thought about NOTES
the kind of society they would like to live in. Those who become seriously interested
in the field have looked towards the theories of political philosophers through the
ages to give coherence to their own ideas on society. Thus, it would not be an
exaggeration to state that from David Hume to Karl Marx, the thoughts of great
political thinkers on subjects as varied as liberty, justice, state, law and property have
provided the foundation for the shaping and the development of human society.
It can be said then that the political environment around the world has been
moulded by the thinking and visions of famous thinkers like Jeremy Bentham, J.S
Mill, Hegel and Immanuel Kant. All their theories covered a wide range of subjects
like freedom, law, justice, rights, authority and property. These theories have set a
base for triggering revolutions and global changes. The majority of political ideologies
of the world owe their guidance to these thinkers. Every person, who is studying
political science, has to have a clear understanding of the political theories of the
thinkers mentioned in the book. This understanding is critical for analysing any situation
in the current scenario of global politics.
The book has been designed keeping in mind the self-instruction mode format
and follows a simple pattern, wherein each unit of the book begins with ‘Introduction’
to the topic followed by ‘Unit Objectives’. The content is then presented in a simple
and easy-to-understand manner, and is interspersed with ‘Check Your Progress’
questions to test the reader’s understanding of the topic. A list of ‘Questions and
Exercises’ is also provided at the end of each unit that includes short-answer as well
as long-answer questions. The ‘Summary’ and ‘Key Terms’ section are useful tools
for students and are meant for effective recapitulation of the text.

Self-Instructional Material 1
 Hume, Bentham and Mill

UNIT 1 HUME, BENTHAM AND MILL

Structure NOTES
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Unit Objectives
1.2 David Hume
1.2.1 Conception of Reason
1.2.2 Fact and Value
1.2.3 Idea of Government and Legitimacy
1.3 Jeremy Bentham
1.3.1 Utilitarianism
1.3.2 Political and Legal Philosophy
1.3.3 The Panopticon
1.4 John Stuart Mill
1.4.1 Equal Rights for Women
1.4.2 Individual Liberty
1.4.3 Representative Government
1.5 Summary
1.6 Key Terms
1.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
1.8 Questions and Exercises
1.9 Further Reading

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The first unit of the book discusses the different philosophers of classical liberalism.
The unit begins with a discussion on the ideas of the 18th century Scottish philosopher
David Hume. Hume was an empiricist who devoted himself to understanding human
nature. Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature was his seminal work in this regard.
The unit will discuss his conception of reason, human nature as well as his ideas on
government.
The unit goes on to describe various facets and aspects of Bentham’s utilitarian
philosophy, underlining and explaining Bentham’s idea of the nature of government
and how it is essential to create a system of right and obligation. The unit also deals
with the concept of the Panopticon, the model of a prison which was structured by
Bentham for the British government.
Besides Bentham and Hume, this unit covers the ideas propounded by J.S.
Mill. John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, political economist and civil servant
who actively contributed to social theory, political economy and political theory. He
is considered the most influential English philosopher of the nineteenth century. Mill
was a proponent of liberty and woman’s rights. He, like Bentham before him,
advocated utilitarianism, and wished to offer a solution to issues related to probabilistic
or inductive reasoning, such as the tendency of people to support information that
conforms to their beliefs (also called confirmation bias). Therefore, he was of the
opinion that falsification is a key component in science.
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Hume, Bentham and Mill
1.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

NOTES  Discuss Hume’s conception of reason
 Describe Hume’s idea of government
 Explain the basic tenets of Bentham’s ideas of political philosophy
 Discuss Bentham’s views on prison reforms and his idea of the Panopticon
 Describe J.S. Mill’s views on the rights for women
 Explain Mill’s idea of individual liberty
 Describe Mill’s view on representative government

1.2 DAVID HUME

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist and historian famous for his
radical empiricism and skepticism. His theories is associated with the philosophy of
John Locke. His major work was A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1739.
The work thoroughly examined the psychological nature of man. In the work, Hume
argued against the existence of innate ideas stating that humans have knowledge
only of things which they have directly experienced or observed. In justifying the
concept of reason, Hume stated that the inductive reasoning and causality cannot be
defended rationally. To study the state, government and law, David Hume adopted
the idea of logical reasoning in terms of deductive and inductive methods. He laid
emphasis on universal values and reasoning. He had his own idea of government
and legitimacy which was the embodiment of morality, justice and truth.
Hume drew his conclusions on the basis of the first major premise. In other
words, Hume proceeded from the universal to the particular which is the main
characteristic of the deductive method. On the other-hand, he used the inductive
method in his study of political theory. Here, he preferred to proceed from a particular
to a general conclusion. First of all, he observed, analyzed and compared different
constitutions of government and then drew the model of an ideal constitution. In this
case, the general conclusion was established from particular facts. This is the
inductive method. Hume was the first political moral philosopher who adopted this
method-in the study of political theory. Since the beginning of the field of political
theory, both deductive and inductive methods have been popularly used methods.
Besides these two methods, the other methods used for the study of political theory
are the historical method, the comparative method, the philosophical method,
observational method, experimental method, psychological method, statistical method,
sociological method and the juridical method. These are the traditional methods used
in the study of political science in term of reasoning.

4 Self-Instructional Material
1.2.1 Conception of Reason Hume, Bentham and Mill

The most significant aspect of David Hume’s writings is his ideas on the problems
of induction. In the 18th century, philosophers and political theorists established their
arguments through two approaches, i.e., through induction or deduction. In the NOTES
deductive method of reasoning, one proceeds from more general propositions to
equally general or less general propositions. The deductive method is concerned
with implication and here, one may proceed from the general to the particular. All
valid reasonings and universal truths are arrived by the deductive method. Here the
conclusion only makes explicit what is implied by the premise and one does not
bother about the material truth or falsity of the premise or the conclusion. In the
deductive method, the formal truth is accepted and is applied to different political
situations. Political action is considered as right or wrong on the basis of the general
conclusion. This method puts emphasis on universal values and reasoning.
The following are the main characteristics of the deductive method of
reasoning:
(i) Hume said that the term ‘deduction’ means ‘reasoning from the general to
particular or from the universal to the individual’. Here the conclusion is
drawn from the first major premise which is accepted as the self-evident
truth. Thus in deductive method, the conclusions are derived from non-
verifiable universal concepts which are accepted as self-evident general
propositions. To cite an example, when the British politician Lord John Acton
stated his famous adage ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely’, if X is in power, using deductive reasoning we can say that X is
corrupt.
(ii) In the deductive method, Hume emphasized that the scholar has to select his
problem first and then he has to draw a general conclusion. While drawing
the general conclusion, universal values and reasoning are given due
consideration. The scholar has to think or speculate about the general reason
or cause. Imagination has a greater role to play in the deductive method.
(iii) The final stage of the deductive method is the application of the general
conclusions or assumptions to particular cases. The scholar has to observe or
test whether his conclusions are becoming true in particular cases. If he
succeeds in getting an answer, his general conclusions or inferences become
valid and he may build certain theory in his subjectPolitical philosophers like
Thomas Moore, Rousseau, Hegel, T.H. Green, and so on, are the great
champions of the deductive method.
Hume stated that the deductive method usually makes use of logical processes
and the power of reasoning. It leads to high standard of general theory on the basis
of which a particular case can be tested. It includes the study of what ought to be
and for what one should strive. It is true that man cannot prosper without certain
ideals. Political institutions should be judged on the basis of ethical and philosophical
norms. The ideal should not be lost sight of and efforts should be made for its
achievement.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill The deductive method avoids unnecessary experimentation by accepting certain
universal principles as valid. In fact, experimentation seems to be difficult in political
theory which deals with human beings. In the deductive method, it is not required to
collect data from large number of particular cases. Hence, it is less expensive and
NOTES takes less time. It simply tests the logical force of various theories or principles in
particular cases.
According to Hume, the deductive method of reasoning has some defects. It
is imaginary and fictitious. In this method imagination or speculation has an important
role to play. It is not based on reality. Further, it is dogmatic as it is based on abstract
reasoning. In the method, ‘what ought to be’ must as far as possible, coincide with
‘what it can be’.
The deductive method also pays less attention to the complex nature of man
and society. It makes broad generalizations without going deep into the complex
relationship between men or between man and society. Hence the modern school of
behaviouralists rejects the deductive method as inadequate to study the complex
political phenomena.
When one proceeds from a particular to a general conclusion or from a less
general proposition to a more general proposition, the method is called inductive.
Here a scholar arrives at a conclusion by a process known as generalization from
the particular fact observed within the range of his experience. Induction is defined
as ‘the legitimate derivation of universal laws from individual cases’. In political
theory, the inductive method is used to get general principles from particular
experiences. One examines here various facts, experiences and findings. Political
Science is such a vast subject that the problems of various individuals, groups and
the state may be studied and certain generalization can be made.
The term ‘induction’ means ‘the legitimate inference of the general from the
particular or the more general from the less general’. It involves a process where
particular cases are studied, verified and tested and then generalization are made.
Here the conclusion is more general than the first proposition. From experience it is
found out that X, Y and Z while in power become corrupt and hence one-may jump
to the conclusion that ‘power corrupts’. In this case, one arrives at a conclusion by
a process known as generalization from particular facts.
In justifying reasoning Hume puts more emphasis in saying that the inductive
method is based on observation of facts. It involves a scientific process of enquiry.
Observation, collection and categorisation of data are made in order to establish the
general conclusion.
The inductive method of reasoning is scientific and rational as it establishes a
general truth of principle by observation, experimentation or reasoning from particular
examples. Its findings are mostly correct and it takes reality into consideration.
When deductive method is said to be dogmatic, the inductive method is pragmatic.
The inductive method takes into consideration various complex factors in
actual life. While advocating empirical investigation, it studies different factors or
variables causing such complexities. Its approach is dynamic as it takes changing
factors into consideration. A great advocate of the inductive method was the British
6 Self-Instructional Material
philosopher and jurist Sir Frances Bacon. The inductive method of study of political Hume, Bentham and Mill
science has given rise to behavioural approaches in recent times. The unit of analysis
is the individual person in a political situation. A behaviouralist studies the behaviour
of persons whose interactions influence group actions and arrive at conclusions on
the basis of actual findings. NOTES
The inductive method also suffers from some defects. It is a difficult method
because collection of data is extremely time consuming. It is also expensive. Lot of
time and money is wasted in the observation and the collection of data.
There are certain limitations while applying inductive method in the study of
political phenomena. Hume debated that the human beings are unpredictable objects.
Their behaviour and response may vary from time to time and from situation to
situation. Political objects are not like physical or natural objects which are subject
to laboratory experiments. Hence, scholars should be cautious while making
generalizations on the basis of observation and experimentation in political science.
It may be said that both deductive (analytical) and inductive (empirical)
methods are used in the study of political science. In fact, these two methods are
frequently used in the study of the social sciences. These two methods are not
independent of each other; rather, they supplement each other. Both the methods
make an attempt to connect the particular with the universal in order to make a
system, although they differ in their starting point. While deduction begins with a
general principle, induction starts with observation of particular facts. Hence both
the methods should be used to study various political objects. Political Science is not
merely concerned with generalization or observation of actual findings. It deals with
both the ideals and actuals or normative and non-normative values. As the scope of
Political Science is ever expanding, both the methods should be adopted in order to
make its study effective and complete.
Hume rejected that reason performs a formative role in inspiring or
disappointing behavior. Hume emphasized that the seminal factor in human behavior
is desire or passion and not reason. As proof, he tries to apprise human events
according to the criterion of instrumentalism. Hume concludes that reason alone
cannot induce anyone to act. Rather, reason facilitates to arrive at judgments, but
individual desires stimulate people to act on or ignore those judgments. Therefore,
reason does not shape the basis of morality. It performs the role of an advisor. For
Hume, immorality is morally wrong not because it infringes reason but because it is
hurtful to us.
1.2.2 Fact and Value
As it is self-evident, fact is something that suggests how the world actually is. For
example, New Delhi is the capital of India is a fact. On the other hand, value refers
to something that is good, something that one strives for. For example, freedom of
speech is something that people generally agree is a good thing. It is a thing that
people value. In philosophy and political theory, facts are usually used for making
propositions which can be verified as either true or false. On the other hand, values
are used for normative prescriptions; to evaluate whether actions are right or wrong.
Self-Instructional Material 7
Hume, Bentham and Mill This distinction between fact and value emerged during the Enlightenment
period. David Hume specifically wrote about this distinction. According to David
Hume, in philosophical or political arguments ‘is’ statements do not follow from
‘ought’ statements. To put it another way, Hume believed that human beings are
NOTES unable to ground normative arguments in positive arguments. What Hume is trying
to suggest is that a set of factual statements cannot be used to give moral prescriptions.
For example, factual statements such as murder causes suffering, people disapprove
of murder does not necessary entail that one ought not to commit murder. For Hume,
the inference from ‘murder causes suffering’ to ‘you ought not to commit murder’ is
invalid. This view that ‘ought’ statements cannot be logically inferred from ‘is’
statements has become known as Hume’s law. However, it is important to not here
that despite what some scholars suggest, Hume here is not suggesting that ethical
and other valuations are beyond the scope of rational discussion. On the contrary,
Hume wrote a great deal on ethics.
According to the English moral philosopher R.M. Hare, the distinction between
fact and value helps explain why ‘ought’ statements cannot be deduced from ‘is’
statements. However, a problem emerges from Hume’s argument. The problem in
Hume’s Law as stated above is that any ‘ought’ statement can be changed into an
‘is’ statement. To give an example, ‘you ought not to steal’ can be changed to
suggest that ‘stealing is wrong’. Generally speaking, an ‘ought’ statement can be
changed into an ‘is’ statement by predicating it with a normative value such as
‘right’ or ‘good’ of that object or state. However, this should not be seen as a
counter to Hume’s law because it still seems improbable to develop any normative
conclusions from a set of factual statements.
Human Psychology
David Hume believed in the bundle theory of personal identity. This theory suggests
that the mind is not an independent power, rather it is simple a bundle of perceptions
without any sense of unity. To prove his assertion, Hume wants people to think
about what impression gives human beings their concept of self. According to Hume,
humans beings tend to think of themselves as stable individuals who exist over time.
However, Hume argues that no matter how closely humans evaluate their own
experiences, they can never observe anything other than a series of fleeting
sensations, feelings and impressions. Hume argues that it is not possible for individuals
to themselves in a unified manner. There is no imprint of the individual that can help
connect specific impressions. To put it another way, Hume believes that human
beings can never be directly aware of themselves; they can only be aware of what
they are experiencing at a particular moment. Although the relations between an
individuals’ ideas, feelings, and so on, individual may be traced through time by
memory, there is no verifiable proof of any core that joins them together. Positivist
philosophers interpreted Hume’s suggestion to mean that terms such as ‘self’,
‘person’, or ‘mind’ referred to collections of ‘sense-contents’.
1.2.3 Idea of Government and Legitimacy
A significant aspect of Hume’s theories is his concern about the value of the rule of
law. Hume also emphasizes the significance of ‘moderation’ in politics in his Essays.
8 Self-Instructional Material
By moderation, Hume essentially means public spirit and regard to the community. Hume, Bentham and Mill
For Hume, the best governed society is one which has a general and unbiased
system of laws. He has less concern about the type of government that governs
these laws, as long as it does so in an impartial manner. However, his distaste for
absolute monarchy is clear. Hume advices people to only rebel against their NOTES
government in cases of absolutely scandalous tyranny. Hume was also distrustful of
attempts to reform society that did not subscribe to long-established traditions.
Hume suggested what would be the best form of government is his essay
entitled Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth. The essay is based on the consideration
to establish a new type of government that would be ‘the most perfect of all’ since
‘present governments seem to serve the purpose of society, but they are not perfect
and do not work accurately’. According to Hume, an established government,
recommended by antiquity, has a lot of advantages and is for this reason accepted
by people. Although theorists like him respect this, but with their ideas they ‘may
attempt some improvements for the public good’ without changing the very fabric of
government. The thrust of Hume’s argument should be clear; he is no radical looking
to create a new society like Rousseau, rather, he is a reformer looking to make
improvements on the existing set-up. However, his essay should not be seen as a
call for political reform in England either, as he makes clear what he hopes from the
essay is that ‘in some future age, an opportunity might be afforded of reducing the
theory to practice, either by a dissolution of some old government, or by the
combination of men to form a new one, in some distant part of the world’.
According to Hume, the need for government arises because of inherent
human weaknesses. The human weakness that Hume speaks about is the tendency
of human beings to prefer short term goods despite knowing that it is detrimental to
the collective long term interest. Hume states that in a small society, there is no need
for a government as people can get by through voluntary compliance of conventions.
However, as population increases, and productivity increases, so does the availability
of luxurious goods. For Hume, the temptation to acquire such goods results in man
acting unjustly. This creates the need for a government that can uniformly enforce
laws, resolve disputes and administer justice.
To overcome the inherent human weakness of preferring short term goods
instead of long term security, people appoint ‘magistrates’ (Kings, judges, and so on)
who administer society for the greater good. According to Hume, it is possible for
human beings to appoint people to become magistrates despite inherent human
weakness of looking for immediate gain because Hume suggests that this human
weakness only takes into effect when the short-term gain is immediately at hand. In
situations where there are two future goods, Hume believes people generally prefer
the greater good rather than the short-term good.
The allegiance that people have to their government is not dependent on any
divine right of rule or any social contract, but because of the general social value of
having a government. Thus, for Hume, there is no reason for governments to be
selected by the people to be considered legitimate. Any government, monarchical or
otherwise, that looks after the interest of the people and administers the rule of law
justly is legitimate. Any rebellion to change government for petty matters of small
Self-Instructional Material 9
Hume, Bentham and Mill goods would result in anarchy and defeat the very purpose of government, thus the
people’s duty of allegiance to their government forbids this. Rebellions can only be
undertaken if the government is resorted to absolute cruelty and tyranny.
However, as stated above, Hume does say in his other works that some
NOTES forms of governments are more preferable to others. For example, for Hume,
governments structured by laws are better than those ruled by edicts of monarchs,
representative forms of government are better than direct democracy and free
governments are better than absolute governments.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. What is the bundle theory of personal identity?
2. What is Hume’s law?
3. For Hume, what is the best governed society?

1.3 JEREMY BENTHAM

Jeremy Bentham, widely known as the founder of utilitarianism, also played the
multiple roles of a philosopher, a jurist, a social reformer and an activist. A leading
theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, Bentham is to be seen as a political
radical whose ideas paved the way for the development of welfarism. He is most
popularly associated with the concept of utilitarianism, and the panopticon. His position
entailed arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, usury, the separation
of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to
divorce, and the decriminalizing of homosexual acts. He also fought for the abolition
of slavery and the death penalty and for the elimination of physical punishment,
including that of children. Even though he was on the side of extension of individual
legal rights, he opposed the theory of natural law and natural rights. Bentham was
one of the most influential utilitarians, and his ideas were brought to the fore through
his works and that of his students like James Mill, John Austin and Robert Owen.
The list of books penned by him include - An Introduction to the principles
of Morals and Legislation (1789), Anarchical Fallacies (1791), Discourse on
Civils and Penal Legislation (1802), The Limits of Jurisprudence (1802), Indirect
Legislation (1802), A Theory of punishments and Rewards (1811), A treaties on
Judicial Evidence (1813), Papers Upon Codification and Public Instruction
(1817), The Book of Fallacies (1824). He also wrote Rational of Evidence (1827),
which was edited by J. S. Mill. He also had several correspondences with the Indian
thinker Ram Mohan Roy, who was his friend. Ram Mohan supported Bentham’s
negation of the natural right theory and the distinction between law and morals. He
was also appreciative of the principle of utilitarianism. Bentham lived till the age of
84 and died on June 6, 1832.

10 Self-Instructional Material
1.3.1 Utilitarianism Hume, Bentham and Mill

From the middle of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, utilitarianism as a school
of thought dominated English political thinking. Francis Hutcheson, Hume, Helvetius,
William Paley and Cesare Beccaria were some of the early propagators of NOTES
utilitarianism. However, it was Bentham who systematically laid down the theory
and made it popular on the basis of his innumerable proposals for reform. The great
philosopher of the twentieth century Bertrand Russell rightly pointed out that Bentham’s
merit consisted not in the doctrine but in his vigorous application of it to various
practical problems.
Bentham’s close friend James Mill introduced him to the two of the greatest
economists of the time, Malthus and David Ricardo from whom Bentham was able
to learn various concepts of classical economics. These thinkers called themselves
‘Philosophic Radicals’. Their aim was to transform England into a modern, liberal,
democratic, constitutional, secular and market state. The term ‘Utilitarianism’ was
used interchangeably with philosophic radicalism, individualism, laissez faire and
administrative nihilism. The principal assumptions of utilitarianism were that human
beings, as a rule, sought happiness, that pleasure alone was good, and that the only
right action was that which produced the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
The utilitarian thinkers reiterated the ideas of the Greek thinker Epicures. Bentham
provided a scientific approach to the pleasure–pain theory and applied to the policies
of the state, welfare measures and the administrative, penal and legislative reforms.
He provided a psychological perspective on human nature.
In his book, Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation,
Bentham elucidates his theory of utility. The keynote of his principle is that the state
is useful only so long as it caters to the ‘Greatest Happiness of the Greatest
Number’. Bentham aspired to create a complete utilitarian code of law, which he
named ‘Pannomion’. He proposed several legal and social reforms and set forth a
fundamental moral tenet on which the code of law should be based. He stressed
that the right act or policy was that which would cause ‘the greatest good for the
greatest number of people,’ (i.e. the greatest happiness principle or the principle of
utility. He proposed the Hedonistic or felicific calculus, which is a procedure for
estimating the moral status of any action. His utilitarian philosophy was revised and
expanded by his student John Stuart Mill. Mill converted ‘Benthamism’ into a principal
element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives.
Bentham classified 12 pains and 14 pleasures. His felicific calculus tested the
‘happiness factor’ of any action. Using these measurements, he puts forward his
views on the concept of punishment and its utilization—whether it would generate
more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to assess whether
punishment becomes a reason for an even more evil offense. Bentham argues that
the unnecessary laws and punishments might ultimately give rise to new and more
dangerous offences. According to Bentham, legislators should measure the pleasures
and pains related to a law. Then, they should create laws for the greatest good of the
greatest number.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill However, it is said that Bentham’s ‘hedonistic’ theory does not have a tenet
of fairness embodied in the theory of justice. As per Bentham, the law forms the
fundamental framework of social interaction. It delimits the personal arenas of
inviolability within which an individual may create and carry on his own ideas of
NOTES well-being.
In the pleasure and pain theory, Bentham pointed out that human beings are
creatures of feeling and sensibility. Reason is also a handmaiden of feeling or passion.
All experiences are either pleasurable or painful. That action is good which increases
pleasure and decreases pain, whereas, the action which decreases pleasure and
increases pain is bad. The yardstick of judging the goodness or badness of every
individual’s actions is the pleasure–pain theory. Bentham advocated that, ‘nature
has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign master, pain and pleasure.
It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what
we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain
of causes and effects, are fasten to heir thorn. The achievement of pleasure and
avoidance of pain are not only the motivating forces of human behaviour; they also
set the standards of values in life’. According to Bentham, what applies to the
individual’s morals, applies with equal force. For the state, he pointed out that the
action of the state is good, which increases pleasure and decreases the pain of the
largest number of the individuals comprising it. All action must be judged by this
criterion. According to him, if the state promotes the greatest good of the greatest
number it is good, otherwise it is bad. The famous American scholar Professor
George Sabine in his book, History of Political Theory, pointed out that this principle
held to be the only rational guide both to private moral and to public policy.
The real function of jurisprudence is sensorial, that is, the criticism of the
legal system in order to bring about improvement. For such criticism a standard of
value is required, and that can be supplied only by the principle of utility. For Bentham,
only the greatest happiness of the greatest number can be the measure of right and
wrong. Hence, Bentham’s utilitarianism is based on individualism as well as
democracy.
According to Bentham, pleasure and pain can be quantitatively calculated
and measured. Pleasure and pain can also be compared. To measure pleasure and
pain, Bentham advocated the doctrine of felicific calculus. The sum of the interest
of the several members composing it is the interest of the community. In calculating
the greatest happiness, each person is to count for one and not for more than one.
Bentham identified some factors to measure pleasure and pain, which were:
(i) intensity (ii) duration (iii) certainty or uncertainty (iv) nearness or remoteness (v)
purity (vi) which extent (vii) fecundity. The first four factors are clear but the fifth
factor means that pleasure is one which is not likely to be followed by pain. The
sixth factor means the number of persons who are likely to be affected by this
particular pleasure or pain. The seventh factor refers to productivity. Bentham’s
formula of calculation suggests that we should sum up all the values of all the pleasures
on one side and those of all the pains on the other. The balance or surplus of any of
the sides will show whether it is good or bad. By using his felicific calculus, Bentham

12 Self-Instructional Material
appears tried to make ethics and politics appear as exact sciences like physics and Hume, Bentham and Mill
mathematics. In the words of Wayper, the author of Political Thought, ‘The doctrine
of utility is a doctrine of quantitatively conceived hedonism- it can recognize no
distinction between pleasure except a quantitative one’.
Bentham agreed that human beings by nature were hedonistic. Each of their NOTES
actions was motivated by a desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Every human
action had a cause and a motive. He viewed hedonism not only as a principle of
motivation, but also as a principle of actions. Bentham described four sanctions as
sources of pain or pleasure, such as physical sanction, political and legal sanction,
moral or popular sanction and religious sanction. Bentham pointed out that an adult
individual was the best judge of his own happiness, fully capable of pursuing it
without harming the happiness of others. He saw an integral link between the
happiness of an individual and that of the community, and offered the principle of
utility as a yardstick to a legislature to frame laws in order to obtain the overall
happiness and welfare of the community. He repeatedly stressed that a person’s
actions and policies had to be judged by his intention to promote the happiness of the
community. Bentham’s defence of the principles of utility led him to plead a case for
democracy.
1.3.2 Political and Legal Philosophy
Bentham was regarded as the central figure of a group of intellectuals called by Elie
Halévy (1904), ‘the philosophic radicals,’ of which both Mill and Herbert Spencer
can be counted among the ‘spiritual descendants.’ Some of the famous Bentham’s
works are ‘Fragments on Government’ and ‘Introduction to the Principles of
Moral and Legislation’, in which Bentham has propounded his political philosophies
which can be discussed under following heads:
Utilitarian principle
The principle of utility has already been discussed above in detail, however a brief
outline can be reproduced here as it is by far the most important political idea of
Bentham. Bentham was not the originator of this idea. He borrowed it from Priestley
and Hutcheson. But Bentham reformulated the idea and attached such a great
importance to this idea that it became the cornerstone of his philosophical system
and also a watch-word of the political movement of the later eighteenth and early
nineteenth century. The keynote of this principle was that the state is useful only so
long as it caters to the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’. The ‘greatest
happiness’ theory in turn is based on a psychological and hedonistic theory of ‘pleasure
and pain’. Bentham highlighted that action is good which increases pleasure and
decreases pain. The yardstick of judging the goodness or badness of every individual’s
action is the pleasure-pain theory. According to Bentham, what applies to the individual
morals, applies with equal force to the state craft. The grand idea of Bentham is that
pleasure and pain can be quantitatively and arithmetically calculated and measured.
With the help of his philosophical calculus, Bentham has tried to make ethics and
politics as exact sciences like physics and mathematics.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill Views on Political Society
Regarding the origin of the political society, Bentham out rightly rejected the social
contract theory as absurd. He pointed out that there is no justification of children
being bound by the oral or written words of their forefathers. He severely criticized
NOTES
the theory of natural rights. According to him, the basis of the state is the selfish
interest of the individuals. People obey the state as it promotes their selfish interest,
their life and property. The political society has existed and is existing because it is
believed to promote the happiness of the individual who are composed of it. Thus, in
a nutshell, the origin of the state is in the interest, welfare and happiness of an utility
of individuals. It is the principle of utility that binds the individuals together. Utilitarian
concept elaborates state as a group of persons organized for the promotion and
maintenance of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of individuals comprising
it. Bentham’s view of the state is that any corporate body, such as state is evidently
fictitious. Whatever is done in its name is done by someone, and its good, as Bentham
said is the sum of the interest of the several members who compose it.
View on State, Law and Liberty
According to Bentham, the state is a legal entity with the individualism as its ethical
basis. He was categorical that modernization of a state required two things: First, a
broad based and diversified legal system, which would take into account individuals
desires; and second, institutions that would support the legal system, namely
bureaucratization of public service and legislation as a continual process,
accommodating both change and diversity. Bentham preserved the individualist notion
of moral autonomy with priority to individual interest. According to Hume, the Scottish
Philosopher, historian, economist and essayist, ‘Bentham’s theory brought together
in a particular way the two great themes of modern political thought: individualism
and the modern sovereign state’.
Bentham thought of ideas and devises to guarantee governmental protection
of individual interest, namely that public happiness should be the object of public
policy. Government is a trust with legislation as the primary function and the uniformity,
clarity, order and consistency were essential to both law and order. He was equally
conscious of the need for institutional safeguards to ensure that the government
pursued public interest. The government could be changed if people desired it for
the sake of good government. He championed the universal adult franchise and
recommended it to all those who could read the list of voters. Bentham defined a
state as a number of persons are supposed to be in the habit of paying obedience to
a person, or an assemblage of persons, of a known and certain description. Such
persons all together are set to be in a state of political society. Bentham recommended
the abolition of monarchy and the House of Lords, checks on legislative authority,
unicameralism, secret ballot annual elections, equal electoral districts, annual
parliaments and election of the prime minister by the parliament. Bentham viewed
representative government as a solution to the problem. He regarded constitutional
representative democracy as an overall political arrangement safeguarded by
measures like widespread suffrage an elected assembly, frequent elections, freedom

14 Self-Instructional Material
of the press and of associations as a guarantee against misrule. He regarded Hume, Bentham and Mill
constitutional democracy as being relevant to all nations and all governments
possessing liberal opinions.
Bentham pointed out that state was the only source of law. The main purpose
of the state was to frame laws which cater to the greatest happiness of the greatest NOTES
number. According to him, law is the command of the sovereign and as such it is
binding on the subjects. But the individuals obey the law of the state only because it
promotes their interest. In the words of Wayper, ‘because law is a command, it must
be the command of a supreme authority. Indeed it is only when such an authority is
habitually obeyed that Bentham is prepared to admit the existence of civil society.
His state, therefore, is a sovereign state. It is the hallmark of a sovereign state that
nothing it does can be illegal’. Law is the only source of rights for the individuals.
There is no such thing as natural rights. All rights are civil rights. The individuals can
never plead natural law against the state. According to Bentham, natural rights are
simple nonsense. The basis of the political obligation is partly habitual obedience of
the laws of the state by the individuals and partly the calculated self-interest of the
individuals. Though Bentham firmly believed rights cannot be maintained against the
state, yet he justified the opposition to the state if that opposition will produce less
pain then continued obedience. According to Bentham, liberty is not an end in itself.
Happiness is the only ultimate criterion and liberty must submit itself to that criterion.
The end of the state is the maximum happiness and not the maximum liberty. Such
a concept of state can only be a democracy and has to be a representative democracy.
According to Bentham, in a state all men should have equal rights. However, the
concept of equality of rights is not based on any abstract notion of natural law but on
the concrete idea that every individual seeks to pursue his interest to the best of his
mind. All the individuals have equal rights including right of property in the eyes of
law though by nature they may not be equal. Protection of property is a measure of
achieving the greatest happiness. However, he was also convinced that law should
aim at equal distribution of property and removal of gross inequalities. As opposed to
natural rights and natural law, Bentham recognized legal laws and rights that were
enacted and enforced by a duly constituted political authority or the state. He defined
law as the command of the sovereign. He considered the power of sovereign as
indivisible, unlimited, inalienable and permanent.
Bentham defined liberty as absence of restraints and coercion. Fundamental
to his concept of liberty was the idea of security linking his idea of civil and political
liberty. For Bentham, the principle of utility provided the objective moral standard
noticeably different from other theories that supplied purely subjective criteria. Even
though Bentham undermined the sanctity of natural rights formulations, he recognized
the importance of right as being crucial for the security of the individual. He rejected
not only the idea of natural and inviolable right to property but also the idea of
absolute right to property as the government had the right to interfere with property
in order to ensure security. He defended the need for adequate compensation in
case of a violation of the individual’s right to property. For him, property was neither
natural or absolute nor inviolable.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill View on jurisprudence and punishment
One of the most original aspects of Bentham’s political philosophy was in the sphere
of jurisprudence and reforms in criminal law and prison. There was no restriction on
the legislative power of the state, not even in the customs and conventions. The
NOTES
state may take help from customs and establish institutions but they were no checks
on legislative competence of the state. Bentham applied his celebrated distinction
between ‘descriptive’ and ‘sensorial’ jurisprudence, namely what the law ought to
be or whether a particular law was bad or good, to establish the validity of moral
propositions about legal rights. Bentham’s greatest achievement is that he tried to
apply the principle of greatest happiness of the greatest number to all the branches
of law, civil and criminal and to the procedural law and to the organization of the
judicial system. For achieving this end, he suggested numerous reforms in civil and
criminal laws and procedures. He was all out for simplification of the English law
and the international law. As a jurist and legal reformer, he suggested liberal reforms
in antiquated British law and procedure. The whole of the nineteenth century legislation
of England was the result of his endeavors. Bentham suggested ways and means by
which justice could be administered cheaply and expeditiously. He pointed out that
justice delayed was justice denied. He suggested that the acts of the parliament
should be couched in simple and easily understandable language so that the lawyers
may not cheat the public at large. The highly technical, rigid, obscure, capricious and
dilatory legal procedures prevailing in his time were nothing short of a conspiracy on
the part of the legal profession to harass the common man. He suggested that there
should be single-judge courts. He also suggested that judges and other officers of
the court should be paid regular salaries instead of ad hoc fees. He even attacked
the jury system.
As far as the punishment was concerned, he held that penalty is an evil but a
necessary evil. It is an evil as it causes pain but it can be justified only if it either
prevents a greater future evil or repairs an evil already done. Bentham was firmly of
the view that punishment should be commensurate to the crime committed and in no
case it should exceed the damage done. He did not favour death penalty except in
very rare cases. He was also in favour of eliminating other savage penalties from
the British legal system. He suggested numerous reforms in the treatment meted
out to the prisoners. According to him the state should adjust the punishment to the
offence in such a way as to restrain the offender from committing it, or at least from
repeating it. Bentham had given a detailed account of various punishments which
should be meted out in particular circumstances.
1.3.3 The Panopticon
The starting point of Bentham’s political theory was his conviction that there was a
need for extensive reforms in British society and particularly in English law and
judicial procedure. He criticized the existing laws and the machinery and methods of
executing them and proposed details schemes of his own. Sir Henry Maine once
said ‘I do not know a single law reform affected since Bentham’s day which cannot
be traced to his influence’. As earlier stated, Bentham advocated a theory of

16 Self-Instructional Material
punishment. In this connection, he envisaged the construction of a prison which was Hume, Bentham and Mill
named as Panopticon. This model prison was designed by him for the British
Government in the 1790s. Bentham envisioned that the British Government would
buy a piece of land to construct the prison, but to his disappointment the project
could not be materialized. Bentham dreamt of the Panopticon to be the cornerstone NOTES
of utilitarianism. His concept of felicific calculus was to be implemented in this
institution. However, it would be pertinent to mention here that the Panopticon
envisioned by Bentham was more than a mere prison. It was to serve as a model for
any disciplinary institutions. Besides being a jail house, it might include school, hospital,
factory, military barracks etc.
Bentham’s ideas of Panopticon were severely criticized by the French thinker
Michel Foucault. Foucault presented the Panopticon as the quintessence of the
disciplinary apparatus of the bourgeois state. According to Michel Foucault, the
Panopticon represented one central moment in the history of repression - the transition
from the inflicting of penalties to the imposition of surveillance. In his book Power/
Knowledge, Michel Foucault elaborated the prison building in detail. Foucault stated,
‘the prison was a perimeter building in the form of a ring at the centre of it, a tower
pierced by large windows opened on to the inner face of the ring. The outer building
was divide into cells, each of which traverses the whole thickness of the building.
The cells had two windows, one opening on to the inside, facing the windows of the
central tower, the other, outer one allowing day light to pass through the whole cell.
The back lighting enabled one to pick out from the central tower the little captive
silhouettes in the shape of cells. In short, the principle of the dungeon was reversed;
day light and the overseer’s gaze captured the inmate more effectively. The prisoner,
who had no contact with each other feel as if they are under the constant watch of
the guards. There was no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints, just
a gaze. An inspecting gaze which each individual under its weight would end by
interiorizing to the point that his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this
surveillance over, and against, himself’. Bentham recommended this ‘Big Brother’
supervision fourteen hours a day.
Bentham also totally rejected solitary confinement as being abhorrent and
irrelevant in his utilitarian mission to prevent crime. He advocated punishments like
castration for rape. Subsequently, he applied the principle of the Panopticon to poultry,
devising the first battery firm. The Mexican prison ‘Lecumberri’ was designed on
the basis of Bentham’s Panopticon. In 1791, Bentham sent his plans to English
Prime Minister Pitt but the Panopticon, as earlier stated, never really materialized,
forcing Bentham to admit defeat.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

4. For Bentham, what is the only measure of right and wrong?
5. What was Bentham’s view of the social contract theory?
6. According to Bentham, what is the purpose of the state?

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Hume, Bentham and Mill
1.4 JOHN STUART MILL

John Stuart Mill, a great essayist, economist, reformer and one of the greatest political
NOTES thinkers of modern times was born in London on 20th May, 1806. His father James
Mill was also a political philosopher and contemporary of Jeremy Bentham. Mill had
eight younger siblings. James Mill had come from Scotland to London with the
desire to become a writer. He tried journalism and then concentrated on writing
History of British India (1818) which had a great influence on young John Mill.
India influenced the life of John Mill which subsequently determined his career.
After the publication of History of British India, James Mill was appointed as an
assistant examiner at the East India House. It was an important event in his life, as
this solved his financial problem, enabling him to devote his time and attention to
areas of his prime interest: philosophical and political problems. He could also conceive
of a liberal profession for his eldest son, John Stuart Mill. In the beginning, he thought
of a career in law for his son but when another vacancy arose for another assistant
examiner in 1823, John Stuart got the post and served the British government till his
retirement. J. S. Mill was a British philosopher and civil servant. An influential
contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of
liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.
He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham,
although his conception of it was very different from Bentham’s. Hoping to remedy
the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias,
he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific
method. Mill was also a member of the Parliament and an important figure in liberal
political philosophy.
Mill became a strong advocate of women’s rights and for social reforms such
as labour unions and farm cooperatives. In Considerations on Representative
Government, J.S. Mill called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially
proportional representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the extension of
suffrage. He was godfather to Bertrand Russell. He died in 1873 at the age of 67.
By the end of his life, he was the acknowledged philosopher-leader of English
liberalism and in Lord Morley’s words, one of the greatest teachers of his age. In his
thinking, he was greatly influenced by the dialogues and dialectics of Plato and the
cross questioning of Socrates. He had imbibed Bentham’s principle from his father
and from Bentham himself, and he found the principle of utility the key stone of his
beliefs. He outlined in his own words ‘I now had a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy, a
religion, the inculcation and diffusion of which would be made the principal out ward
purpose of my life.’
Harriet Taylor, a wife of a pharmacist and mother of three, supported social
reforms and equal rights for women. Her husband did not support her in her
endeavours and provided little intellectual stimulation for her. In 1830, Harriet Taylor
met John Stuart Mill for the first time at a dinner party in her home. They quickly
recognized their mutual interests and developed affection for each other. She started
helping Mill in editing and writing his articles and books.
18 Self-Instructional Material
 After he met Harriet, Mill was able to create an impression on the intellectual Hume, Bentham and Mill
people of England. In 1831, he wrote The Spirit of the Age, an essay that used
history to show how Britain was going through a transition from feudalism to a new
age. To get rid of Britain’s old feudal aristocracy, Mill wanted to foster an alliance of
the middle and working classes. After his father died in 1836, Mill experienced a NOTES
personal liberation as his father was a dominating man. At 30, he took over his
father’s job at India House. Mill published books on logic and economics that made
him a more important philosopher than his father. In his economics book, Mill criticized
the relentless pursuit of money. He argued that people should give importance to
wealth to achieve higher goal of individual self-development which he called
‘individuality’. Mill wanted more participation of people as business owners in a
free-market economy. For this, Mill suggested that people should pool in their money
to buy out private businesses and operate them as cooperative enterprises and wages
should be paid wages from the profits of the enterprises. Mill was also against
Government central planning, which was supported by most European socialists.
His vision was every man and woman can be a business owner. Mill saw this as a
way to help them achieve self-development and happiness. Today, historians often
classify Mill as a Utopian Socialist. Mill could finally marry Harriet Taylor in 1851
after the death of her husband. Both of them, however, soon suffered from
tuberculosis. Believing he would die, Mill spent more time writing his autobiography.
But Harriet died in 1858 when they were in France, as her tuberculosis was more
severe. Mill buried her there and erected a monument with a long inscription, praising
her.
Her influence on his work appeared to have been smaller than his thought.
She humanized his political economy, and suggested the chapter on The Probable
Futurity of the Laboring Classes. She helped him in writing On Liberty, published
in 1859, the year after her death, and she certainly inspired the book on The
Subjection of Women. The other great influence on the mind of Mill proceeded
from the discussions and deliberations of the Utilitarian Society and Speculative
Debating Society founded by him. The Political Economy Club was also equally
important which functioned under his fostering care. It was here that he began his
public speaking. It was in these societies and clubs that topics pertaining to utility,
logic, political economy, and psychology were discussed with a view to have clear
knowledge about these subjects. He was a prolific writer and he wrote on different
branches of knowledge with equal mastery. His famous works are:
 System of Logic (1843)
 Principles of Political Economy (1848)
 Essay on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy
 On Liberty (1859)
 Considerations on Representative Government (1861)
 Utilitarianism (1865)
 Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1863)
 Subjection of Women (1869).
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Hume, Bentham and Mill An intellectual prodigy, John Stuart who started his education at the tender
age of three enriched the philosophical treasures by his clear understanding and
deep insight into things. He had a reverence for his intellectual age but with a
difference projecting his own personality and ideas in the prevailing theories reduced
NOTES into writings by different pains. He died in 1873 in Evignon, France.
1.4.1 Equal Rights for Women
J.S. Mill applied the principles of liberalism to issues of political and sexual equality
for women. He was as much interested in social reforms as in political speculations.
His sense of justice was stirred early in his life by the social discrimination meted out
to women. In the mid-Victorian period, the condition of the women in the British
society was appalling. Mill argued that women’s submissive nature was the result of
centuries of subjugation and lack of opportunities. This inequality he regarded as
highly unjust. He regarded birth as no basis of excluding women from the rights that
they deserve. According to Mill, no person is deliberately created by nature for a
particular profession. If women, however, differ from men on the grounds of sex,
this distinction should not be made a basis of distinction everywhere. He was eager
to emancipate women and was the first to plead their cause in the parliament. He
believed that if women were given equal opportunities to men, the result would be
beneficial for women, since freedom alone gives happiness and is valuable to the
community in general. He believed that the society would benefit from the
contributions made by the mental capacities and characteristics of women. Higher
education for women would increase opportunities for them and will help open their
talents, and would extend to them the franchise and eligibility to public office.
For Mill, improving the position of women in society by providing them with
suffrage, education and employment opportunities was a stepping stone to progress
and civility. Mill considered the improvement in the position of women as an issue
which concerned the whole of society. In this regard, his work The Subjection of
Women made a strong claim for women’s right to vote and women’s right to equal
opportunities in education and employment. The two themes that is prevalent
throughout the writings of Mill is liberty and self-determination. Mill believed that
freedom was the most spacious and crucial issue for a human’s well-being. In this
context, Mill asserted that women were the subjugated sex who were not given
access to their own potential and were subjected to their unquestioned prejudices
and biases in society. Mill’s main concern was equality as a legal right between the
sexes. He referred to women as both the subject and the enslaved class for he
believed that their position was worse than that of slaves. According to Mill, unlike
slaves, women were in a ‘chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined.’ He
pointed out that the capacity of women was spent in seeking happiness not in their
own lives, but exclusively in winning the favour and affection of the other sex, which
they gained at the cost of their independence. A woman was not free within her
marriage, nor was she free to remain unmarried. He explained how unmarried women
in the 19th century were deprived of avenues for living a good and independent life.
He deplored the lack of freedom of choice for women and contended that equality
should be the ordering principle of societal and personal relationships. He pointed
20 Self-Instructional Material
out that opposition to sexual equality was not based on any reason. Mill asserted that Hume, Bentham and Mill
to dismiss equality of the sexes as a mere theoretical opposition did not lend credibility
to the argument that women were weaker and hence subordinate. He agreed that
the majority of the opinions favoured inequality but this he contended went against
reason. NOTES
According to Mill, the way men dominate women was entirely inappropriate
and altogether based on force. Women also accepted it voluntarily without any
complaint and became consenting parties to their subordination. Men, on their part,
expected not only obedience but also affection from women. This was ensured
through education, training and the socialization process. Women from childhood
were taught to be submissive, yielding and accommodating, rather than being
independent with self-will and self-control. They were taught to live for others, their
husband and children. Selfless devotion was considered to be the best feminine trait,
the glory of womanhood. In the case of a pre-contractual social arrangement, birth
determines ones position and privileges, while the modern society was characterized
by the principle of equality. Individuals enjoyed greater freedom of choice to pursue
their own life and improve their faculties. However, women continued to be denied
of this opportunity, for they were not free to do what they chose to. It seemed
paradoxical that the modern world accepted the general social practice of women’s
equality, but not gender equality. Mill emphatically said that denying women an equal
position only demeaned a man. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, he believed that women
could earn their liberation with the support of men. Both Mill and Wollstonecraft
presented a reasonable critique of male domination within marriage. However, Mill
extended it by pleading for a relationship based on mutual friendship and respect.
He subscribed to the view that by and large human nature and character were
decided by the circumstances in which individuals were found, and unless and until
women were granted freedom, they could not express themselves. The process
itself could take longer, but that could not be the basis for denying women the freedom
and opportunities for their complete development. He believed that women were as
bright and gifted as men, and once granted the same ‘eagerness for fame’, women
would achieve the same success. A judgment regarding the capacities and talent in
women could be made only after generations of women benefited from equal
opportunities through education and employment. He rejected the idea that it was
natural for a women to be a mother and wife, and felt that it was the women who
should be able to decide whether to marry and manage a house or to pursue a
career. He lamented that it was society, however, that decided marriage to be the
ultimate aim of women. He articulated and defended the right of women to be
considered as a free rational being capable of choosing the life they would like for
themselves, rather than being dictated by what the society thought they should be or
do. He was of the opinion that women, even if granted freedom and opportunities,
would not fail to perform their traditional functions. When he was a member of the
British Parliament, he supported a married women’s property bill.
According to Mill, the position of the wife under the common law of Britain
was worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries; by the Roman law, for
example, a slave might have his peculiar status, which, to a certain extent, the law
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Hume, Bentham and Mill guaranteed him his exclusive use. He further pointed out that marriage did not give
women the dignity and equal status that she ought to get. Once married, she was
totally under the control of her husband. She was denied by the law the right to her
children and property. Hence, they must have the rights to property, inheritance and
NOTES custody. He pleaded for the equality of both sexes before the law, for that was
crucial to ensuring a just arrangement. This he felt would be beneficial for all. He
was of the opinion that a marriage contract based on the equality of married persons
before the law was not only a sufficient but also a necessary condition for full and
just equality between the sexes. For Mill, equality was a genuine moral sentiment
that ought to govern all relationships including the marital one. He also acknowledged
the family as the real school of learning the virtues of freedom and liberation, yet it
was there that sentiments of injustice, inequality and despotism were taught. He
desired a transformation of the family to suit the temperament and spirit of the
modern age, namely the spirit of equality and justice, and in the process to bring
about a moral regeneration of humankind. The relationship between a man and a
woman should be based on mutual respect and mutual love, and giving due regard to
one another’s rights. This would make women self-reliant and self-sufficient. Mill
said, unless the equal and just worth of human beings was recognized, they could not
enjoy equal rights and could not realize their full potential as well. A life of rational
freedom devoted to the release of their full creative potential was as much a
requirement for a man as for a woman. In spite of his insistence on the need to
restructure family relationships based on equity and fairness, he continued to pursue
the family as one where a man earns for the family and a woman takes care of
domestic affairs. He was convinced that if suitable domestic help was made possible,
then a women, and in particular the talented and exceptional ones, could take up a
profession or a vocation. Like Wollstonecraft and Fuller, he argued that ‘the dignity
of a woman was guaranteed if she had the power of earning her own living’. A
married woman would have full right in her property and earning. She would have
the right to enter a profession or take up a career. According to him, women were
fully capable of becoming business partners, philosophers, politicians and scientists.
Mill said both the law and the custom prohibited women from seeking any
means of livelihood, other than being a mother and a wife. Besides equal opportunity
for women in education and property, he also pleaded for political rights to vote and
to participate in the government as administrators and rulers. In his book, The
Representative Government, he commented that the difference of sex could not be
the basis of political rights. He desired that the subjection of women be ended not
only by the law, but also by education, opinion, habits and finally a change in the
family life itself. In his book, Principles, he observed the need to open industrial
occupations for both sexes.
After On Liberty was published in 1859 Mill turned his attention towards
reforms in the political sphere. It could be stated that many of his political opinions
were contradictory in nature. Although Mill was a strong supporter of giving voting
rights to all, especially women, he advocated a contentious voting system. Rather
than universal adult franchise, Mill wanted a voting system where people with an
education had more voting power than those who did not. Moreover, Mill was not a
supporter of the public schooling system believing that such a system would enforce
22 Self-Instructional Material
social conformity. At the same time he supported government subsidies to parents Hume, Bentham and Mill
who could not afford schooling for their children. Mill was also an opponent of
slavery, something that Britain had abolished in 1833, and was sympathetic to the
American North in the American Civil War. When the American Civil War was
raging, Mill wrote that if the American South won then this ‘would be a victory of NOTES
the powers of evil, which would give courage to the enemies of progress’.
Mill contested and won a seat in the British Parliament in 1865 on a Liberal
Party ticket. He used his Parliamentary position as a platform to give voice to his
opinions on social and political reform, especially on issues relating to women. As a
parliamentarian Mill helped found the first women’s suffrage society in Britain in
1867. Many of Mill’s speeches in parliament on issues were many years ahead of
his time. He had become a parliamentarian on the condition that he would vote
according to his conscience, unfortunately, he was defeated for re-election in 1868
after serving only one term.
The same year that Mill left the British parliament, he published perhaps his
most famous work - The Subjection of Women. The pamphlet in detail delineates
Mill’s argument for equality for men and women in society. In it Mill stressed that
both women and men should have the same rights to develop their individuality. This
entailed both men and women having equal rights to their own property, earn a
college education, choose any occupation, and participate fully in politics. Mill’s
position on the rights of women Mill was sharply different from his father. Mill Sr.
believed that women should not have a right to vote since their husbands represented
them when they voted. J.S. Mill, on the other hand, stated that a wife’s interests are
often different from those of her husband, and thus she should have an equal right to
vote.
The Subjection of Women and many other works that preceded it galvanized
society and played a huge part in breaking patriarchal mindsets and forcing the male
dominated society to finally give in to the demand of women’s suffrage. This finally
occurred in 1918, long after Mill had died.
1.4.2 Individual Liberty
Mill’s Essay on Liberty is one of the finest discourses on the definition of freedom
in general and freedom of thought and expression in particular. He was an ardent
champion of liberty. According to him, free discussion alone can nourish fruitful
ideas. He pointed out that not even the whole of humankind can coerce even a
single dissentient into accepting the majority’s view point as nobody knows that
majority views may be incorrect. He said the truth will certainly come out of free
discussions, but if somebody’s views are suppressed, then not only the truth will
never come out, but also that particular individual’s development will be retarded.
There cannot be any self-realization or self-development of individuals without liberty.
He passionately advocated the right of the individual to freedom. In its negative
sense, it meant that the society has no right to coerce an unwilling individual, except
for self-defence. In his words, ‘It is being left to one self: all restraints qua restrains
are an evil.’ In its positive sense, it meant the grant of freedom for the pursuit of the
individual’s creative impulses and energies and for self-development. If there is a
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Hume, Bentham and Mill clash between the opinion of the individual and that of the community, it is the
individual who is the ultimate judge, unless the community could convince without
resorting to threat and coercion. Mill’s ideas on liberty had a direct relationship with
his theories of utility or happiness. He regarded liberty as a necessary means for the
NOTES development of individuality which will become the ultimate source of happiness.
There was only one road for him to take and that was the road of higher utility. He
has done a distinction between higher and lower utility which may better be
understood, respectively, as conducting to the good of the society and the good of
individuals. He was keen to do good for the society and for individuals as well.
Happiness, for Mill, is the ability of individuals to discover their innate powers and
develop these while exercising their human abilities of autonomous thought and
action. Happiness thus meant liberty and individuality. Liberty is regarded as a
fundamental prerequisite for leading a good, worthy and dignified life. J. Gray says,
‘The contention of the Essay on Liberty is that happiness so conceived is best
achieved in a free society governed by the principle of liberty.’
Mill insisted on the liberty of thought and expression as well as the liberty of
conduct. He defended the liberty of thought and expression on two important grounds.
In the first place, he argued that it is useful to the society. He asserted that rational
knowledge is the basis of social welfare, and the only way of confirming the
correctness of the knowledge is to submit all ideas, old and new, to the test of free
discussion and debate. In the second place, he advocated the liberty of thought and
expression on the grounds of human dignity. On the liberty of conduct, he took
another line of argument. He drew a distinction between two types of actions of a
man: ‘self-regarding actions’ and ‘other-regarding actions’. He advocated complete
freedom of conduct for the individual in all matters not affecting the community, i.e.
in the case of ‘self-regarding actions’. However, in the case of ‘other-regarding
actions’, i.e. in matters that do affect the community, Mill conceded the right of the
community to coerce the individual if his conduct is prejudicial to its welfare. In this
way, he defended complete freedom of conduct for the individual unless it adversely
affects the community. But the state could also interfere in the self-regarding action
if it is thought to be very injurious for an individual. He wrote in his Essay on
Liberty, ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.’
Mill defended the right of individuality, which means the right of choice. He
explained that as far as self-regarding actions are concerned, coercion would be
detrimental to self-development. First, the evils of coercion far outweighed the good
achieved. Second, individuals are so diverse in the needs and capacities for happiness
that coercion would be futile. Since individuals are the best judge of their own interest,
they possess the information and the incentives to achieve them. Third, since diversity
is in itself good, other things being equal, it should be encouraged. Finally, freedom is
the most important requirement in the life of a rational person. He contended that
positive liberty, i.e., autonomy and self-mastery, is inherently desirable and it is possible
if individuals are allowed to develop their own talents and invent their own lifestyles,
i.e. a great deal of negative liberty. Hence, he made a strong case for negative
liberty, and the liberal state and liberal society are essential prerequisites.
24 Self-Instructional Material
 Mill had no doubt about the utility of absolute liberty of thought and expression. Hume, Bentham and Mill
He does not recognize any limitation of any kind whatsoever on the right of free
discussion of individuals. According to him, no society in which these liberties are
not on the whole respected is free, whatever be its form of government. He was not
only concerned with the advocacy of thought and discussion, but also with the NOTES
development of the individuality of men and women in the community. The freedom
of thought and discussion is not the only theme of his liberty. He wanted to promote
the development of individual men and women because he was convinced that all
wise and noble things come and must come from individuals. In his opinion, there
can be no self-development without liberty. It is this connection between liberty and
self-development which interested him even though he went on to argue that liberty
is also necessary for the happiness of society.
Mill justified restricted interference because of his inherent distrust of authority,
and especially of democratically controlled authority. His contention was that
individuals in democracy are swamped in general. Democracy prevents them from
developing their individuality. From the arguments of Mill and his definitions of liberty,
it became very clear that he was a reluctant democrat and all the more a prophet of
empty liberty. Mill stated that ‘liberty consists in what one desires. You would be
justified in preventing a man crossing a bridge that you know to be unsafe. Liberty
consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river.’ He
had gone far in admitting the extreme idealist contention that one can be forced to
be free. C.L. Wayper in his book Political Thought elaborates that Bentham must
have gyrated in his grave much faster than ever he did from room to room at the
thought that his favourite follower could ever contemplate such a non-utilitarian
position. Another writer Davidson commenting on Mill’s freedom of action writes
that his freedom of action or conduct is admirable and his working-out of the theme
is skillfully done. But there are certain points that lead themselves to criticism. First,
in his argument he identified individual energy with ‘genius’ or originality. However,
he forgot that this energy may be mere eccentricity rather than encouragement.
Second, he did not sufficiently recognize that whereas men’s desires and impulses
are indispensable to the development of their nature, they are not a sure guide to the
proper outlet for their activities.
Mill regarded the liberty of conscience, liberty to express and publish one’s
opinion, liberty to live as one pleases and the freedom of association essential for a
meaningful life and for the pursuit of one’s own good. His defence of the freedom of
thought and expression was one of the most powerful and eloquent expositions in
the western intellectual tradition. In his words, ‘If all humankind minus one were of
one opinion, humankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, then
he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing humankind.’
The early liberals defended liberty for the sake of an efficient government,
whereas for Mill, liberty is good in itself, for it helps in the development of a humane,
civilized, and a moral person. It is beneficial both to the society that permits them
and to the individual who enjoys that. He accepted the observation of Tocqueville
that the modern industrial societies were becoming more egalitarian and socially
conformist, thereby threatening individuality and creativity. He was fearful, ‘Lest
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Hume, Bentham and Mill the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of public opinion
should impose on humankind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice.’
According to Mill, the singular threat to an individual’s liberty was from the
tyranny of the majority in their quest for extreme egalitarianism and social conformity.
NOTES This made him realize the inadequacy of early liberalism. He pointed out that in the
area of thought and discussion the active and inquiring mind had become morally
timid, for it concealed the true opinion when discussed in public. He further said,
‘Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no public, but induces men to
disguise them, or to an extent from any active effort for their diffusion.’
For Mill, individuality means the power or capacity for critical inquiry and
responsible thought. It meant self-development and the expression of free will. He
stressed absolute liberty of conscience, belief and expression for they were crucial
to human progress. He offered two arguments for the liberty of expression in the
liberty of truth: (i) the dissenting opinion could be true and its suppression would rub
humankind of useful knowledge; (ii) even if the opinion was false, it would strengthen
the correct view by challenging it.
Mill applied the principle of liberty to mature individuals and excluded children,
invalids, the mentally handicapped and barbarian societies in which the race itself
was considered in its ‘nonage’. Liberty could be withheld where individuals were
not educated. He considered liberty as belonging to higher and advanced civilizations,
and prescribed despotism or paternalism with severe restrictions in the case of
lower ones. He also cautioned against sacrifice or infringement of liberty for the
sake of making a state strong.
The political theorist Isaiah Berlin is of the opinion that it is generally believed
that Mill’s Essay on Liberty was essentially written with the purpose of defending
the idea of negative liberty. It is true that Mill advanced a notion of positive liberty
but he valued choice and individuality as ends in themselves, and not because they
promoted general happiness. He did not propose a single overarching principle or
values which normally accompanied theories of positive liberty. The theme on liberty
was not the absence of restraints but the denial of individual autonomy by the coercion
exercised by moral majority and/or an intrusive public opinion. It is criticized that
Mill’s linkage between individuality and liberty made him conclude that only a minority
were in a position to enjoy freedom. The majority of the people remained enslaved
in customs, and hence unfree. However, in spite of his elitism, he remained an
uncompromising liberal for he ruled out paternalism, the idea that the law and society
could intervene in order to do good to the individual. He explicitly ruled out interference
in self-regarding actions. Mill stated that the right to liberty could be sacrificed only
for some ‘other right’, a point that has been reiterated by American philosopher
John Rawls. However, Mill tried to analyse and establish a relationship between
freedom and responsibility. It is also argued that Mill failed to specify the proper
limits of legislation, and was unclear when it came to actual cases. For instance, he
supported compulsory education, regulations of business and industry in the interest
of public welfare and good, but regarded prohibition as an intrusion on liberty. The
British political theorist Ernest Barker has criticized Mill as the ‘prophet of an empty

26 Self-Instructional Material
liberty and an abstract individual.’ This observation flowed from the interpretation Hume, Bentham and Mill
that the absolutist statements on liberty like the rights of one individual against the
rest were not substantiated when one accessed Mill’s writings in their totality.
For Mill, the sole end for which humankind is allowed, individually or
collectively, to interfere with the liberty of action of any of their number is self- NOTES
protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over
any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully
be compelled to do or forbear because it will make him happier, because, in the
opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. The only part of the conduct
of anyone, for which they are amenable to the society, is that which concerns others.
In the part which merely concerns them, their independence is absolute. Over himself,
and over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
Controversially by today’s standards, in On Liberty, Mill also argued that in
‘backward’ societies a despotic government is tolerable as long as the despot has
the best interests of the people at heart because of the barriers to spontaneous
progress. Mill’s principles in On Liberty seem to be clear. However, there are
certain complications. For example, Mill’s definition of ‘harm’ includes both acts of
omission as well as acts of commission. Thus, for Mill, not saving a drowning child
or not paying taxes are harmful acts of omission that need to be regulated. On the
other hand, it does not count as harming someone if— without force or fraud—the
affected individual consents to assume the risk. Therefore, it is acceptable according
to Mill’s standards to offer unsafe employment to others provided that this is done
without fraud and deceit. While reading Mill’s arguments in On Liberty it is important
to keep in mind that Mill was a product of his time and also that his arguments are
based on the principle of utility and not on appeals to natural rights.
Mill in On Liberty also delineates an impassioned defence of free speech.
For Mill, free speech is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress.
According to Mill, ‘We can never be sure that a silenced opinion does not contain
some element of the truth’. He also suggests that the airing of false or uninformed
opinions is productive for two reasons. Firstly, he states that an open and frank
exchange of ideas will result in people abandoning incorrect beliefs. Secondly, Mill
argues that debate forces people to examine and affirm their own opinions and thus
prevents these beliefs from declining into mere dogma. In Mill’s view, it is simply not
good enough if one believes in something that happens to be true; one must also
know why the belief in question is true.
Mill believed that people should have the right to have a say in the government’s
decisions. For Mill then social liberty meant limiting the power of rulers so that they
may not be able to use power based on whims and thereby bring harm to society.
Mill wrote that social liberty is, ‘the nature and limits of the power which can be
legitimately exercised by society over the individual’. Mill believed that to bring
about this social liberty one needed the recognition of certain immunities, called
political liberties or rights and also by establishing a system which had ‘constitutional
checks’.

Self-Instructional Material 27
Hume, Bentham and Mill The limiting of a government’s power is not enough for Mill. Mill believed
that a society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates
instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it
results in a social tyranny more fearsome than many kinds of political oppression.
NOTES Mill co-wrote On Liberty with Harriet Taylor; the work was published a year
after Harriet’s death and is dedicated to her. On Liberty begins with Mill’s assertion
that democratic nations like the United States would replace absolute monarchies of
the past. However, Mill goes on to examine a new problem that would arise with
people being control of their governments. Deeply influenced by the works of Alexis
de Tocqueville, especially his Democracy in America, Mill fears that will of the
people in democracies would result in the ‘will of the majority’. Mill believed that a
tyranny of the majority is a huge threat to individual liberty and self-development if
the majority started acting to oppress minority viewpoints and lifestyles. To overcome
this threat, Mill proposed what philosophers today call ‘harm principle’. Mill’s harm
principle stated that, ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others.’ This principle of Mill negates the tyranny of the majority and thus would
block democratic majorities from interfering with the liberty of any adult unless that
person threatened harm to others.
In On Liberty Mill identified various types of liberties. They are enumerated
below:
 Liberty of conscience
 Liberty of thought and feeling
 Absolute freedom of opinion
 Liberty of expressing and publishing opinions (freedom of speech and
press)
 Freedom to unite, for any purpose (freedom of assembly)
 Liberty of making the plan of our life to suit our own character, of doing
what we like, even if this appeared to be foolish, perverse, or wrong
Mill stressed that a society that does not have such liberties is not really free.
According to Mill, ‘The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing
our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.’ Mill argued that truth is found through the
‘collision of adverse opinions’. He further wrote, ‘He who knows only his side of
the case, knows little of that.’ When people listen only to one viewpoint, he explained,
‘errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by
being exaggerated into falsehood’. At the same time, Mill believed that there needed
to be limits on individual liberty so as to prevent harm to others. To explain his point
Mill provided the example of an ‘excited mob’ outside the house of a grain dealer
who are shouting that the grain dealer is starving the poor. Mill believed that in such
situations the police are justified in arresting those who might incite violence among
the crowd.

28 Self-Instructional Material
 Mill was also against the censoring of newspaper articles by the government. Hume, Bentham and Mill
In Mill’s view, ‘an atmosphere of freedom’ was essential to make sure that all
citizens of a nation had the opportunity to develop their own individuality. Condemning
the conformist nature of British society, Mill supported original thinkers and non-
conformists who experimented with different lifestyles, thus preventing human life NOTES
from becoming a ‘stagnant pool’. Mill declared that the purpose of government was
only to provide the necessary conditions so that people could achieve the higher
objective of self-development. He cites the example of the prohibition of gambling
and also the harassment of Mormons to prove that the government is wrong in
stamping out certain lifestyles and behavior. On the other hand in On Liberty Mill
also argued for not permitting people from getting married if they could not afford to
have children. He declared, ‘To have a child without a fair prospect of being able
not only to provide food for their body, but also to nurture their mind is a moral crime
both against the unfortunate offspring and against the society.’ From the moment it
was published On Liberty was criticized from all quarters. Some said that the work
promoted anarchy and godlessness, other’s critiqued Mill’s notion of ‘harm’ and
questioned his assumption that people actually wanted to pursue self-development.
Mill himself stated that On Liberty was ‘likely to survive longer than anything else
that I have written’. Mill’s prophecy proved to be accurate in On Liberty which
remains one of his most popular works.
1.4.3 Representative Government
While in his Essays on Liberty, Mill’s main concern was his passion for freedom of
thought and expression, in the treatise Representative Government, Mill’s concern
is institutional reforms in the government so as to make it more representative and
responsible. In Representative Government Mill asserts that progress requires
representative democracy as only representative democracy can permit the full
development of the faculties of its citizens. For Mill representative democracy
promotes virtue, intelligence and excellence. He strongly believed that interactions
between individuals in a democracy ensure that only the best and the wisest leaders
emerge. Representative democracy for Mill encourages free discussion which is
necessary for the emergence of the truth. According to Mill, representative
democracy should be judged on the basis of how far it ‘promotes good management
of the affairs of the society by means of the existing faculties, moral intellectual and
activity of its various members and by improving those faculties’. Unlike Bentham,
Mill has assigned some positive reaction of the state. He wants the state to have a
positive role in the sphere of education, factory law, economic life, etc. In order to
perform its duties well and exercise its power within the limits, every state must
have a constitution. Of course, in those countries which have no written constitution,
the conventions or customs prescribe the limits of the powers of the government.
However, Mill argued there will always be a single repository of ultimate power,
whether by a constitutional prescription or by an unwritten custom.
According to Andrew Hacker, Mill tried to reconcile the principle of political
equality with individual freedom. Mill asserted that all citizens regardless of their
status were equal and that only popular sovereignty could give legitimacy to the
Self-Instructional Material 29
Hume, Bentham and Mill government. Democracy was good because it made people happier and better. Mill
had identified several conditions for the representative government. First, such a
government could only function with citizens who were of an ‘active self-acting
character’. They must be willing to accept it. The passive citizens in backward
NOTES civilizations would hardly be able to run a representative democracy. Second, they
must be willing and able to do what is necessary to keep it functional. Third, the
citizens must be willing and able to do what it requires from them to enable it to fulfil
its purpose. Mill was an advocate for liberal democracy where the powers of legally
elected majorities were limited by the protection of individual rights against majorities.
Mill pleaded for balancing the numerical majority in a democracy by adjusting
franchise. For Mill, it was only through political participation that a citizen’s intellectual
qualities of reason and judgment are developed. Therefore, people had to be free to
be able to participate in the government of their country, the management of their
work place and to act as bulwarks against the autocracy of modern-day bureaucracy.
This feeling of belonging to a community could only come about if all were granted
the right to vote. At the same time Mill worried about the consequences that granting
universal adult franchise would entailed, namely the trampling of wise and educated
minorities by the mass of people. He prescribed compulsory elementary education
for that would make citizens wise, competent and independent judges. Mill always
emphasized that representative democracy was only possible in a state that was
small and homogeneous. Mill also advocated for open ballot for voting. According to
Mill, voting was a public trust which ‘should be performed under the eye and the
criticism of the public.’
Mill also prescribed some conditions for voting. He favoured registration tests
to assess performances, universal education for all children and plurality of votes to
the better educated in order to balance the lack of voting rights to the uneducated.
His idea of representative democracy also entailed the disqualification of three other
categories of dependence:
 Those who were unable to pay local taxes
 Those who were dependent on public welfare, would be excluded for five
years from the last day of receipt
 Those who were legal bankrupts and moral deviants like habitual drunkards
Mill, however, wanted equal voting rights for people irrespective of their gender
or skin colour.
Mill also gave his views on the best form of government. According to Mill,
the best form of government is the representative government. A despotic government
however benevolent can never be a good government as its subjects suffer in their
intellectual, moral and political capacities. There is no such thing as a good despotism.
An ideal representative government must safeguard the aggregate interest of the
society as a whole. The representative government must be supported by any active
and critical body of citizens. The government should not be the representative of a
minority but of the entire community. The representative body should represent all
classes. According to Mill, the first element of a good government was the virtue
and intelligence of the human beings composing the community, and it is the foremost
30 Self-Instructional Material
duty of the state to foster these elements in the members of the community. He Hume, Bentham and Mill
argues that the sovereign power of the state should reside in the organ of the
government which is representative of the people. He was in favour of a
representative government, but it does not mean that the representative government
could be uniformly applied to all people. This government should be adopted by NOTES
people who are sufficiently advanced and trained in self-government.
According to J.S. Mill, people may be unwilling or unable to fulfil the duties
which a particular form of government requires from them. Rude people, though in
some degree alive to the benefits of a civilized society, may be unable to practise the
forbearance which it demands: their passions may be too violent, or their personal
pride too exacting, to forego private conflicts and leave to the law the avenging of
their real or supposed wrongs. In such a case, a civilized government, to be really
advantageous to them, requires to be despotic to a considerable degree: to be one
over which they do not themselves exercise control, and which imposes a great
amount of forcible restraint upon their actions. Again, people who do not cooperate
actively with the law and the public authorities in the repression of evil doers must
be considered unfit for more than limited and qualified freedom; who are more
disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend; who perjure themselves to screen
those who has robbed them, rather than taking trouble or exposing themselves to
vindictiveness by showing evidence against them; and who revolt an execution but
are not shocked at an assassination, believe that the public authorities should be
armed with much sterner powers of repression as the first indispensable requisites
of civilized life have nothing else to rest on. These deplorable states of feeling in any
person is when that person has experienced a savage life which is a consequence of
a previous bad government that has taught them to regard the law to have been
made for other ends than for their good and its administrators to be their worse
enemies than those who openly violate it. However, little blame may be given to
those in whom these habits have developed and these habits may be ultimately
conquerable by a better government. People disposed to such habits cannot be
governed as people whose sympathies are on the side of the law and are willing to
give active assistance in its enforcement. Again, representative institutions are of
little value and may be an instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when general electors
are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote or if they
vote at all, they do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds but sell them for
money or vote as told by others who have control over them. Popular election thus
practiced is an additional wheel in its machinery. Besides these moral hindrances,
mechanical difficulties are an impediment to government. In the ancient world, though
there might be, and often were, great individuals or local independence, there could
be nothing like a regulated popular government because physical conditions for the
formation and propagation of a public opinion did not exist. It is a quality in which
different nations, and different stages of civilization, substantially differ from one
another. The capability of any individual of fulfilling the conditions of a given form of
government cannot be pronounced by any sweeping rule. Knowledge of particular
people, and general practical judgment and sagacity, must be the guides. There is
also another consideration not to lose sight of. People may be unprepared for good

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Hume, Bentham and Mill institutions, but to kindle a desire for them is a necessary part of the preparation. To
recommend and advocate a particular institution or form of government, and set its
advantages in the strongest light, is one of the modes, often the only mode within the
reach of educating the mind of the nation not only for accepting or claiming, but also
NOTES for running the institution.
It is a quality in which different nations, and different stages of civilization,
substantially differ from one another. The capability of any individual of fulfilling the
conditions of a given form of government cannot be pronounced by any sweeping
rule. Knowledge of particular people, and general practical judgment and sagacity,
must be the guides. There is also another consideration not to lose sight of. People
may be unprepared for good institutions, but to kindle a desire for them is a necessary
part of the preparation. To recommend and advocate a particular institution or form
of government, and set its advantages in the strongest light, is one of the modes,
often the only mode within the reach of educating the mind of the nation not only for
accepting or claiming, but also for running the institution.
This mode of stating the problem gives less help to its investigation and does
not even bring the whole question into view as the proper functions of a government
are not fixed and it varies from state to state in a society which is much more
extensive in backward states than in advanced ones. The character of a government
or the set of political institutions cannot be estimated sufficiently.
A government is said to preserve its orders if it succeeds in getting itself
obeyed. There are different degrees of obedience and every degree is not
commendable. Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen
shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority. Orders, thus
understood, express, without any doubt, an indispensable attribute of the government.
Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed cannot be said to be governing.
Although a necessary condition, this is not the objective of the government. That it
should make itself obeyed is a requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other
purpose.
The first element of a good government, therefore, being the virtue and
intelligence of the human beings composing the community. The most important
point of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the
virtue and intelligence of the people themselves. The first question in respect of any
political institutions is how far they tend to foster in the members of the community
the various desirable qualities: moral and intellectual, or rather moral, intellectual and
activeness. The government that does this the best has the likelihood of being the
best in all other respects, since it is on these qualities, so far as they exist in the
people, that all possibility of goodness in the practical operations of the government
depends. The goodness of a government is measured by the degree by which it
tends to increase the sum of good qualities in the governed, collectively and individually;
since besides that their well-being is the sole objective of the government, their good
qualities supply the moving force which makes the machinery work. The study on
Mill’s ideas of a representative government reveals that he was a reluctant and
distrustful democrat.

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 Hume, Bentham and Mill

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

7. What was Mill’s purpose in writing The Spirit of the Age?
8. According to Mill, what was the reason for women’s submissive nature? NOTES
9. What were the two grounds on which Mill defended liberty of thought
and expression?
10. According to Mill, what is the best form of government?

1.5 SUMMARY

 David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist and historian famous for
his radical empiricism and skepticism. His theories is associated with the
philosophy of John Locke.
 Hume’s major work was A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1739.
The work thoroughly examined the psychological nature of man. In the work,
Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas stating that humans have
knowledge only of things which they have directly experienced or observed.
 The most significant aspect of David Hume’s writings is his ideas on the
problems of induction.
 In the 18th century, philosophers and political theorists established their
arguments through two approaches, i.e., through induction or deduction.
 In the deductive method of reasoning, one proceeds from more general
propositions to equally general or less general propositions.
 When one proceeds from a particular to a general conclusion or from a less
general proposition to a more general proposition, the method is called
inductive.
 In philosophy and political theory, facts are usually used for making propositions
which can be verified as either true or false. On the other hand, values are
used for normative prescriptions; to evaluate whether actions are right or
wrong.
 According to David Hume, in philosophical or political arguments ‘is’
statements do not follow from ‘ought’ statements. To put it another way,
Hume believed that human beings are unable to ground normative arguments
in positive arguments.
 Hume suggested what would be the best form of government is his essay
entitled Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.
 According to Hume, the need for government arises because of inherent
human weaknesses. The human weakness that Hume speaks about is the
tendency of human beings to prefer short term goods despite knowing that it
is detrimental to the collective long term interest.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill  Jeremy Bentham, widely regarded as the founder of utilitarianism, combined
throughout his active life the career of a philosopher, a jurist and a social
reformer and an activist.
 Utilitarianism or the principle of utility presents a moral test for the rightness
NOTES of actions, on the basis of the pleasure or pain they create.
 In his book, Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation,
Bentham elucidates his theory of utility. The keynote of his principle is that
the state is useful only so long as it caters to the ‘Greatest Happiness of the
Greatest Number’.
 According to Bentham, pleasure and pain can be quantitatively calculated
and measured. Pleasure and pain can also be compared. To measure pleasure
and pain, Bentham advocated the doctrine of felicific calculus.
 Bentham identified some factors to measure pleasure and pain, which were:
(i) intensity (ii) duration (iii) certainty or uncertainty (iv) nearness or remoteness
(v) purity (vi) which extent (vii) fecundity.
 According to Bentham, the state is a legal entity with the individualism as its
ethical basis. He was categorical that modernization of a state required two
things: First, a broad based and diversified legal system, which would take
into account individuals desires; and second, institutions that would support
the legal system, namely bureaucratization of public service and legislation as
a continual process, accommodating both change and diversity.
 Bentham defined liberty as absence of restraints and coercion. Fundamental
to his concept of liberty was the idea of security linking his idea of civil and
political liberty.
 One of the most original aspects of Bentham’s political philosophy was in the
sphere of jurisprudence and reforms in criminal law and prison.
 Bentham applied his celebrated distinction between ‘descriptive’ and ‘sensorial’
jurisprudence, namely what the law ought to be or whether a particular law
was bad or good, to establish the validity of moral propositions about legal
rights.
 Bentham’s greatest achievement is that he tried to apply the principle of
greatest happiness of the greatest number to all the branches of law, civil and
criminal and to the procedural law and to the organization of the judicial
system.
 Bentham advocated a theory of punishment. In this connection, he envisaged
the construction of a prison which was named as Panopticon.
 J.S. Mill is one of the greatest liberals and individualists in the history of
political thought. The state, according to him, exists for the individual and not
the individual for the state.
 J.S. Mill is one of the greatest and most enlightened champions of individualism
and individual liberty, and ranks with Milton, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine and

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 Jefferson. He observed that the existence of a state depends on the all round Hume, Bentham and Mill
development of its individuals.
 J.S. Mill’s contribution remains unparalleled in history so far his recognition
of the value of human personality and his insistence on the development of a
full individual as the goal of the government is concerned. NOTES
 J.S. Mill is also regarded as one of the true and the most efficient democrats
that the world has ever produced. He not only advocated the cause of
democracy, but also made aware of the dangers of the excesses and misuse
of democracy. According to him, the ultimate political sovereignty should lie
with the people.
 J.S. Mill’s advocacy of rights and freedom for women also deserves utmost
appreciation. He was a bold advocate of the enfranchisement of women. He
earnestly thought for the rights of women. He championed the cause of their
emancipation in both public and private life.
 There is no denying the fact that J.S. Mill was a great man and a great
political thinker. His contribution to the growth of political thought is really
remarkable. Mill through his writings gave a new direction to the utilitarian
tenets so as to enable them to be acceptable in the high political and intellectual
circles in particular and the masses in general.
 The world will always remember him for his advocacy of the emancipation
of women and their suffrage, liberalism, individualism, classic advocacy of
liberty, cautious approach towards democracy and realization of the possible
tyranny of the majority rule.
 Today, most consider that J.S. Mill was Britain’s greatest philosopher of the
19th century.
 J.S. Mill was also one of the last major thinkers to write on nearly every
philosophical topic, ranging from logic to religion. His far-sighted views on
democracy, individual liberty and equality for women make him the most
relevant in the contemporary world.

1.6 KEY TERMS

 Individual liberty: It defines the state of being free to enjoy various social,
political or economic rights, free from any government control or restraints in
the exercise of those rights. It forms the core of democracy.
 Good governance: It defines a form of governance where public institutions
conduct public affairs and manage public resources in a way to guarantee the
realization of human rights.
 Subjugation: It defines the state of gaining control over somebody or
something.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill  Representative government: A form of government which is elected by
the people; in such a form of government, only those who are the elected
representatives have the power to make laws and institute taxes.
 Utilitarianism: An ethical theory which states that the right course of action
NOTES is the one that maximizes the overall ‘good’ consequences of the action; it
thus promotes that the moral worth of an action is determined by its resulting
outcome.
 Panopticon: A circular prison with cells arranged around a central well,
from which prisoners could at all times be observed.
 Nihilism: The rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief
that life is meaningless.
 Hedonism: The ethical theory that pleasure is the highest good and proper
aim of human life.
 Felicific Calculus: The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by
utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount
of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause.

1.7 ANSWERS TO ‘CHECK YOUR PROGRESS’

1. The bundle theory of personal identity. This theory suggests that the mind is
not an independent power, rather it is simple a bundle of perceptions without
any sense of unity.
2. The point of view that ‘ought’ statements cannot be logically inferred from
‘is’ statements has become known as Hume’s law.
3. For Hume, the best governed society is one which has a general and unbiased
system of laws.
4. For Bentham, only the greatest happiness of the greatest number can be the
measure of right and wrong.
5. Regarding the origin of the political society, Bentham out rightly rejected the
social contract theory as absurd. He pointed out that there is no justification
of children being bound by the oral or written words of their forefathers.
6. For Bentham, the main purpose of the state was to frame laws which cater to
the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
7. In 1831, he wrote The Spirit of the Age, an essay that used history to show
how Britain was going through a transition from feudalism to a new age.
8. Mill argued that women’s submissive nature was the result of centuries of
subjugation and lack of opportunities.
9. Mill defended the liberty of thought and expression on two important grounds.
In the first place, he argued that it is useful to the society. He asserted that

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 rational knowledge is the basis of social welfare, and the only way of confirming Hume, Bentham and Mill
the correctness of the knowledge is to submit all ideas, old and new, to the
test of free discussion and debate. In the second place, he advocated the
liberty of thought and expression on the grounds of human dignity.
10. According to Mill, the best form of government is the representative NOTES
government.

1.8 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short-Answer Questions
1. What is inductive reasoning?
2. When is Hume’s view of the concept of self?
3. What did J.S. Mill intend to convey through his work Considerations on
Representative Government?
4. What was the panopticon?
5. What are the various liberties that Mill identifies in the essay Liberty?
6. What does the study on Mill’s ideas on representative government reveal?
7. Write a short note on Bentham’s pleasure and pain theory.
Long-Answer Questions
1. Examine the maxim ‘Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number’ in light
of Bentham’s theories.
2. Discuss Hume’s idea of the perfect government.
3. Discuss Mill’s contributions towards the emancipation of women.
4. Hume believed that human beings are unable to ground normative arguments
in positive arguments. Discuss.
5. Pleasure and pain are the fundamental tenets of utilitarianism. Discuss.
6. According to Mill, ‘the position of the wife under the common law of Britain
was worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries’. Discuss the
condition of women during Mill’s time in light of his statement.
7. Discuss Bentham’s theory of punishment.

1.9 FURTHER READING

Parekh, Bhikhu (ed.) 1993. Jeremey Bentham: Critical Assessments. London:

Routledge.
Stark, Warner. 2004. Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings: Critical Edition.
London: Francis and Taylor.

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Hume, Bentham and Mill Semple, Janet. 1993. Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Subrata, Mukharjee and Susila Ramaswamy, 2007. A History of Political Thought:
Plato to Marx. New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd.
NOTES
Iain, Hampsher – Monk. 1992. Modern Political Thought: Major Political
Thinkers from Hobbes to Marx. Oxford: UK, Blackwell Publisher Ltd.
Thomas Hobbes, C.B. Macpherson (ed.). 1968. Leviathan. London: Penguin.
Todor, Jones. 2002. Political Thinkers and Ideas: A Historical Introduction.
New York: Routledge Publication.

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 Kant, Hegel and Green

UNIT 2 KANT, HEGEL AND GREEN

Structure NOTES
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Unit Objectives
2.2 Immanuel Kant
2.2.1 Kant’s Theory of Perception
2.2.2 Categories of the Faculty of Judgement
2.2.3 Kant’s Moral Philosophy
2.2.4 Kant’s Idea of Freedom
2.2.5 Political Philosophy: Notion of Perpetual Peace
2.2.6 History and Cosmopolitism
2.3 Friedrich Hegel
2.3.1 Idealism of Hegel
2.3.2 Dialectical Method
2.3.3 Theory of State and Freedom of Individual
2.3.4 Freedom of the Individual
2.4 Thomas Green
2.4.1 Notion of Social Contract Theory and State
2.4.2 Punishment
2.4.3 Political Obligation
2.4.4 Concept of Moral Freedom
2.5 Summary
2.6 Key Terms
2.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
2.8 Questions and Exercises
2.9 Further Reading

2.0 INTRODUCTION

In this unit, you will learn about the theories of George Willhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Immanuel Kant and T.H. Green.
Hegel was the founder of modern idealism. He innovated dialectic method
and the theory of self-realization. He was critical of purely reflective knowledge.
His famous work Philosophy of Right deals with key issues of law, politics and
morality, and makes an important distinction between the state and civil society.
According to some scholars and researchers, it was Hegel who was the first thinker
to have understood very clearly that questions concerning morality change from one
particular place and time to another, and there was nothing called a permanent
moral question. The dialectic between civil society and the state of restoration is not
incidental in Hegel’s philosophy. Hegelian idealism is often referred to as absolute
idealism because it provides us with a set of categories in terms of which all human
experiences of the past and the present can be understood.
Thomas Hill Green was a leading British philosopher and political figure and
founder of the school of British Idealism. He pioneered in questioning the traditional
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Kant, Hegel and Green liberal antithesis between the state and the individual. He emphasized on individualism
which is very strong in all liberal thought. Yet, when compared to the body of preceding
liberal thought, he can be seen to have replaced the former’s emphasis of the
autonomy of the individual with an emphasis on the ‘organic’ society, and the value
NOTES of community ethos.
Immanuel Kant was a great German philosopher of the 18th century
Enlightenment. Kant’s most important work, the Critique of Pure Reason, aimed
at uniting reason with experience to move beyond what he considered to be failures
of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end an age of speculation
where objects which could not be experienced were used to support the futile theories.
Thus, he opposed the scepticism and idealism of philosophers like Descartes, Berkeley
and Hume. Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason deals with ethics and the Critique
of Judgement looks at aesthetics and teleology. He aimed to resolve disputes between
empirical and rationalist approaches. He was of the opinion that using reason without
applying it to experience will lead to theoretical illusions.
Kant’s ideas influenced many thinkers in Germany during his lifetime. He
moved philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. The
philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer developed the Kantian
system, which, in turn, brought about various forms of German idealism. German
and European thinking progressed after his time, and his influence is inspiring
philosophical works even today.

2.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

 Discuss Kant’s political philosophy
 Describe the concept of idealism as propounded by Hegel
 Describe Hegel’s notion of the state
 Examine the ‘dialectic theory’ of Hegel
 Explain Green’s views on the theory of social contract and punishment

2.2 IMMANUEL KANT

Let us begin the theories of Kant by trying to understand his philosophical ideas.
According to Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment period was shaped by the Latin
saying Sapere aude (‘Dare to Know’). Kant believed that an individual should think
autonomously; the individual should be free of the dictates of external authority.
Kant’s theories resolved many of the divergences between 18th century rationalist
and empiricist traditions. He asserted that due to the limitations of argumentation in
the absence of indisputable evidence, one cannot really know whether there is a
God and an afterlife or not. People are, according to Kant, reasonably justified in
believing in them to save the society and morality.

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 There were two interconnected foundations of Kant’s ‘critical philosophy’. Kant, Hegel and Green
These were:
 Epistemology of transcendental idealism
 Moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason NOTES
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the centre of the
cognitive and moral worlds.
Conceptual unification and integration is conducted by the mind through
concepts or the categories of understanding. This operates on the perceptual manifold
within space and time. Hence, the objective order of nature and the causal necessity
that operates within it depend on the mind’s processes, the product of the rule-based
activity which Kant called ‘synthesis’.
Kant also talks about the transcendental object. For Kant, the transcendental
object is a product of human understanding as it tries to imagine objects in abstraction
from the conditions of sensibility. Echoing this, other scholars have stated that the
notion of ‘thing in itself’ does not represent a separate ontological domain; it is
simply a way of envisaging objects by means of the understanding alone. This is
referred to as the two-aspect view.
As far as morality is concerned, Kant states, ‘The source of the good lies not
in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is
only the good will itself.’A good will, according to Kant, is one that acts from duty
according to the universal moral law an autonomous human being freely gives itself.
This law obliges one to consider humanity as an end in itself rather than just a means
to other ends the individuals might hold.
2.2.1 Kant’s Theory of Perception
Kant’s theory of perception can be found in his work The Critique of Pure Reason.
Scholars and theorists consider the treatise to be one of the most important works of
metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. In the work, Kant suggests
that human understanding of the external world is based not only on experience,
rather it is based on experience as well as priori concepts. Kant, therefore, provides
a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy. He refers to this as his ‘Copernican
revolution’.
Let us see how Kant differentiates between analytic and synthetic propositions.
 Analytic proposition: It refers to a proposition whose predicate concept
is contained in its subject concept. For example, the statement ‘All human
bodies need food’.
 Synthetic proposition: It refers a proposition whose predicate concept
is not contained in its subject concept. For example, the statement ‘All
cricketers are happy’.
Analytic propositions are factual statements based on the meaning of the
words that comprise the sentence. We do not require any other knowledge except
for an understanding of the language to understand the proposition. On the other
hand, synthetic propositions are those that communicate us something about society.
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Kant, Hegel and Green According to Kant, elementary mathematics is synthetic a priori, in the sense
that its statements provide new knowledge. This knowledge is not established from
experience. He is of the view that the possibility of experience is dependent on
certain essential conditions—referred to as a priori forms—and that these conditions
NOTES hold true of the world of experience. His main arguments in favour of ‘transcendental
aesthetic’ are: (i) mathematic judgements are synthetic a priori and (ii) space and
time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Kant asserts that experience is based on two factors: (i) the perception of
external objects and (ii) a priori knowledge. The external world provides us with
those things that can be sensed by us. It is, however, our mind that processes this
information about the world and gives it order. Only then we are able to comprehend
the information. The conditions of space and time to experience objects are supplied
by our mind. As per the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’, the concepts of the
mind (i.e., understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information
from phenomena (i.e., sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. It means that
if there are no concepts, intuitions are non-descript; if there are no intuitions, concepts
are meaningless. This has led to the famous statement, ‘Thoughts without content
are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.’
2.2.2 Categories of the Faculty of Judgement
While studying the works of Kant, one needs to realize that there is a distinction
between ‘understanding’ as the general concept and the ‘understanding’ as a faculty
of the human mind. In much English language scholarship, the word “understanding”
is used in both senses.
According to Kant, human beings have some objective knowledge of the
world. However, this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, such as
causality and substance. The problem, then, is how this is feasible. Kant’s solution
was to reason that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects
possible, and that these laws are the synthetic, a priori laws of nature.
According to Kant, ‘Judgements are the preconditions of any thought. Man
thinks via judgements, so all possible judgements must be listed and the perceptions
connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments
when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgements. Categories are
equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far
as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus, by
listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.’
As far as the number of possible judgements is concerned, Kant believes
that:
 All the possible propositions within Aristotle’s syllogistic logic are equivalent
to all possible judgements.
 All the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the
moments of the understanding within judgements.

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 Hence, Kant listed Aristotle’s system of judgement in four groups of three: Kant, Hegel and Green

 Quantity: Universal, particular and singular

 Quality: Affirmative, negative and infinite
 Relation: Categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive NOTES
 Modality: Problematic, assertoric and apodeictic
You can draw the parallelism with Kant’s categorization of judgement, which
is as follows:
1. Quantity: Unity, plurality and totality
2. Quality: Reality, negation and limitation
3. Relation: Substance, cause and community
4. Modality: Possibility, existence and necessity
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e., objective knowledge, are
as follows:
 First there is the sensibility, whose function is to supply the mind with
intuitions. This is followed by the understanding, whose function is to
produce judgements of these intuitions and subsume them under categories.
 These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject’s current state of
consciousness and put them within consciousness in general, leading to
the production of universally necessary knowledge.
 For the categories are instinctive in any rational being, so any intuition
thought within a category in one mind will essentially be subsumed and
understood identically in any mind. Thus, we filter what we see and hear.
2.2.3 Kant’s Moral Philosophy
Kant developed his moral philosophy in the following three works:
 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
 Critique of Practical Reason
 Metaphysics of Morals
In the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant’s method attempts at
converting humanities rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge.
Critique of Practical Reason and Metaphysics of Morals followed the method of
using ‘practical reason’. This method is based only upon things about which reason
can inform us. It does not derive any principles from experience to reach conclusions.
The moral philosophy of Kant may be summarized as follows:
 According to Kant, there is a single moral obligation, referred to as
‘categorical imperative’, which is derived from the concept of duty.
 The demands of the moral law are defined as ‘categorical imperatives’.
Categorical imperatives are beliefs that are inherently valid; they are good
in themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances by
human beings if human behaviour is to observe the moral law.
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Kant, Hegel and Green  Kant states that from the categorical imperatives, all other moral
imperatives are established. It is from the categorical imperatives that all
other moral obligations are generated, and by which all moral obligations
can be tested.
NOTES  The moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative.
 Rational beings can pursue certain ‘ends’ using the appropriate ‘means’.
 Ends that are based on physical needs or wants will always give merely
hypothetical imperatives.
 The moral law is a principle of reason itself and is not based on contingent
facts about the world.
 A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation, that is, it is an
obligation that has to be adhered to irrespective of human will and desire.
 Kant also says that if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it
is without moral value. Every action should have pure intention behind it;
otherwise it was meaningless.
 For Kant, it is wrong to assert that the final result is the most significant
aspect of an action. How the person feels while carrying out the action is
the time at which value is set to the result.
 There is a difference between preferences and values and considerations
of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility. This is referred
to as a ‘counter-utilitarian idea’.
 Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be
replaced by something else as its equivalent. But that which constitutes
the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not
have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.
2.2.4 Kant’s Idea of Freedom
Kant’s ideas about freedom may be summarized as follows:
(a) Kant differentiates between the transcendental notion of freedom, which, as
a psychological concept, is ‘primarily empirical’. The transcendental notion
of freedom talks about ‘the question whether we must admit a power of
spontaneously beginning a series of successive things or states as a real
ground of necessity in regard to causality’.
(b) Kant finds it hard to swallow that the practical notion of freedom is based on
the transcendental notion of freedom. However, he accepts it for practical
reasons.
(c) He calls practical ‘everything that is possible through freedom’. According to
him, the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions
but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws.
(d) Kant believes that reason can give us only the ‘pragmatic laws of free action
through the senses’, but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate
‘what should not be done’.
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2.2.5 Political Philosophy: Notion of Perpetual Peace Kant, Hegel and Green

Kant in his work Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, provided a wide

variety of conditions that he thinks are critical to end wars and create an everlasting
peace. One of the things that it encompassed was a world of constitutional republics. NOTES
His classical republican theory was extended in the first part of Metaphysics of
Morals— published separately as Science of Right.
Kant was opposed to ‘democracy’, which during his period meant direct
democracy. Kant asserted that direct democracy resulted in majority rule which
was a huge threat to individual liberty. Kant considers democracy to be nothing less
than despotism since it results in an executive power where ‘all decide for or even
against one who disagrees; that is, all, who are not quite all, decide, and this is a
disagreement with the general will with itself and with freedom.’ Like other
philosophers of his period, Kant categorizes three forms of government, namely
democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. For Kant, a mixed government is the most
ideal form of government.
Kant wrote his social and political philosophy with the objective of championing
the enlightenment in general and the idea of freedom in particular. Kant believed
that every rational human being had both an inherent right to freedom and a duty to
enter into a civil condition governed by a social contract so that he can realize and
preserve that freedom.
Kant’s political philosophy may be discussed under the following heads:
(a) Freedom as the basis of the state
 According to Kant, ‘There is only one innate right, i.e., right to freedom
(independence from being constrained by another’s choice).’ Kant does not
agree to any other basis for the state. Kant’s view on freedom as the basis of
the state may be summarized as follows:
 He believes that the welfare of citizens cannot be the basis of state power.
 He asserts that a state cannot justifiably force any particular conception of
happiness upon its citizens.
 He asserts that the state should treat its citizens as children, assuming that
they are not capable of understanding what is truly useful or harmful to them.
 In Groundwork, he distinguishes the ethics of autonomy from those of
heteronomy. In autonomy, the will is the basis of its own law, whereas in
heteronomy, something independent of the will, such as happiness, is the basis
of moral law.
 In his work, Critique of Practical Reason, Kant asserts that happiness is
not specific enough to demand any general desires in human beings.
 He believes that no specific notion of happiness can becoming the basis of
the pure principle of the state. Moreover, he believes that the general notion
of happiness is so ambiguous that it cannot become the basis of a law. Thus,
Kant cannot imagine a ‘universal principle of right’ that is based upon
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Kant, Hegel and Green happiness; this principle of right can only be based on something truly universal,
such as freedom.
 For Kant, freedom means ‘independence from being constrained by another’s
choice’.
NOTES
 The core of Kant’s political philosophy is the notion of individual freedom of
action. Kant makes the assumption that an individual’s use of choice is free in
the transcendental sense. As all individuals enjoy transcendental freedom by
virtue of being rational, freedom of choice is a universal human quality, which
needs to be respected and promoted, even when it is not exercised in rational
or virtuous way.
 Kant believes that freedom of choice can be comprehended both in terms of
its content, i.e., the specific decisions of people, and their form, i.e., the free,
unconstrained nature of choice of any possible particular end.
 Kant argues that freedom is universal. It can be comprehended in such a
way that it is vulnerable to specification without losing its universality.
 According to him, the state is not a barrier to freedom; rather, it is the means
for freedom. State action maintains the maximal freedom that is consistent
with identical freedom for all without reducing it.
 In the work Theory and Practice, he makes freedom the first of the following
three principles:
o The freedom of every member of the state as a human being.
o His equality with every other as a subject.
o The independence of every member of a commonwealth as a citizen.
 He believes that equality is not substantive; it is formal. Before the law, each
member of the state is equal to its every other member.
(b) Social contract
Kant’s views on social contract may be summarized as follows:
 According to Kant, the sovereign needs to recognize the ‘original contract’
as an idea of reason that forces the sovereign to give his laws arising from
the united will of the people. Kant believes that the sovereign should regard
each subject, insofar as he wants to be a citizen, as if he has joined in voting
for such a will.
 Kant stresses that any rights and duties arise from an initial contract due to
the rightful relations embodied in it and not owing to any particular historical
provenance. He points out that unlike a historical act, an empirical cannot be
the basis of any rightful rights and duties.
 Kant believes that the idea of an original contract limits the sovereign as a
legislator. There cannot be a law which has the consent of all the people.
 Kant argues that the set of actual particular desires of citizens cannot be the
basis of deciding if they could possibly consent to a law. In fact, the type of

46 Self-Instructional Material
 possibility at issue is one of rational probable unanimity based upon fair sharing Kant, Hegel and Green
of burdens and rights. This could be better understood with the help of two
examples provided by Kant.
Examples: Kant’s first example speaks of a law offering inherited privileges
to members of a certain class of subjects. For Kant, such a law would be NOTES
unjust since it would be illogical for people not belonging to this class to give
their consent to tolerate lesser privileges than individuals of the class. It may
be argued that empirical information cannot possibly make sure that all people
to agree to this law. Kant’s second example speaks of a war tax. According
to Kant, if the tax is governed and overseen in an unbiased manner, it cannot
be called unjust. He states that even if the actual citizens are against the war,
the war tax would be just since it is possible that the war is being fought for
correct reasons, which the state, but not citizens, know about.
 Kant’s social contract theory is similar to that of Hobbes in a few important
characteristics. Like Hobbes, Kant stresses that the social contract is not a
historical document and does not entail a historical act. Rather, the social
contract is a rational justification for state power. He asserts that it is not
based on deals between individuals or between individuals and a government.
Kant also agrees with the Hobbes’ assumption that the social contract is not
voluntary. For Kant, people can be forced into the civil condition even if they
do not give their consent.
 An important difference between the social contract theory of Kant and
Hobbes is that the latter establishes his theory on the individual benefit for
each party to the contract, while the former establishes his theory on right
itself, comprehended as freedom for all persons in general. Thus, it can be
stated that here Kant is influenced more by Rousseau’s idea of the General
Will.
(c) Republics and democracy
Kant’s ideas on republics and democracy may be summarized as follows:
 Immanuel Kant does not emphasize self-government. In the work Perpetual
Peace, Kant discusses the conventional separation of the types of government.
Kant categorizes governments in the following two dimensions.
 Form of sovereignty: It concerns who rules. He identifies the three
conventional forms, namely rule by one person, rule by a small group of
people and rule by all people.
 Form of government: It concerns how those people rule. Here he
provides either republican or despotic, which is a variation on the
traditional good–bad dichotomy.
 By ‘republican’, Kant means a state where there is a division between the
executive power (the government) and the legislative power. On the other
hand, in despotic governments, both are united such that the monarch has
given laws to himself and in essence made his private will into the public will.

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Kant, Hegel and Green  According to Kant, Republics need representation to make sure that the
executive power only imposes the public will by insisting that the executive
implements only those laws that are made by representatives of the people
and not the executive itself. Kant states that a republican government need
NOTES not involve actual participation of citizens in making the legislations so long as
the legislations are promulgated with the united will of the people. Kant firmly
believes that an elected representative legislator is the best form of a republic.
 When Kant discusses voting for representatives, he follows many prejudices
that were prevalent during his day. According to Kant, the right to vote requires
‘being one’s own master’. This meant only those had a right to vote who
possessed property or had some skill that would help support themselves
independently. Kant also does not believe women need a right to vote because
of what he calls ‘natural’ reasons. He does not say what these reasons are.
 Kant asserts that insistence on a representative system is not insistence on
an elected representative system. However, as stated before, that such an
elected representative system is the ideal form of government.
 Kant firmly believes that republican constitutions help avoid war because
when the consent of the people is needed, they think about the costs that
accompany a war like taxes, loss of life and property, on the other hand, a
non-republican monarch has no such concerns.
(d) Property and contract right
Kant’s view on property and contract right may be summarized as follows:
 According to Kant, rightful possession must be possession of an object without
holding it so that another’s usage of the object without the possessor’s
permission harms him even when he is not physically affected and not currently
using the object. Kant terms this ‘intelligible possession’.
 Kant says that there must be an intelligible possession rather than just physical
possession for something to be considered rightful possession. This refers to
the application of individual choice. An object of choice is one that some
individual has the capacity to use for his purposes. Rightful possession would
be the right to make use of such an object.
Example: To explain his argument, Kant provides an example. According to
Kant, suppose there is an object and no one has rightful possession of it. It
means that a usable object would be beyond possible use. Kant asserts that
this condition does not controvert the principle of right since it is compatible
with everyone’s freedom in accordance with universal law. However, keeping
an object beyond rightful use when humans have the capacity to use it would
‘annihilate’ the object in a practical sense.
 According to Kant, Intelligible possession is required by right so that free
individuals can achieve their freedom by using objects for their freely selected
aims. This conclusion involves the existence of private property but not any
particular distribution of private property. The state ensures that all individuals

48 Self-Instructional Material
 respect the property of other individuals. Without a state, property rights cannot Kant, Hegel and Green
be applied.
 Kant disagrees with Locke’s theory of property. His reason is that Locke’s
theory makes property a relation between an individual and a thing rather
than between the wills of numerous individuals. Kant states that since property NOTES
is a relation of wills that can occur only in a civil condition under a common
sovereign power, prior to this civil condition, property can be procured only in
anticipation of and in conformity with a civil condition.
 Kant categorizes property rights into three types:
o Firstly, the right to a thing, to corporeal objects in space. One example
of this type is land.
o Secondly, the right against a person, the right to coerce that person to
perform an action. This refers to contract rights.
o Thirdly, the right to a person akin to a right to a thing. Kant says that
some of the examples of this type of right are spouses, children and
servants.
(e) Rebellion and revolution
Kant considers the idea of revolting against the government to be illogical. This is
because he believes that the source of all rights is the state. Kant here is not suggesting
that any actually existing state is invariably just or that merely by virtue of its power,
the state could determine what justice is. What he is trying to suggest is that a
rightful condition can only occur when there is some means for people to be
administered by the general legislative will. This can only occur in a state.
Kant’s ideas on rebellion and revolution may be summarized as follows:
 For Kant, any type of state will embody the general will of the people better
than no state at all. Kant’s seemingly pragmatic logic is based on the notion
that a rightful condition requires the centralizing of coercive power in a state
as the only means to bring about reciprocal coercion and obligation.
 Kant also asserts that a right to rebel suggests that people should be given
power to resist the state. Kant believes that such kind of authorization for
action is an exercise of sovereign power, and for any type of people to assert
such a right would mean that the people rather than the state embodies
sovereign power. This is of course unacceptable for Kant.
 According to Kant, those who argue for people to be have a right to revolt do
not understand the nature of the social contract. Since the social contract is
only a notion of reason which sets moral limits to the sovereign’s legislative
acts, and the sovereign’s judgment alone decides how these limits are to be
interpreted, there is no independent contractual agreement to which individuals
can refer in their complaints.
 Though Kant asserts that the people cannot rebel against the state, he does
not say that people have to obey the state all the time. He has no problems
with passive civil disobedience. This takes two forms:
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Kant, Hegel and Green o In a republican representative system, such as the one prevalent in
England, there can be a negative resistance, i.e, a refusal of the people
(in Parliament) to accept every demand the government puts forth as
needed for governing the state.
NOTES o The second form of acceptable resistance is for individuals. Kant states
that individuals are obligated to obey the sovereign in ‘whatever does
not conflict with inner morality’. However, he does not specify what
inner morality means.
 Kant, however, does not always rejects the action of revolutionaries. According
to him, if a revolution is successful, individuals are obligated to obey the new
government just as they did the old one.
2.2.6 History and Cosmopolitism
Kant’s views on international relations and history is stated below:
 According to Kant, states must be seen to be in a state of nature relative to
one another. Like individuals in the state of nature, states must be considered
to be in a state of war with each other. Therefore, like people, states should
leave this state of nature and come together to form a union such as a league
of states.
 Before the establishment of such a league, Kant says that states do have the
right to go to war with each other if a state threatens them. However, a
declaration of war should be affirmed by people ‘co-legislating members of a
state’.
 Once war begins, states have a duty to fight the war under principles that
allow the possibility of an eventual league of states. Therefore, those actions
that undercut trust between states like assassinations are prohibited.
 Kant holds that the league of states is only analogous, not equivalent, to a
state created by people, since each particular civil state is indissoluble.
 Kant’s idea of historical progress is linked to his notion of international relations.
He actually presents several versions of his argument for the progress of
humanity toward the ideal condition in which states, each governed by a
republican civil constitution and thus each providing maximal consistent freedom
for its citizens, all collaborate in a league of states.
 Kant believes that incessant war will eventually result in rulers understanding
the importance of peaceful negotiations. In such a situation, they will step by
step increase the freedoms provided to their citizens, because freer citizens
are economically more productive and hence make the state stronger in its
international dealings.
Cosmopolitan Right
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single
community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and
particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism.
50 Self-Instructional Material
 Kant’s views on cosmopolitan right may be summarized as follows: Kant, Hegel and Green

 According to Kant, since human beings share a limited amount of living

space due to the spherical shape of the earth, the totality of which they
must be understood to have originally shared in common, they must be
understood to have a right to possible communication with one another. NOTES
This cosmopolitan right is restricted to the right to offer to participate in
commerce, not a right to demand actual commerce.
 A person belonging to one state may try to create connection with people
belonging to other state; he asserts that no state has the right to stop
foreign people from visiting their lands. However, they do have rights to
restrict settlement of foreigners.
 Kant firmly believes that cosmopolitan right is a critical aspect of perpetual
or everlasting peace. According to Kant, since interactions between people
all over the world has increased over time, now ‘a violation of right on one
place of the earth is felt in all’ as people depend upon one another and
know more and more about one another. Thus, Kant states, violations of
the cosmopolitan right would make it more difficult for states to build trust
and cooperation that is need for perpetual peace.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. What are the two interconnected foundations of Kant’s ‘critical
philosophy’?
2. What is cosmopolitanism?

2.3 FRIEDRICH HEGEL

George Willhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart, Germany on 27 August,

1770. He was nineteen when the French Revolution broke out. His father was a
civil servant in the department of finances of the state of Wurtemberg. Most of his
relatives were either teachers or liberal ministers. He grew up with patient and
methodical habits of those civil servants whose modest efficiency had given Germany
the best governed cities in the world. Hegel, as a student, was highly industrious and
hardworking and he made full analysis of all the important books he read. He was
sent to the grammar school at Stuttgart for his education. At school, Hegel was a
brilliant student; he excelled and won a scholarship to a reputed seminary at Tubingen
in 1788, where he studied philosophy and theology; he devoted himself thoroughly in
theological studies in preparation for the Lutheran ministry. Later on, he felt disgusted
with the orthodox tenets of Christianity and abandoned the career which his parents
wanted him to pursue. After completing his studies, he accepted the position of a
family tutor with a wealthy family in Switzerland from 1793–1796. This was followed
by a similar position at Berne and Frankfort from 1797–1800. His philosophical
speculation began at this time. After his father died in 1799, Hegel inherited a modest

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Kant, Hegel and Green fortune. He gave up tutoring and took to writing. He published a book differentiating
the philosophy of Johann Fichte and Friedrich Schelling. In collaboration with Schelling,
he edited the Journal fur Philosophie. His well-known work Phenomenology of
Mind appeared in 1807. He was a university lecturer at Jena from 1801 to 1807.
NOTES After working for a year as a newspaper editor in Bamberg, he moved to Nureberg
as headmaster of a high school in 1808, and continued in this position till 1816. His
long work, Science of Logic in three volumes, appeared in 1812, 1813 and1816. By
this time, he became quite well known, and in 1816 he was invited to take up the post
of professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.
Two years later in 1818, he was called to the University of Berlin as the only
man who could fill with credit the chair of philosophy that had been vacant since the
death of Johann Fichte. At the University of Berlin, he created a name for himself
and became a favourite of the government and in a sense its official philosopher. His
doctrines were highly favoured and appreciated by the Prussian Government and he
was signally honoured in many ways and attracted a large following. His influence
extended all over Germany. In the last phase of his life, Hegel was a devout follower
and admirer of the Prussian police state, just as he had previously admired Jacobinism
and Napoleon.
His principal works were The Phenomenalogy of Spirit (1807), Science of
Logic (1812–1816), which captivated Germany by its unintelligibility and won him
the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg. In 1817, he wrote his Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences on the strength of which he could get a position at the
University of Berlin. In 1821, he published his Philosophy of Right and his Philosophy
of History was published posthumously in 1837. In all these works, Hegel covered
many aspects of political theory.
Hegel was the founder of modern idealism and the greatest influence in the
first half of the eighteenth century when the entire academic community in Germany
was divided between Hegelians, the left Hegelians and the right Hegelians. He
innovated the dialectic method and the theory of self-realization. He propounded a
new theory of history, which according to him was the human spirit writ large, the
‘march of reason in the world’. He was critical of purely reflective knowledge. His
famous work Philosophy of Right deals with key issues of law, politics and morality,
and made an important distinction between the state and civil society. Towards the
end of his life, Hegel started attracting large audiences from the entire German
speaking world and many became his disciples. His other works were Lectures in
the Philosophy of History, Lecture on aesthetics, Lecture on the Philosophy of
Religion and Lectures on the History of Philosophy. In recognition of his work, in
1830, Hegel was elected rector of the University. He died suddenly on 14 November
1831, after suffering from cholera for one day.
2.3.1 Idealism of Hegel
Hegel is considered an idealist thinker. He started with the assumption that the
universe is a coherent whole. This organic unity, what he also refers to as idea, or
spirit or reason, or the divine mind, is the only reality. Everything, including matter or

52 Self-Instructional Material
the external world, is the creation of this idea or spirit or reason or the divine mind. Kant, Hegel and Green
Hence, it is true to say that reason is the sovereign of the world. In Germany, it was
considered that if the contemporary reality was not based on reason, then the reality
had to be altered. This framework of general political theory was given a highly
sophisticated personal touch by Hegel with his two-fold argument that, first, history NOTES
was not merely a chronological table but had a meaning which was both profound
and purposeful, the particularly important thing for him being to recreate Greek
harmony within the context of modern society based on individualism and reason.
Second, as Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre, a British philosopher, observed, it was
Hegel who was the first thinker to have understood very clearly that questions
concerning morality change from one particular place and time to another, as such
and there was nothing called a permanent moral question. This led to the important
assertion of Hegel that the history of philosophy was the core of philosophy. What
logically followed was the important conclusion that history represented particular
levels of development, and had to be judged on the basis of the advancement towards
the realization of reason. Hegel was convinced that reason, truth and freedom were
identifiable, and that the process of reaching the final stage and even a blue print of
the final stage was conceivable as history.
Hegel’s system is associated with a definite political philosophy and a political
order. The dialectic between civil society and the state of the restoration is not
incidental in Hegel’s philosophy, nor is it just a section of philosophy of right. The
Romantic Movement in Germany influenced Hegel considerably, though he rejected
the ideas of the movement. Among all the philosophers of the German Romantic
movement it was Emanuel Kant who influenced Hegel’s mind the most. Kant’s
famous work Critique of Pure Reason (1781) was a synthesis of the two different
ideals of the enlightenment–Newtonian Physics and Helvetian Empiricism. Newton
offered definite and unalterable laws for all the occasions and places. On the other
hand, Helvetious and Hume argued that rational belief emanated from our own
sensual encounters. Kant’s important contribution emerged with his assertion that
these two different perceptions would be reconciled by the fact that all our experiences
ended in a Newtonian certainty, by the nature of the concepts and categories with
which we understand the world. This interrelationship was crucial, as ‘concepts
without percepts are empty: percepts without concept are blind’.
Kant was the exponent of practical reason, which was based on belief in
God, freedom and immortality. Within this framework, any meaningful moral category
had to have a universalistic basis, for instance, when all nations became a republic
there need not be any war. This was similar to a popular assertion in the late twentieth
century that democracies do not fight one another. The condensation of history and
the rejection of the past as essentially resonated in the writings of Hegel, and
subsequently in those of Marx. Karl Marx’s assertion, ‘one hundred years of
capitalism did more wonders than all the preceding history taken together’, echoed
the optimism and confidence that Kant and Hegel excluded.
Hegel criticized Kant’s handling of reason while dealing with the challenge of
empiricism. If things in themselves were beyond the scrutiny of reason then reason

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Kant, Hegel and Green remained merely subjective, without control over the objective reality, leading to an
unacceptable division of the world between subjectivity and objectivity. The relation
between subject and object was complex but an interrelated one, with the unity of
the opposite subjects or matters both in theory and practice leading to a ‘praxis’.
NOTES This conflict was of crucial importance to Hegel, as his seminal contribution of
alienation originated with this formulation. The alienation of mind originated when
the objective factors which were originally produced by human labour and knowledge
became detached and unrecognizable to man. In such a situation, theory did not
reflect reality, and truth had no meaning in the real world. As a result, human frustration
and helplessness increased. To end this separateness in all its manifestations, the
entire framework of inquiry was brought within the ambit of reason. Separateness
had to be ended by a theory of unity of totality in philosophy. This utmost emphasis
on reason was of tremendous importance to Hegel, as human emancipation–a distinct
possibility in the modern period could only be realized on the basis of reason. Hegel
emphasized the human capacity to cherish freedom, and in that sense had the capacity
to transcend the imperfections of contemporary nature and society by the process
of mediation. Reason and human action led to mediation by new concepts and
category replacing old ones, which at one time looked stable. This was the driving
force of the Hegelian dialectic, which made his philosophy a negative one.
Hegelian idealism is often referred to as absolute idealism because it provides
us with a set of categories in terms of which all human experiences of the past and
the present can be understood. There is another dimension of Hegelian idealism,
which may be called the idealist interpretation of history. According to this theory,
ideas constitute the true motor of history whereas what gives momentum to history
is the development of ideas. All changes in society, economy, polity and culture take
place because of development of these ideas. All changes in society, economy,
polity and culture take place because of development of ideas. Hegel’s idealism,
which is often called absolute idealism, sees a certain relationship between the subject
and the object. It is a relationship between the subject and the object. It is a relationship
between a knowing subject and the objective world, i.e., the relationship between
the mind and the world.
2.3.2 Dialectical Method
The most distinctive feature of Hegel’s philosophical system was his dialectical
method. The dialectical method is as old as Socrates, but in the hands of Hegel it
was given a universal validity and application that was more moral and profound.
According to Hegel, the movement of thought was dialectical. By applying the
categories of a thesis, and anti-thesis and a synthesis, Hegel’s major thrust was to
solve the problem of contradiction. Hegel’s dialectical method attempted to reconcile
the many apparent contradictory positions and theories developed by earlier thought
processes. As a method of interpretation, it attempted to reconcile the various different
traits developed in the past. He never claimed to be its inventor, and even
acknowledged that the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates used it. According to
Hegel, every truth is the synthesis of two contradictory elements. Affirmation leads
to dogmatism, negation to skepticism, and only through the systematic mediation of
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mysticism can the real truth emerge. According to Hegel, human progress does not Kant, Hegel and Green
take place in a positive straight line. It is always a zig-zag movement. It is just like ‘a
ship tackling against an unfavourable wind’. The world, according to Hegel, is not
static, but dynamic. The true concept of this world must be an active, moving process,
a process of evolution. In evolution, something that is underdeveloped, undifferentiated NOTES
or homogenous develops by assuming many different and opposing or contradictory
forms. It then unites again in a new concrete form. It does not remain what it was,
but it is preserved in a higher form. This whole process was given the name of
‘dialectic’ by Hegel.
Hegel’s own use of the dialectical method originated with his identification of
Kantian critical theory, which meant the rejection of the Enlightenment philosophical
method based on the scientific approach of studying nature. Crucial to this method
was a belief that accuracy came out of a method of reduction, which meant that
knowledge emerged out of the detailed study and analysis of parts. Hegel’s dialectical
method pre-supposed that ideas and beliefs were to be related to their institutions
and social structures, i.e. the spheres of the subjective mind and the objective mind
had to converge. The categories of subject and object were to go together as theory
and practice. What apparently looked contradictory were actually dialectical terms,
inter-dependent. This method was to be internally linked to the subject matter. It did
not just record and observe but attempted to build an edifice of a well-connected
discourse, which one may accept or reject. It accepted dialogue and conversations
and the very basis of the dialectical method was a constant endeavour to convert
every occasion of non-agreement into an occasion of agreement. In Phenomenology,
Hegel gave an example of the use of dialectics in human consciousness but a more
comprehensive political use was found in the Philosophy of Right, in which the
dialectical process reflected the evolution of world history from the time of ancient
Greece to Hegel’s time. According to Hegel, there was a dialectical pattern in history,
in the state representing the ultimate body, highly complex formed as a result of a
synthesis of contradictory elements at different levels of social life. However, the
relationship between contradiction and synthesis was within the concepts saved by
human practices. Marx too discerned a dialectical pattern in history, but then
understood contradictions between the means and relations of production and different
stages of history.
Everything, as Hegel expressed, is to be understood, not only by what it is but
what it is not. The opposite of being is not being, and being and not being are alike
summed up and carried further towards reality. Each stage, or thesis reached by the
ideal until it has arrived at its goals, must fall short of perfection. Its imperfections
will call into being a movement to remove them or the anti-thesis. There will be a
struggle between thesis and anti-thesis until such time as a synthesis is found, which
will preserve what is true in both thesis and anti-thesis. The synthesis, in its turn, will
become a new thesis, and so until the idea is at last enthroned in perfection.
According to Hegel, the dialectic is the only way in which the human mind
can arrive at the truth about anything. As human beings you formulate a doctrine
about something. That doctrine will contain elements of truth but also since all human
beings are passionate, self-centered, fallible and limited by their particular historical
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Kant, Hegel and Green perspective, elements of error–other individuals perceiving the error in that doctrine
will formulate a doctrine, which will be precisely the opposite. Their doctrine–will
contain elements of both truth and error. A third doctrine is necessary in order to
preserve what is true in both, only a synthesis can reconcile the thesis and its anti-
NOTES thesis. The third doctrine again became a new thesis subject to self-contradiction
and you are faced with the problem again of constructing a new synthesis out of this
third doctrine and its anti-thesis. This process presumably continues indefinitely
although each synthesis is thought to be closer to the absolute truth then each presiding
synthesis.
All finite things, according to Hegel, are contradictory in themselves. Moreover,
it is not men who remove these contradictions but reason itself, if not us, but the very
force, within the thesis and the anti-thesis, which is the reason that promotes
development. Contradiction or the dialectic is, therefore a self-generating process.
It is the principle of the world.
Dialectic is, therefore, a theory which explains how history is the story of the
continuous development of the spirit. Since all the former steps of the spirit are
preserved in the new ones taken it emphasizes the continuity of that story of the
increasing revelation of the spirit. History is a process by which the spirit passes
from knowing nothing to the full knowledge of itself. It is the increasing revelation of
the purposes of the rational mind. Hegel applied his dialectical theory to the explanation
of the progress of society and its institutions. The purpose of the dialectics is to
display what Hegel calls ‘necessity in history’.
The historical necessity which Hegel saw in history was a physical and moral
compulsion. He had before his eyes the picture of Germany after the Battle of Jena,
which was hopelessly miserable. He wanted Germany to stand and rise and become
a world spirit. In other words, Germany should dominate the entire world. When he
said that Germany must become a state he meant that it ought to do so and the
highest interest of civilization and national life required it to advance in that direction.
Germany must become a state not because the Germans wished it but because the
growth of Germany into a world-state was in line with the whole direction of moral
and scientific development as it was the present bearer of the world spirit. The
disunion and feebleness of Germany, he says, were not the marks of her decay but
rather the travel of the German spirit about to give birth to a new social and political
order. It is in this way that Hegel made an appeal to the fidelity of German nation
and idealized and exalted the state to its mystical height. Thus, dialectic was not only
a logical method of arriving at the truth; it was also a moral instrument for bringing
about the unification of Germany and its emergence as a great nation.
The first criticism of Hegel’s methodology is that the dialectic is very vague
and ambiguous. The American scholar and philosopher Professor George Sabine
contended that the most obvious error in Hegel’s dialectic was the extreme vagueness,
not to say the ambiguity, of his use of terms and the extreme generality that he
attributed to words, which are notoriously hard to define. He uses words like ‘thought,’
‘contradiction’, ‘absolute idea’, ‘civil society’, ‘march of God on earth’ to mean
what he wants them to mean. His use of these and so many other words is

56 Self-Instructional Material
unconventional, vague and ambiguous. Hegel’s theory of dialectic was full of over- Kant, Hegel and Green
simplification and over-generalization.
The second criticism of Hegel’s method was that the dialectical method, as a
synthetic logic, which Hegel wanted to replace, supplement and supersede the logic
of the understanding, it was neither convincing nor effective. NOTES
Thirdly, according to Hegel’s dialectical and historical method, the course of
history is determined. In the words of American author and scholar Professor
Lancaster, ‘it is a necessary result of following the dialectical method that the
individual wishes and preferences are reduced to the level of mere caprice. The
actors in human history are not but vast in personal forces’.
Fourth, the dialectical method of Hegel was criticized as a double-edged sword,
which was used by Hegel as an instrument of conservatism, while in the hands of
Marx and Engels was a tool for bringing about revolutionary communism.
Fifth, Sabine pointed out that Hegel’s theory of the logical emergence of the
German national state out of the dialectical logic was not correct. Hegel’s theory of
nationality was not the outcome of the dialectic but was occasioned by the
revolutionary upsurge of contemporary France.
Sixth, Hegel’s method was also criticized on the basis that logic as such cannot
be the only basis of all human activities. Dr Mac Taggart has pointed out three
difficulties in Hegel’s dialectics, which are as follows:
 The first difficulty is that the thesis, the anti-thesis and the synthesis cannot
be recognized except in relation to one another.
 The second difficulty is that in religion, liberty, history, law and philosophy,
the dialectical process is affected by the external influences.
 The third difficulty is that in the application of the dialectical method to the
field of natural and social sciences, you will be dealing with a subject
matter which is highly intricate and not sufficiently systematized.
2.3.3 Theory of State and Freedom of Individual
Hegel regarded the state as the embodiment of the Giest or the universal mind. The
state, according to Hegel, was the representative of the divine idea or divine purpose.
As such, he regarded it as essentially divine in origin. The state, as such, must be
looked upon with great reverence. Since Hegel regards the state as the product of
the divine will; he rejects the social contract theory as the origin of the state altogether.
The social contract theory makes the state an artificial institution—a position which
Hegel is not prepared to accept. The idea that men in the state of nature were free
and equal appeared to be absorbed and ridiculous to Hegel. The life of men in the
state of nature, according to Hegel, was marked by injustice and violence and it was
mostly dominated by natural impulses and feelings. He regarded the state not as a
conception of individuals, but as a product of a long process of evolution. It marked
the advancement from a lower group life to higher and more perfect institutional
life. It grew from the family which was replaced by civil society, and the civil society
was replaced by the state. At every stage of this development, Hegel saw the
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Kant, Hegel and Green working of the universal mind or the hand of the spirit, which was God. This is the
Hegelian concept of the state as the march of God on earth. Through his ‘logic’
Hegel tries to prove that the state is God in human history. It is a unity between
particularity and universality and, therefore, it constitutes perfect rationality. To Hegel,
NOTES what is rational is real and what is real is rational. The state is perfectly rational and,
therefore, it was perfectly real. Since, perfect reality is God; the state is, therefore,
God in the phenomenal existence.
According to Hegel, the state represented universal altruism. It synthesized
dialectically the elements within the family and civil society. As in the case of the
family, the state functions in a manner that the interests of everyone were furthered
and enhanced. It represented the universal tendencies within civil society, thus giving
rise to the notion of civil society. The state had ‘its reality in the particular self-
consciousness raised to the place of the universal’. The state was ‘absolutely rational’
and had substantive will for realizing itself through history, and was therefore, internal.
Hegel perceived the state as an end in itself; it was mind realizing itself through
history. As an idealist, Hegel viewed the state as an organism having the highest
right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn was to be a member of the state.
He emphasized the public nature of the state, yet he did not distinguish between the
private and the public spheres. Hegel examined the different components of the
state like the rule of law, the bureaucracy and the monarchy.
According to Hegel, the state also is an end in itself. It is not only the highest
expression that the spirit has yet to attend; it is also the final embodiment of spirit on
earth. There can thus be no spiritual evolution beyond the state anymore, and then
there cannot be any physical evolution beyond man. The state too is a whole, which
is far greater than the parts which compose it and which have significance only in it.
The state is unchecked by any moral law, for it itself the creator of morality. This
can be seen clearly in its internal affairs and in its external relations. Firstly, it lays
down what shall be the standard of morality for its individual citizens. It goes without
saying that they can never plead conscience or the moral law against it. Kant had
believed that the individual conscience or the practical reason of the individual was
the guide of guides to cling to. Hegel, while going beyond Kant to J.J. Rousseau,
maintained that conscience can only tell us to do what is right. It cannot tell us what
is right. Conscience itself must be informed by the traditions of the community.
According to him, wisdom and virtue consist in leaving conformably to the customs
of one’s people, which are indeed the collective reason of the past and the state is
the truest interpreter of the tradition of the community. It can tell us what is good,
and conformity with its decrease, or social ethics, is thus the highest morality. The
state can recognize no obligation other than its own safety in its relations with the
other states. Its own welfare is its highest law. It is a generally acknowledged and a
well-known principle that the particular interest of the state is the most important
consideration. Against this no plea based on hypothetic morality can be allowed. In
Ethics, Hegel writes categorically ‘the state is the self-certain, absolute mind which
acknowledges no abstract rules of good and bad, shameful and mean, craft and
deceptions.’ International relations, therefore, are relations between sovereign states
who believe that what is in their own interest is right and that the only sin is to act
58 Self-Instructional Material
knowingly against those interests. He further writes ‘the fundamental propositions Kant, Hegel and Green
of the international law remain a good intention. States look upon the stipulations
which they make with one another as provisional. Hence when the particular wills
of states can come to no agreement; the controversy can be settled only by war.’
Moreover, war is not to be regarded as an absolute evil. For Hegel peace corrupts NOTES
and everlasting peace would corrupt everlastingly. War is the state of affairs which
deals in the earnest with the vanity of temporal goods and concerns – a vanity at
other times a common theme for edifying sermonizing. He writes that successful
wars have prevented civil broils and strengthened the internal power of the state.
According to Hegel, the state is an individual in history. It is to history what an
individual is to biography. The state was the achievement of freedom because it was
the embodiment of freedom. The real freedom of the individual consists in obeying
the laws of the state and cultivating the habit of looking at the common wealth as our
substantive purpose and the foundation of our lives. From the point of view of will it
is the incarnation of the general will or real will. The state represents the best in the
individual will. It has a will and a personality of its own apart from and superior to
the will and personality of its members. The individual can attain his true freedom
only as a member of the state. Rights are derived from the state and therefore, no
man can have any right against the state. The end of the state is the glorification of
the state itself. The British politician and sociologist Professor L. T. Hobhouse summed
up the Hegelian theory of the state by calling the state as a greater being, a spirit, a
super—personal entity, in which the individuals with their private conscience or
claims of right, their happiness or their misery are merely subordinate elements. The
state also represented the highest social morality and it led down the standard of
morality for its individual members. Hegel regarded the state as a mystic
transcendental unity, the mysterious union of all with the entire greater whole which
embraces all the other institutions of social life. Hegel morally and rationally exalted
the authority of the state. Hegel completely subordinated the individual to the authority
of the state. His personality has been reduced to a zero. The English philosopher
Professor C.E.M. Joad drew the following paradoxical conclusions from Hegel’s
theory of the state:
 The state can never act unrepresentatively. For example, the policeman
who arrests the burglar and hands him over to the magistrate, and the
magistrate who sends him to the jail expresses the will (real will) of the
burglar to be arrested and to be locked up.
 The bond which binds the individual to other individuals in the community
and to the state as a whole forms an integral part of his personality. He
cannot act as an isolated unit but only as an integral part of the state. The
will with which he acts is not purely individual will but a part of the will of
the state as well.
 The state contains within itself the social morality of all its citizens. It is a
supreme moral community, a guardian of the whole moral world and not a
factor within an organized moral world.

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Kant, Hegel and Green 2.3.4 Freedom of the Individual
Hegel’s concept of freedom was based on the old Greek idea of an individual finding
his true self, freedom and personality in and through the state. According to Sabine,
NOTES Hegel swung back in the direction of Greek political theory towards the view that an
individual good implies the performance of a socially valuable task. According to
Hegel, freedom is the very essence of man. It is his distinctive quality to renounce
freedom and to renounce one’s humanity. Not to be free, therefore, is to cease to be
a human being. It is however not the freedom of any and every casual will of which
he talks. Hegel’s freedom consists in rendering obedience to the real will or the
reasonable will. In this concept of freedom he was very much indebted to Rousseau
and Kant. In developing their theories and freedom, in fact, both Kant and Hegel
have started from Rousseau’s concept of moral freedom as the peculiar and distinctive
quality of man, and both considered the state entirely in its relation to this freedom.
But the Kantian concept of freedom was negative, limited and subjective in meaning,
which made his attitude to the state somewhat individualistic. Kant had interpreted
freedom as the right to will a self-imposed duty, and he insisted that every man
possessing in virtue of his reason such a will, existed, and ought to be treated, always
as an end in himself and never as merely a means. To Hegel, freedom of this kind is
negative because it wears the face of beauty, and it is limited because it isolates
each man as an end in himself. Such freedom is, again subjective because it resides
in the inner world of intention and conscience, and does not find a free issue outwards
into the objective life.
According to Kant, freedom consists in obedience to any moral will, but
according to Hegel, freedom consists in obedience to the dictates of social morality,
to the moral will of the community. According to Hegel, freedom consists in obedience
to the dictates of the universal reason, but he identifies the dictates of universal
reason with social morality rather than with the isolated moral will of the individual.
The state, for Hegel, is the crystallization of this social morality; it is the embodiment
of the community.
According to Hegel, freedom consists in willing to make your natural self
(composed of particular interest and passion) conform to the thinking self (reason).
A person realizes freedom when he submits to the law, to the rules of social morality
and to the institutions of the national state. The state is the highest and the most
perfect embodiment of social morality. It is sustained by personality as freedom of
will transcends by compelling to contemplate a good beyond its own personal interest.
Hegel equates liberty with law. Law may guarantee and safeguard liberty but
sometimes it may also go against liberty. In order to justify his equation of liberty
with law Hegel says that only that authority has the power to make laws or thus
guarantee liberty which can represent the spirit of the nation. The spirit of the nation
cannot be represented by the majority of the people or by an assemblage of man. It
can only be represented by one actual decreeing individual, i.e., the monarch. In
other words, Hegel identifies the will of the monarch with the liberty of the individual.
According to Hegel, each and every element in the society can reach its free
resistance only in an absolute monarchy like the one prevailing in the then Prussia.
60 Self-Instructional Material
 Hegel emphasized that freedom consists of complete obedience to the laws Kant, Hegel and Green
of the state. He argues that the state is the embodiment of reason. The laws of the
state are the outward expressions of reason. According to German idealism, freedom
lies in the obedience of reasons. Another argument put forward by Hegel is that the
essence of spirit, which seeks to know itself, is freedom. The history of mankind is NOTES
the history of the evolution of spirit and hence of freedom. When the state is the
embodiment of freedom, all the individuals live under freedom. The individual realizes
freedom to the extent to which he identifies himself with the spirit or the essence of
the spirit. There are two wills existing side by side in the individual mind – real will
and actual will. Real will represents the rational will and takes care of the interest of
the community as a whole while the actual will looks after the personal and private
interest of the individual alone.
According to Hegel, freedom for the individual consists in subordinating the
actual will to rational will. By serving the interest of the community alone, the individual
can get the fulfilment of his personality. The impulsive will being very powerful, the
individual himself cannot subjugate it without the help of the state. The only way to
be free is the voluntary submission of the impulsive will to reason which is expressed
in the state. According to Hegel, an individual is free only if he identifies voluntarily,
willingly and consciously with the laws of the state. If an individual obeys the state
due to fear or punishment he is no longer free. Hegel does not conceive of the
freedom in terms of the rights of the individuals. The state according to him is
omnipotent. The individuals do not possess any rights against the state. He does not
give any rights of speech, or expression or association to the individual in conflict
with the state. In the state alone, man can find freedom, while without it, he is
completely in subjugation.
Hegel’s ideas of freedom was both objective and creative, and it outwardly
expressed itself in a series of outward manifestations—first the law, then the rules
of the inward morality; and finally the whole system of institutions and influences
that make for righteousness in the national state. The whole system of institutions
and influences was called social ethics by Hegel. The state should be envisaged in
terms of social ethics. The social morality is the product of a free will seeking to
realize itself in a positive and objective form; and the state, as the highest expression
and organ of social morality. Individual freedom therefore was a social phenomenon.
It consisted in participation of the moral life of the community. Freedom to Hegel
meant willing of what is rational of what the spirit would desire and the power to
perform it. It consisted in total obedience to the state and performance of duties.
Sabine states that, ‘(the) theory of freedom was a part of the widespread
reaction against the violence of the French revolution’. There was a sound reason
why the case against the revolution should have appealed to a German philosopher.
The theory of natural rights, while of course fully known to educated Germans, had
never made itself part of the popular consciousness in Germany. In England and
France, the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries had seen the theory made into
a defense of revolution and Germany was a country in which there was no revolution.
Hegel’s view on freedom implied two things. Firstly, he continually implied that no
genuine conflict of interest can arise between the individuals and the society they
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Kant, Hegel and Green belong to, and secondly, the state is continually represented as standing for the
possible ethical value. These two phases of Hegel’s philosophy, though they are
perfectly comprehensible when viewed in the light of the circumstances in which he
wrote, are nevertheless the causes of great confusion in his thoughts.
NOTES

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

3. Why is Hegelian idealism referred to as absolute idealism?
4. According to Hegel, what was the state a representative of?
5. For Hegel, what does freedom consist of?
6. What does Hegel’s concept of freedom based on?

2.4 THOMAS GREEN

Thomas Hill Green, English philosopher, political radical and temperance reformer,
and a member of British idealism movement, was born in Yorkshire, England in
1836. Like all the British idealists, Green was influenced by the metaphysical
historicism of Hegel.
Green was one of the thinkers behind the philosophy of social liberalism. He
was the son of a clergyman in the Church of England. On the paternal side, he was
a descendent of Oliver Cromwell. He entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1855 where
he was destined to spend the remainder of his life. At Balliol, Green came under the
influence of the renowned theologian and Oxford tutor Benjamin Jowett and by this
inspiring contact was fired to more definite and purposeful intellectual endeavours.
Green was elected a fellow of Balliol in 1860 and continued in this capacity right up
to 1878. In 1878, he was chosen as Whyte Professor of Moral Philosophy. He
married Miss Charlotte Symonds, a sister of John Addington Symonds in 1871. John
Addington Symonds was a noted critic and poet of his days. Green’s teaching at the
University of Oxford covered a wide range of subjects including history, ethics,
logic, metaphysics, education and the history of philosophy. Green was not merely a
clustered pedagogue. He took an active part in public affairs and was a member of
the Oxford town council for many years. Green was a frequent campaign speaker
for the liberal party, served as member in several committees and commissions and
was a prominent worker in the temperance movement. He was stricken with blood
poisoning in 1882 and died at the age of forty–six.
In his political philosophy Green was highly influenced by his studies of the
Greek classics. According to the English political scientist Ernest Barker, ‘The
influence of Plato and Aristotle has been peculiarly deep in England’. The curriculum
of the oldest and most important branch of studies in Oxford finds in the ‘Republic’
of Plato and the ‘Ethics’ of Aristotle in its central texts; and truths drawn from
Greek thought have been taught in Oxford and enforced in the world, not only by the
thinkers, but also by the man of action who have been trained in this curriculum.
Green himself was a product of the University of Oxford and there he had also
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served as a Professor of moral philosophy. The ultimate basis of his philosophy is to Kant, Hegel and Green
be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Another and more important influence
on the political ideas of Green was that of German philosophy. Green drew his
inspiration from the writings of Kant and Hegel. Among the philosophers of the
European continent who exercised a tremendous influence on the writings of Green NOTES
was the author of the Social Contract, i.e., Rousseau. What Green found
permanently valuable in Rousseau was the conception of the state or sovereign as
representing a General Will, and as authorized or entitled to obedience on that account.
Green was involved in local politics for many years, through the University,
temperance societies and the local Oxford Liberal association. During the passage
of the Second Reform Act, he campaigned for the franchise to be extended to all
men living in boroughs, even if they did not own real property. In this sense, Green’s
position was more radical than that of most other British Liberals, including William
Ewart Gladstone. It was in the context of his Liberal party activities that in 1881
Green gave what became one of his most famous statements of his liberal political
philosophy, the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract. At this
time, he was also lecturing on religion, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy.
Green was most influential during his lifetime as a teacher and it was not until
after his death that his most important works were published. His Lectures on the
Principles of Political Obligation were first delivered during his tenure of the
chair of moral philosophy at Oxford in the winter of 1879–80 and first published in
1882. Likewise, his Prolegomena to Ethics was also published after his death.
2.4.1 Notion of Social Contract Theory and State
Green did not approve the social contract theory of the origin of government. He
considered it a confused way of stating truth. Green’s rejection of the social contract
theory was based on the reason that it makes the state a voluntary association. He
also rejected the force theory of the origin of the state because it makes the force as
the very basis of the state. The basis of the state is not consent, neither is ii force,
but it is will. This conception of his becomes clearer when he analyses the British
jurist John Austin’s definition of sovereignty.
It is not the existence of supreme coercive power that makes a state but
‘supreme coercive power exercised in certain ways and for certain ends viz. exercised
according to law written or customary, and for the maintenance of rights.’ The state
maintains through a system of law, the possibility of freedom that otherwise would
not exist. Green himself says that the state is justified in using force to repeal a force
which is opposed to freedom. Hence, it can be said that apart from the state the
individual can have no existence as a person. Green regards the state as natural and
necessary. He considered it as an ethical institution essential to the moral development
of man. Its primary purpose is to enforce rights, even by compulsion if necessary.
Although natural and necessary but the authority of the state is neither absolute nor
omnipotent. It is limited both from within and without. It is limited from within because
the law of the state can deal only with the externality of an action and intentions. It
cannot deal with motives. The state cannot promote morality directly. It can simply

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Kant, Hegel and Green remove obstacles to good life. It is limited again by the fact that in exceptional
circumstances particularly when the laws of the state are tyrannical and the state
fails to promote the common good, the individual has the right of resistance. According
to Green, resistance under these circumstances is not merely a right but it becomes
NOTES a duty.
Green further recognized that the various permanent groups with society
have their own inner system of rights and that the right of the state over them is one
of adjustment. According to Barker, the state adjust each group its system of rights
internally and it adjusts each system of rights to the state externally. Since the power
of the state is that of adjustment, it therefore, had ultimate authority. Green mentioned
that the existence of groups in society contains the germs of the theory of pluralism.
But Green has not taken up the pluralistic position at all.
The authority of the state is limited from without in the sense that it has to
show its respect to the existence of international law. Like Kant and unlike Hegel,
Green is a believer in international law and international organizations. The right of
every man as man to free life involves the conception of a common humanity and of
a common social organism. According to Green, the function of the state is negative.
Good life for the most part is self-earned. The state cannot promote it directly. Its
business was simply removing obstacles to freedom. The three greatest obstacles to
freedom, as he saw it, were ignorance, drunkenness and poverty. It is the function
of the state to remove such obstacles. Classical liberalism, he thinks went wrong in
regarding freedom simply in negative forms; freedom is positive. Thus, Green led
the intellectual foundations for the modern social welfare state, for old age pensions,
unemployment and insurance, health insurance, and all the other legislative schemes
designed to promote ‘self-security’.
Commenting upon Green’s theory of state actions Professor Sabine says,
‘Green’s general principle that a liberal government ought to legislate in any case
where the law can remove an obstacle to the highest moral development of its
citizens, provided at least the framework for a wholly different conception of
government form that held by the older liberalism’. In place of laissez-faire and
freedom of contract it opened the way, in the name of positive freedom, for any
degree of social legislation that could be justified as particularly effective in improving
the standard of living. What Green added to liberal theory was his conception of
collective well-being as a pre-condition of individual freedom and responsibility. Thus,
in principle, Green’s revision of liberalism closed up the gap which laissez-faire has
placed between politics and economics and put on government the duty of regulating
the economic system.
The state, Green insists, is the only source of actual rights. He says rights
may be conceived which are not in the state; only when they are in it do they
become rights. Green’s state like Hegel’s, is a community of communities, but again
like Hegel’s, there is no question that it is supreme over all the communities. The
members of the state derive the rights which they have as members of other
associations from the state and have no rights against it.

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 For all his belief that the state was the embodiment of the Divine Spirit, Green Kant, Hegel and Green
never regarded the state as an end in itself. It was a means to an end, and that end
was the full moral development of the individuals who composed of it. He believed
in the existence of the ‘General Will’. He was convinced that this ‘General Will’ is
the real basis of the state. Legal sovereignty, he agreed with Austin, must reside in NOTES
the supreme authority within the state, in that body which recognizes no power
above itself. But behind this legal sovereign is the General Will, and this General
Will, not force or fear is what really determines the habitual obedience of people.
Men habitually obey only those institutions which, perhaps unconsciously, they feel
represent the General Will. This is true irrespective of the form of government the
state may possess, since even an absolute monarchy must inspire loyalty and voluntary
submission in its subject. According to Green, ‘General Will’ is the true sovereign of
the community.
Green believed that the state should foster and protect the social, political and
economic environments in which people will be able to get their chance to act
according to their conscience. It is the responsibility of the state to decide which
liberties to curtail and in which way. Over-enthusiastic or clumsy state intervention
could reduce or close the opportunities for conscientious action. This will eventually
stifle the moral development of the people. The state should intervene only when it
is sure that a particular liberty is enslaving a person. Even under such a situation,
Green was of the opinion that the community should react to such a situation instead
of the state as local councils and municipal authorities tended to produce measures
that were more imaginative and better suited to the daily reality of a social problem.
Hence, Green favoured the ‘local option’ where local people decided the issuing of
liquor licenses in their area through their town councils. He stressed the need for
specific solutions tailored to solve specific problems. Green also thought that there
are no inevitable solutions or timeless division of responsibilities between national
and local governmental units. The distribution of responsibilities should be based on
the participation of as many individuals as possible to exercise their conscientious
will in particular circumstances. This would help to foster individual self- realization
in the long-run. If the local and municipal departments are unable to control the
harmful influences of some social evils then the national state should take responsibility
for the public policy of this area. Green argued that the ultimate power to decide on
the allocation of such tasks should rest with the national state. The national state
according to Green upholds a system of rights and obligations that is likely to help in
individual self-realization. Even after all this, the most appropriate structure of this
system cannot be determined by purely political calculation nor by philosophical
speculation.
2.4.2 Punishment
T.H. Green’s views on punishment are essentially related to his theory of state
action. In order to maintain conditions and remove obstacles, the state must positively
interfere with everything tending to violate conditions or impose obstacles. It must
use force to repeal a force which is opposed to freedom. According to Barker,
punishment is not inflicted with any direct reference to the moral guilt of the offender
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Kant, Hegel and Green in the past; or to his moral reformation in the future. If it were imposed with reference
to moral guilt, it would have to be graded according to the degree of moral guilt, and
here we are at once made by the insuperable difficulty that moral guilt cannot be
measured by degrees because we cannot enter into the recesses of the will to
NOTES discover its intensity or quality. If again punishments were imposed with reference
to moral reformation in the future, it would not only lose its power as a deterrent, but
it would deprive the criminal of the possibility, let us rather say, the fundamental duty
of regenerating his own will.
The criminals who are anti-social, constitutes a force opposed to freedom.
Punishment in such a case is a force directed against that force. Punishment is not
inflicted with any direct reference to the moral guilt of the offender in the past or to
his moral reformation in the future. If it were imposed with reference to moral guilt,
the difficulty would arise that moral guilt cannot be measured by degrees. If again
punishment were imposed with reference to moral reformation in the future, it would
not only lose its power as a deterrent, but it would deprive the criminal of the possibility
of regenerating his own will. Actually punishment is adjusted to maintaining the
external conditions necessary for the free action of will; it is not adjusted to the inner
will itself. It is in fact directed to secure the external conditions necessary for moral
action. Punishment therefore, like all state action, has a moral purpose. It is moral in
the sense that its ultimate aim is to secure freedom of action for the moral will of
every member of the community.
According to Green, the primary objective of punishment is not to cause pain
to the criminal for the sake of causing it nor chiefly for the sack of preventing him
from committing the crime again, but to associate terror with the contemplation of
the crime in the minds of others who might be tempted to commit it. The future
prevention of crime is the chief aim of punishment. Green said that the state looks
not to virtue and vice but to rights and wrongs. It looks back to the wrong done in the
crime which it punishes; not however, in order to avenge it, but in consideration of
the sort of terror which needs to be associated with such wrong-doing in order to
ensure the future maintenance of rights. Actually punishment is adjusted to maintain
the external conditions necessary for the free action of will; it is not adjusted to the
inner will itself. Its ultimate aim is to secure freedom of action for the moral will of
every member of the community. It implies that punishment should be given according
to the importance of the right violated.
For Green, punishment has both direct and indirect defects. Directly, it is a
force preventive of a force opposed to rights. Indirectly, punishment is, and in order
to be effectively preventive must be a reformation of the will, or rather a shock
which makes criminal reformations possible. Even in this aspect, punishment is a
removal of obstacle; for the obstacle which the criminal opposes is not only a force,
but a will. Green states that ‘it is commonly asked whether punishment according to
its proper nature is retributive or preventive or reformatory. The true answer is that
it is and should be all three’. The Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria had previously
attempted to do the same with a theory of deterrence and an aspect of retributivism,
but he failed to keep his theory consistent.

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 Before we take a look at T.H. Green’s views on crime and punishment, let us Kant, Hegel and Green
try and understand the two theories of retributivism and deterrence, which Green
tries to connect through his arguments.
Immanuel Kant advanced the theory of Retributivism, and derived its right to
punish from the theory of social contract. For this, Kant created a framework labelled NOTES
the ‘categorical imperative’. Kant stated that this framework meant one should ‘act
only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should
become a universal law’. Kant believes that the notion of punishment restores the
injustice that is done when moral laws are infringed upon. He says that the individual
responsible for infringing moral law has brought the punishment upon himself. Kant
asserts that the punishment the individual has to receive must match the gravity of
the crime committed. For example, for killing a fellow human being, a grave moral
crime, the punishment is execution. Thus, for Kant, for each crime that is committed,
there is an equal physical punishment and there can be no question of using discretion
in the matter. In this theory, punishment of the crime is the core principle. Deterrence
or reformation may occur, however, they are merely by products. A person who has
reformed still has to be punished. Thus, it can be said that Kant’s theory of retributivism
focuses on personal responsibility of the individual committing the crime rather than
the greater good of society. There are many failings with this theory, the most apparent
one is that not every crime has an equal physical punishment. Moreover, this theory
can also be criticized since it lacks compassion.
On the other hand, deterrence theory is the polar opposite of Kant’s theory of
retributivism. Deterrence theory evolved from utilitarianism, which as you know,
believed in the ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. Bentham was a great
proponent of the deterrence theory. In this theory, the notion of individual responsibility
for the crime is largely absent. Only happiness matters. Anything that is an obstacle
to the utilitarian maxim of the greatest good for the greatest number must be avoided.
Punishment can be seen as something that causes unhappiness, until it can be proven
that the act of punishing an individual causes more happiness than harm.
In Bentham’s theory then, deterring harm is the central objective. Thus, unlike
the Kantian notion of punishment, there is no need for punishment to correlate to the
crime that is committed. The only thing that matters is deterring the individual and
others from committing the similar crimes. A major flaw with this theory is that it
can be argued that according to utilitarian notion, an innocent person may be punished
for a crime he has not committed, as long as it deters others from committing similar
acts.
Green attempted to unite both these opposite theories. As you can see, both
the theory of deterrence and retribution have justifications for punishment. On the
other hand, Green’s theory of punishment is derived from rights. Green stated, ‘The
right.......of free life in every man rest on the assumed capacity in every man of free
action contributory to social good’. Green goes on to assert that individuals cannot
possess natural rights in the state of nature. Rights can only be obtained if there is a
society that regulates these rights for the common good. ‘Natural rights’, for Green,
‘so far as there are such things, are themselves relative to the moral end to which

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Kant, Hegel and Green perfect law is relative’. A law, therefore is not good because it puts into effect
‘natural rights’ but because it adds to the achievement of a certain result. Human
beings can only understand what rights can be considered natural when they consider
what powers must be secured to a man in order to achieve this result. These powers
NOTES a perfect law to secure its full extent.
Green believes that this framework of the common good creates the basis of
human society’s existence as well as the morality of a person. Green agreed with
Kant on the notion of the ‘categorical imperative’ and accepted that individual morality
derived from it. He went on to extend the Kantian notion of the categorical imperative
by arguing that possession of these natural rights encompass that no other individual
of a society interferes with an individual’s rights and that an individual recognizes
that other people have the same natural rights. What this means is that an individual
should accept the moral agency of other individuals as long as these actions do not
prove to be an obstacle to the common good of society. Green goes on to argue that
‘associated men’ have the right to obstruct and even avert actions as interference
contributory to social good. This is Green’s theory of the right of punishment, which
is ‘the right to use force...as may be necessary to save others from this interference.’
Thus, Green’s idea of punishment is not to reprimand moral wickedness. Its
aim is the ‘protection of rights, and the association of terror with their violations’.
What this suggests is that the framework of rights need a framework of enforcement
of these rights, that is, punishment. Thus, it is the duty of the state to do what is
necessary to uphold these rights and the common good that comes with it. Green,
however, states that a punishment would be unjust if the action is not an impingement
of a known right. This is Green’s framework of punishment. However, to ensure
that punishment that is meted out is just, Green believes the following aspects need
to be incorporated.
According to Green, the punishment of crime aims to prevent a crime; however,
it is not ‘preventive of any or every evil or by any and every means, but . . . justly
preventive of injustice; preventive of interference with those powers of action and
acquisition which it is for the general well-being that individuals should possess, and
according to laws which allow those powers equally to all men’. However, to ensure
that it attains its goal of prevention, and to do so in a just manner, it must also be
reformatory.
To comprehend what Green is trying to suggest, it is critical to examine each
aspect of his theory. According to Green, although punishment needs to be just as
well as retributive, it is not vengeance. Only the state has the right to inflict this
punishment on an individual who has committed a crime. Nobody else has the right
to inflict this punishment. The state only has this right to prevent others from
committing similar acts and if that fails, to punish the offender. The quantum of
punishment to the offender must be equal to what is necessary to ensure protection
in the future. It should not be excessive or based on vengeance. According to Green,
‘Crime should be punished according to the importance of the right which it violates,
and to the degree of terror which in a well-organized society needs to be associated
with crime in order to protection of the right’.

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 However, it should be noted that although Green argues that the theory of Kant, Hegel and Green
punishment is deterrence, he does not ignore that punishment also needs to be both
retributive and reformatory. Echoing Kant, Green asserts that punishment is in its
own right an act returning on himself, in the sense that it is the essential result of an
offenders act in a society governed by the notion of rights, a notion which the offender NOTES
recognizes and to which he does involuntary reverence.
Green agrees with Kant that the infringement of a right necessitates retribution
and that the offender should ‘have his due, and….should be punished justly.’ However,
he then goes on to differ with the Kantian notion. For Green, a just punishment is not
the same as ‘equal’ punishment. This is so because the suffering that a crime causes
cannot be measured. Then how can equal punishment be inflicted while trying to
punish an offender? To argue his point, Green provides an example of hard labour.
Green asks how can the punishment of hard labour be the equal of robbery? Green
asserts that retribution is an element of punishment. The already complicated aim of
trying to assess the penalty of a crime must not be complicated further by adding to
it the goal of trying to make the strictness of the penalty proportional to the moral
evil committed by the offender. However, law must establish categories for each
crime and fix penalties for crimes. This is because the punishment should not be
completely out of proportion with the right that is violated. Green asserts that more
central the right the more severe the punishment. Thus, for Green, the severity of
the punishment increases with the seriousness of the crime. As Green says, ‘It
amounts to this, that the crime which requires most terror to be associated with it in
order to its prevention should have most terror thus associated with it.’
Green believes that a just punishment is one that is preventative in nature.
This does not mean that retribution is completely ignored. An offender is still being
punishment according to the seriousness of his crime. Green asserts that punishment
should not be ‘preventive of any or every evil or by any and every means, but.......justly
preventive of injustice’. What this means is that the state has the right to punish an
individual for the crime that is committed and no other thing. The punishment for the
crime will be fixed based on crime as well as the consideration of the type of ‘terror’
that needs to be associated with such crimes to prevent them in the future and to
maintain future rights of individuals.
Green asserts that no punishment can be justified if a right has not been
violated. What this suggests that no innocent person can be punished for a crime
even if the nature of punishment acted as deterrent for future crimes. Only when a
right has been infringed upon the individual intentionally can one claim just punishment.
So far, Green’s conception of punishment seems to be more of a theory of deterrence
rather than one of retribution. Green himself asserts that the first purpose of
punishment is deterrence of future crime. However, despite using deterrence as his
main argument, he does provide certain examples that contradict the principle. Green
states that to execute a man for stealing sheep is not just punishment, even if the
stealing of sheep becomes an extremely common problem. Under the concept of
Utilitarianism, the execution of thieves or robbers can be justified. For Green, however,
‘a society where there was any decent reconciliation of rights no such terror as is
caused by the punishment would be required for the punishment of death.’ Thus for
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Kant, Hegel and Green Green, the punishment needs to be corresponding to the severity of the crime that is
committed.
The quantum of punishment that is inflicted on the offender is a core component
of whether a punishment can be considered just or unjust. As you have learned,
NOTES Kant’s view of punishment has a major drawback that it is not possible to determine
the quantum of punishment equal to every crime that is committed. As Green says,
‘The amount of pain which in any kind of punishment causes to a particular person
depends on his temperament and the circumstances, which neither a state nor its
agent the judge, can ascertain’. For Green, a just punishment is one that has the
aspects of deterrence, retribution as well as reform.
For Green, the duty of the state to punish offender also has to do with deterring
others from committing similar crimes. Thus, the quantum of punishment should be
prospective rather than retrospective. In case of a crime that has been committed a
right has been violated. Therefore, no amount of punishment can change what harm
has been done or ease the suffering of the individual who rights have been violated.
Punishment can only help in decreasing the occurrence of such crimes in the future.
Thus, the purpose of punishment is not to punish a particular person for committing
a crime, although that is an aspect of it, rather the purpose is to create fear and
ensure that such acts are not committed in the future.
In terms of reform, Green asserts that punishment in order to be effective
and just must also be reformatory. A punishment must not only deter others from
committing a crime but must also deter the offender from committing the crime in
the future too. For Green, reform of the criminal is an important and significant by-
product of preventative punishment. As an offender loses some rights due to his
actions, Green believes it is desirable that the offender should be able to reform and
regain the right that he has lost. By dealing with the offender in this manner, Green
believes will make the offender realise the nature of his anti-social acts.
Thus, it can be said that Green’s theory is one of deterrence. Green himself
suggests this numerous times in the text. However, Green also asserts that punishment
must also be just and by exploiting the drawbacks of Kant’s theories and building
upon them, Green makes a case for uniting both theories. Green’s theory remains
one of deterrence and though he adds elements of retribution, it cannot be said that
Green followed the tradition of Immanuel Kant in his theory of punishment. This
does not mean that Green did not improve Kant’s theories by ironing out its major
drawbacks as well as the problems with deterrence theory.
2.4.3 Political Obligation
The problem of political obligation is one of the most important issues of political
philosophy. Green belongs to the idealist school of political obligation. It was his
idealism coming to the fore when Green declared that government cannot claim an
unconditional obedience of its citizens. He argued that individuals owe their allegiance
to society, not to the state or government. Accordingly, the organized power of
society should be recognized as political authority for the purpose of determining
political obligation. Green’s concept of political obligation is based on his concept of
the ‘common good’.
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 Green writes, ‘To ask why I am to submit to the power of the state, is to ask Kant, Hegel and Green
why I am to allow my life to be regulated by that complex of institutions without
which I literally should not have a life to call my own, nor should be able to ask for
a justification of what I am called on to do. For that I may have a life which I can call
my own, I must not only be conscious of myself and of ends which I present to NOTES
myself as mine; I must be able to reckon on a certain freedom of action and acquisition
for the attainment of those ends, and this can only be secured through common
recognition of this freedom on the part of each other by members of a society, as
being for a common good.’
The law of our being involves in its turn civic or political duties. Moral goodness
cannot be limited or constituted by the cultivation of self-regarding virtues. It consists
of the attempt to realize that moral ideal to us as our ideal. From this arises the fact
of political obligation as the institutions of political or civic life are the embodiment of
moral ideas in terms of our day and generation. We have a criterion by which to test
these institutions since society exists only for the proper development of people. It is
obvious that the final moral ideal is not realized in any civic institutions but the same
analysis that demonstrates this points out the direction in which true development
will take place. Due to this rights and duties should be formulated and be maintained
by law, as opposed to those actually maintained. As stated before, the state represents
a ‘General Will’ that is a desire for a common good. Its basis is not a coercive
authority that has been imposed on the citizens from without, but consists in the
spiritual recognition on part of the citizens of that which constitutes their true nature.
He pointed out that it is society, not the state, which is the pivot of the common
good. Green is quite different from utilitarian view so far as the notion of human
nature is concerned. Whereas utilitarian’s treat human beings as a pleasure-seeking
animal, Green holds that human beings do not seek pleasure as such. In his opinion,
the rational basis of human activity is will or reason, not desire or passion. As self-
conscious beings, man and women wish to realize the good which they grasp along
with other members of the community. He further says that human beings do not
identify their self-interest as distinctly as they identify the common good. Common
good not only comprehends the good of all members of the community, but their
conceptions of the common good are also identical. In his lectures on the principles
of political obligations Green argued that the state itself is obliged to promote the
common good as conceived by its citizens, and that individuals are obliged to obey
only those laws which promote the common good. If individuals think that they will
serve the cause of the common good by defying any command of the state, their
political obligation does not prevent them from such defiance.
In Green’s view, it is the consciousness of the common good which prompts
human beings to accept their duties. They tend to sacrifice their self-interest for the
sake of the common good for they realize that they can attain self-realization only as
members of the community, not as separate individuals. The question of priority
between the individual and the community is irrelevant because individuals have no
existence outside the community, and no community can exist without its constituent
individuals. The true basis of the community lies in each individual treating every
other individual as an end in itself, because each member of the community is
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Kant, Hegel and Green recognized as capable of pursuing ideal object. The true goal of politics as well as of
morality is to improve the moral character of individuals. This should be the criterion
of evaluation of any institutional law. In other words, each institutional law should
enable the citizens to exercise their good will and reason in the conduct of their
NOTES affairs. It is the moral nature of human being which postulates his freedom. Freedom
requires all members of the community to have equal opportunity of self- development.
It is the duty of the state to create such conditions that are conducive to human
freedom. Green points out that law can force the individual to perform certain acts,
but this would be external acts only. No law can make them moral because morality
is dependent on something freely willed. Will, not force, is the very basis of the state,
Green writes.
Green thus, emphasizes the moral nature and capacity of human beings. The
principal function of the state is to secure the common good as conceived and
defined by its citizens. By recognizing the organized power of the community rather
than the state as the object of political obligation, Green rules out the claim of any
government to demand unconditional obedience from its citizens.
2.4.4 Concept of Moral Freedom
According to Green, freedom is power ‘necessary to the fulfillment of man’s vocation
as a moral being’. This moral freedom links rights with the moral development of
man and looks at rights essentially from the moral point of view.
The theory of moral freedom has been criticized as being vague and
ambiguous. The conditions supposed to be aiming at the moral perfection of the
individuals cannot be assessed. Extreme idealists do great harm to freedom of the
individual by asking them to obey the state, implicitly without giving them the right to
criticize the state or to resist laws, which are bad and harmful to them. The rights of
the individual are made subordinate to the society. Green’s vision on freedom greatly
reflected the influence of political thinkers like Hegel and Kant. Green believed that
freedom was the greatest of all the blessings and a fundamental condition for the
moral development of the individual. It may be stated that for Green, the goal of
human life was not the search of external ends like pleasure or happiness, but the
moral development of life. He would like the individual to be left free to follow this
end and did not favour any state interference in this regard. However, he was in
favour of the state removing all those obstacles which stood in the way of the
individual’s moral development. But he was clearly against extreme state interference
or a paternal government.
For Green, man’s condition will be deplorable, if he does not have moral,
liberty or freedom. Moral liberty consists in acting in accordance with one’s rational
or real self. It is related with the self-realisation of the individual. It means freedom
to do things according to the dictates of one’s conscience. Political liberty and civil
liberty do not have much significance without moral liberty. Green paid much attention
to it. Thus, moral liberty has a meaning only in the context of the common good, and
it includes the good of each member and postulates free scope for the development
of his personality.

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 Green also agreed with Hegel’s view that freedom was something global and Kant, Hegel and Green
positive and could be realized only through contribution in the state. However, he did
not agree with Hegel that the state is the realization of freedom. Green by keeping
away from the two extreme views of Kant and Hegel steered through the middle
path and asserted that man free when he is in that ‘state in which he shall have NOTES
realized of himself, shall be at one with the law, which he be familiar with as the
which he ought to obey, shall have become all that he has it in him be, and so fulfil
the law of his being’. However, he asserted that freedom was not inevitable. It was
depended upon to the realization of self-consciousness. As he stated, ‘any direct
enforcement of outward conduct, which ought to flow from social interests, by
means threatened penalties and a law requiring such conduct essential implies
penalties for disobedience to it is interference with the spontaneous action of those
interests and consequently checks the growth of the capacity which is the condition
of the beneficial exercise rights’.
Since Green could not recognize either Hegel or Kant’s view of freedom in
its entirely, he had to find a justifiable basis for positive liberty which would shun the
extremes. Somehow he had to bring together what he considered sound in the stark
individualism of Bentham’s philosophy and the insight of the idealists. Green solved
this dilemma by developing the concept of positive freedom. By positive freedom
Green means ‘a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth
doing or enjoying and that too; something than we do or enjoy in common with
other’.
In short we can say that to Green freedom is amazingly positive. It is the
power of enjoying something worth doing or enjoying something in common with
others. Secondly, it is determinate and does not include freedom ‘to do anything and
everything’. It includes the pursuit of only those goals which make our lives better.
This point is fully borne by the following observation of Green. Green states that,
‘Social institutions render it possible for a man to be freely determined by the idea of
a possible satisfaction of himself, instead of being driven this way and that by external
forces, and thus they give reality to the ability called will and they enable him to
realize his reason, i.e. his idea of self- perfection by acting as a member of a social
organization, in which each contributes to the well-being of all the rest’.
In justifying moral freedom, Green believed that the freedom of self- realization
could be possible only through institution of certain universal and impartial rights
which could be enforced through the state. Therefore, he implies by right ‘the claim
on an individual to will his own ideal objects and developing his capacities of reason
and will’. According to Green, the basis of rights was not legal recognition but
common moral consciousness. In other words, he emphasized that right are more
relative to morality than law and were the essential condition for the fulfillment of
man’s moral end.
Green highlighted the social side of rights. To quote Green, ‘The capacity,
then, on the part of the individual of conceiving a good is the same for himself and
others, and of being determined to action by that conception, is the foundation of
rights; and rights are the conditions of that capacity being realized. No right is justifiable
or should be right except on the ground that directly or indirectly it serves this purpose.
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Kant, Hegel and Green Conversely every power should be a right, i.e., society should secure to individual
every power that is necessary for realizing this capacity.’ Thus no one could have
right except as a member of the society.
Green also rejected the concept of natural rights in so far as it implied the
NOTES existence of certain rights in the pre-social state. He asserted that there could be no
rights without recognition. However, in a different context he considers the rights as
natural. Thus, Green considered rights as natural for the realisation of the moral
capacities of man. Viewed in this context his natural rights were both broader and
deeper than the actual rights granted to the citizens by the states.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

7. What is the ultimate basis of Green’s philosophy?
8. Why did Green reject the social contract theory of the state?
9. For Green, what is the purpose of punishment?
10. According to Green’s philosophy, what is the principal function of the
state?

2.5 SUMMARY

 Kant’s theories resolved many of the divergences between 18th century

rationalist and empiricist traditions.
 Kant suggests that human understanding of the external world is based not
only on experience, rather it is based on experience as well as priori concepts.
Kant, therefore, provides a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy.
 Kant in his work Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, provided a
wide variety of conditions that he thinks are critical to end wars and create an
everlasting peace. One of the things that it encompassed was a world of
constitutional republics.
 Kant believes that incessant war will eventually result in rulers understanding
the importance of peaceful negotiations.
 In the entire tradition of western political theory of over two thousand years,
no other thinker has aroused as much controversy about the meaning of his
discourse as Hegel did.
 Hegel’s works were difficult to dissect and because of the critical nature of
his philosophy and the operation of the dialectics, the inner essence was
always vulnerable to more than one plausible interpretation.
 The debate as to whether Hegel was a conservative, a liberal or a totalitarian
continues till today.
 The credit of creating a philosophy of will, in the real sense, goes to Hegel.
 As a corrective to the extreme individualism of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the Hegelian philosophy emphasized the organic nature of society
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 and the fact that individuals had not only rights as over against other individuals Kant, Hegel and Green
but duties as well.
 Hegel’s political theory contained all the essential elements of fascism,
racialism, nationalism, the leadership principle, government by authority rather
than consent, and above all the idealization of power as the supreme text of NOTES
human values.
 The claim of Hegel that each sovereign state is sufficient for its members is
the greatest danger to modern civilization.
 Hegel lacked proper understanding of the role of science in changing the
societal process. His thesis was in itself a key expression of the history of his
time and place.
 The Hegelian political philosophy goes beyond the idealism of Kant and of
Fichte to embody a historical, evolutionary doctrine, which transforms the
will into an aspect of pure abstract intelligence.
 Hegel rejected the instrumentalist conception of the state as a political
community for the promotional and protection of individual aspirations and
ambitions.
 The Hegelian state did not permit individual judgment or choice. It emphasized
obedience.
 The basic problem with Hegel’s liberalism was that it was ambiguous and
placed a great deal of emphasis on the state.
 Hegel was too authoritarian to be a liberal and too liberal to be authoritarian.
He exerted considerable influence on subsequent political theory, particularly
Marxism and existentialism. He is considered the philosophical inspiration for
both communists and fascists.
 Thomas Green propagated the theory that ethics apply to peculiar conditions
of the social life.
 Thomas Hill Green was an English philosopher, political radical and temperance
reformer, and a member of British idealism movement that was born in
Yorkshire, England in 1836.
 Most of Green’s major works were published posthumously, including his lay
sermons on Faith and The Witness of God, the essay On the Different
Senses of ‘Freedom’ as Applied to Will and the Moral Progress of Man,
Prolegomena to Ethics, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation,
and the Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract. His
other famous book was Lectures on Liberal Legislations and Freedom of
Contract.
 Green also rejected the force theory of the origin of the state because it
makes the force as the very basis of the state. The basis of the state not
‘consent’, neither it is force, but it is will. This conception of his becomes
clearer when he analyses Austin’s definition of sovereignty.

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Kant, Hegel and Green  Green further recognized that the various permanent groups with society
have their own inner system of rights and that the right of the state over them
is one of adjustment.
 The state, Green insists is the only source of actual rights. He says idea rights
NOTES may be conceived which are not in the state; only when they are in it do they
become rights. Green’s state like Hegel’s, is a community of communities,
but again like Hegel’s there is no questions but that it is supreme over all the
communities it contains.
 Green believed that the state should foster and protect the social, political and
economic environments in which individuals will have the best chance of
acting according to their consciences.
 Green’s views on punishment are essentially related to his theory of state
action. In order to maintain conditions and remove obstacles, the state must
positively interfere with everything tending to violate conditions or impose
obstacles. It must use force to repeal a force which is opposed to freedom.
 According to Green, the primary object of punishment is not to cause pain to
the criminal for the sake of causing it nor chiefly for the sack of preventing
him from committing the crime again, but to associate terror with the
contemplation of the crime in the minds of others who might be tempted to
commit it.

2.6 KEY TERMS

 Cosmopolitanism: It is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their

political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community.
Different versions of cosmopolitanism envision this community in different
ways, some focusing on political institutions, others on moral norms or
relationships, and still others focusing on shared markets or forms of cultural
expression.
 Dialectic method: The method of argument for resolving disagreement that
is central to Indian and European philosophy is known as the dialectic method.
 Totalitarianism: A political system where the state, usually under the power
of a single political person, faction, or class recognizes no limits to its authority
and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible.
 Liberalism: The belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights is known
as liberalism.
 Retributivism: It is a policy or theory of criminal justice that advocates the
punishment of criminals in retribution for the harm they have inflicted.
 Subserve: It means to help to further or promote.

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 Kant, Hegel and Green
2.7 ANSWERS TO ‘CHECK YOUR PROGRESS’

1. There were two interconnected foundations of Kant’s ‘critical philosophy’.

These were: NOTES
 Epistemology of transcendental idealism
 Moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason
2. Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a
single community based on a shared morality.
3. Hegelian idealism is often referred to as absolute idealism because it provides
us with a set of categories in terms of which all human experiences of the
past and the present can be understood.
4. The state, according to Hegel, was the representative of the divine idea or
divine purpose.
5. According to Hegel, freedom consists in obedience to the dictates of social
morality, to the moral will of the community.
6. Hegel’s concept of freedom was based on the old Greek idea of an individual
finding his true self, freedom and personality in and through the state.
7. The ultimate basis of his philosophy is to be found in the writings of Plato and
Aristotle.
8. Green’s rejection of the social contract theory was based on the reason that
it makes the state a voluntary association.
9. The purpose of punishment is not to punish moral wickedness; rather its
purpose is the ‘protection of rights, and the association of terror with their
violations’.
10. The principal function of the state is to secure the common good as conceived
and defined by its citizens.

2.8 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short-Answer Questions
1. What does Kant mean when he refers to cosmopolitan rights?
2. What is Kant’s notion of judgement?
3. What influenced Green’s political philosophy?
4. Write in brief about the early life of Hegel.
5. Hegel’s dialectic method is the crux of his philosophy. Elucidate.
6. What was Green’s concept of political obligation?
7. What is Green’s concept of moral freedom?

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Kant, Hegel and Green Long-Answer Questions
1. Examine Kant’s idea of perpetual peace.
2. For Kant, freedom is the basis of the state. Discuss.
NOTES 3. Explain Hegel’s idea on the state and freedom of the individual.
4. According to Hegel, the state is an individual in history. Explain.
5. Discuss Hegel’s concept of individual freedom in your own words.
6. Write a brief note on Green’s idea of state.
7. Explain how Green interpreted the purpose of punishment.

2.9 FURTHER READING

Sullivan, J. Roger. 1989. Immanuel Kant’s Moral Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2008. Critique of Judgement. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Wempe, Ben. 2004. T.H. Green’s Theory of Positive Freedom: From Metaphysics
to Political Theory. Exeter: Imprint Academic.
Cater, Matt. 2004. T.H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism. Exeter:
Imprint Academic.
Beiser, Frederick. 2005. Hegel. New York: Routledge.
Coleman, Janet. 2000. A History of Political Thought. New Delhi: Wiley-Blackwell.
Wolff, Jonathan. 2006. An Introduction to Political Philosophy. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, India.
Strauss, Leo, Joseph Cropsey. 1987. A History of Political Philosophy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Miller, David, Janet Coleman, William Connolly [Link]. 1991. The Blackwell
Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. New Delhi: Wiley-Blackwell.

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 Burke, Marx and Lenin

UNIT 3 BURKE, MARX AND LENIN

Structure NOTES
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Unit Objectives
3.2 Edmund Burke
3.2.1 Critique of the French Revolution
3.2.2 Political Ideas
3.3 Karl Marx
3.3.1 Brief Life Sketch
3.3.2 Dialectical Materialism
3.3.3 Historical Materialism
3.3.4 The State and Revolution
3.3.5 Social Revolution
3.4 Vladimir Lenin
3.4.1 Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
3.4.2 Theory of Party
3.4.3 Socialism in One Country
3.5 Summary
3.6 Key Terms
3.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
3.8 Questions and Exercises
3.9 Further Reading

3.0 INTRODUCTION

For over 150 years the world has been challenged by a system of thought known as
Marxism. Marxism has questioned the basis of class society in general and capitalist
society in particular, and it was the foundation of a new kind of state, namely, a
socialist state. A socialist state is a structured and organized economy where all
means of production are controlled by the government. It is a state formed on the
basis of centralized economic planning for the welfare of the masses. Two of the
most outstanding proponents of this system of thought were Karl Marx of Germany
and V. I. Lenin of Russia. Marx, the proponent of Marxism, discovered the law of
class contradiction and declared that, without a revolution of the proletariat, there
cannot be an end of exploitation of the working people. Lenin gave an organizational
shape to this doctrine by setting up a revolutionary party that captured power in
Czarist Russia and transformed it into a socialist state. We will study the thoughts of
both of these philosophers in this unit. However, the unit will begin with a discussion
on the British philosopher and political theorist Edmund Burke.
Today, Burke is considered to be the philosophical founder of English
Conservatism. During his time, he was a staunch supporter of the American
Revolution and the removal of discriminatory laws against Catholics in Britain. At
the same time, and contradictorily, he was also a fierce critic of the French Revolution.
In India, Burke is best known for his role as the prosecutor for the impeachment of
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Burke, Marx and Lenin the First Governor-General of Bengal Warren Hastings. The unit will discuss Edmund
Burke’s political ideas as well as his critique of the French Revolution.

3.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

NOTES
After going through this unit, you will be able to:
 Discuss Edmund Burke’s political ideas
 Describe Burke’s critique of the French Revolution
 Explain Karl Marx’s tenets of Marxism
 Examine the Marxist concept of historical and dialectical materialism
 Discuss the Marxist concept of the state
 Describe Lenin’s theory of imperialism

3.2 EDMUND BURKE

Edmund Burke was a British conservative thinker from the 18th century. He is
perhaps best known for his vehement criticism the French Revolution of 1789. At
the same time, he was a supporter of the American Revolution against English
injustices as well as a critique of the policies of the East India Company in India.
The core of his philosophical ideas was the promotion and retention of customary
social institutions.
Scholars trace Burke’s conservatism to his reaction to the events surrounding
the French Revolution of 1789. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790) is still considered to be the archetypical declaration of conservatism. Burke
argued that the revolutionaries in France and the British radicals of his day, who
were calling for worldwide voting rights and the elimination of the monarchy, had a
mistaken faith in reason and conceptual ideas. For them, a simple belief in natural
rights, or freedom and equality, was enough basis for improvement existing
governments. For Burke, such radicals and revolutionaries undervalued the
complication of organizations and the depth of their roots in history and tradition.
Burke was distrustful of all intellectuals who sought to generate an ideal new political
order instead of becoming compliant to what history had shaped. In Burke’s view,
unfairness and unhappiness are best defeated through gradual processes of
improvement and reform, not through critical revolutionary transformation.
3.2.1 Critique of the French Revolution
Burke’s critique of the French revolution took the form of a comprehensive letter
written to a young man named Charles DePont, who had asked Burke for his view
on the revolution. This is how Reflections on the Revolution in France came into
being. It first appeared in print on 1 November, 1790 and sold twelve thousand
copies in the first month alone. By 1796, over thirty thousand copies had been put on

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the market, making it one of the most powerful political books published at that time. Burke, Marx and Lenin
The French Revolution resulted in the annihilation of the French monarchy, the
recognition of France as a republic, and was followed by decades of violent political
turmoil known as the Reign of Terror. It finally culminated in the dictatorship of
Napoleon Bonaparte, who brought many of the founding ideals of the revolution, NOTES
namely Liberty, Equally, Fraternity, to different corners of Western Europe and posed
a challenge to old feudal monarchies throughout the European continent.
The French Revolution put an end to many of the laws that exploited the
common people for the benefit for the minority wealthy aristocracy. The Revolution
eliminated ‘tithes’ owed to local churches as well as feudal dues billed to local
landlords. The revolution also resulted in the abolishment of the guild system, which
the revolutionaries considered a ‘worthless remainder of feudalism’. The revolution
also did away with the highly inefficient system of tax farming, whereby private
individuals would gather taxes for a hefty fee. However, many of the progressive
laws passed failed to provide relief to the people due to corruption and inefficiency
which followed the general chaos of the revolution.
In Britain, an overwhelming majority opposed the French Revolution. In fact,
Britain led and supported a series of coalitions that fought France from 1793 to
1815, and then helped re-established the Bourbons aristocracy in France after
Bonaparte’s defeat. Despite the apparent injustices committed by the French
aristocracy on the French people, Burke argued against the French Revolution. In
spite of this, he considered the main evils that led to the French Revolution to be
‘bottomless money owing, competition between social classes, and the unlawful
behavior of the king’.
The main argument that Burke makes against the Revolution is that it was
based on abstract ambiguous principles, which for him ignored the complexities of
human nature and society. For Burke, it was important to focus on practical and
tangible solutions instead of aiming for abstract ideals. As Burke write, ‘What is the
use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon
the method of procuring and administering them. In this deliberation I shall always
advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor’.
Although an opponent of the divine right of monarchs to rule and a firm believer in
the right of people to throw out an unjust ruler, Burke advocated gradual changes
and reform rather than radical revolution. Burke in Reflections firmly asserts that
idealist proclamations like ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ and the rights of man can
be used by unscrupulous men to justify tyranny. Instead of such ambiguous idealist
principles, he advocates rights based on principle and tradition, such as the Magna
Carta and the 1689 Declaration of Rights enacted in the British Parliament, and
other constitutional measures to guard against governmental injustices.
Many of the predictions that Burke made in Reflections proved to be true.
The revolution in spite of its revolutionary ideals resulted in general chaos and a
period known as the ‘Reign of Terror’ began in France. This reign of terror ended
with the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.

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Burke, Marx and Lenin 3.2.2 Political Ideas
As you have learned, today, Burke is considered to be the philosophical founder of
conservatism. However, during his lifetime, he became a member of parliament
NOTES from the Whig Party, a largely liberal dispensation. After his death, he was praised
by both English conservatives and liberals alike. Burke’s friend Philip Francis writing
about Burke after his death said that Burke ‘was a man who truly & prophetically
foresaw all the consequences which would rise from the adoption of the French
principles’ but since Burke wrote with passion, people doubted his arguments. The
poet William Wordsworth criticized Burke after reading his views of the French
Revolution, however, he later came to admire Burke as a politician who whose
predictions ‘time has verified’. On the other hand, Karl Marx wrote a devastating
critic of Burke, especially his contradictory positions in regards to the American and
the French Revolution.
Marx wrote, ‘The sycophant (Burke)—who in the pay of the English oligarchy
played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as,
in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles,
he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar
bourgeois. Burke wrote “The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and
therefore the laws of God.” No wonder that, true to the laws of God and Nature, he
always sold himself in the best market.’
Burke was an Irish political elite. His thoughts on politics must be seem
corresponding to the ideas of the members of his class. The Irish educated elite in
the 18th century, which was a tiny minority, generally believed in the improvement of
masses in the widest possible sense. What this meant was that they linked self-
improvement through the guidance of the arts and sciences, and through the
improvement of intellectual skills, alongside morality and economic prosperity. This
elite believed that it was the duty of the elites to guide the masses towards their self-
improvement, an idea that Burke retained throughout his life. Any other way of
improving the life of the masses would lead to violence. These general ideas lie
behind Burke’s political theories.
As a Member of Parliament, Burke believed that it was the responsibility of
the elected political representative to act like representative of his constituency and
not as a mere delegate obeying all whims and fancies of his constituents. The elected
representative must keep in mind the interests of the nation based on his conscience
and not think about his electoral prospects while taking decisions.
In his political philosophy, Burke represents a decisive break from the ideas
of John Locke, who had dominated the political theories of the 18th century. Burke
attacked the individualistic doctrine of the ‘rights of man’ inherited from Locke,
considering it totally ambiguous. Disagreeing with the social contract theory, and the
belief that states form on the basis of contracts between free individuals, Burke
states that the individual is a product of society. For Burke, the individual is born with
an ‘inheritance of rights’ but also has a set of corresponding duties. Burke argued
that societies are not formed on the basis of contract, but because they are needed.
The factors that shape society are not pre-conceived abstract inherited rights, but
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rather ‘convenience’. Of these conveniences or rights, two of the most important Burke, Marx and Lenin
are government and prescription, i.e., the existence of ‘a power out of themselves
by which the will of individuals may be controlled,’ and the acknowledgement of the
hallowed nature of prescription.
Burke believes that no matter how a state may have been formed, because NOTES
of invasions or revolutions, because of time the institutions and rights of the state
come to rest upon prescription. Without a state people are vague, loose individuals
and nothing more. Thus, no individual has the right to rebel against a state at will.
Rebellion is always to be used as the last resort. He calls revolution as the ‘extreme
medicine of the constitution’ that must only be undertaken when some rights have
been infringed. And only when after weighing the pros and cons of such drastic
action.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. What is the core of Edmund Burke’s philosophical ideas?
2. What is Burke’s principal argument against the French Revolution?

3.3 KARL MARX

As you have studied previously, in the 19th century Hegel’s influence on philosophy
was such that later philosophers in Germany came to be divided into left-wing and
right-wing Hegelians. The left-wing Hegelians included Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels
and Marx. They were also referred to as the Young Hegelians.
While Marx remained a relatively obscure figure in his own lifetime, his ideas
play a significant role in both the development of modern social sciences and also in
the socialist political movement. In the 20th century, revolutionary socialist governments
following Marxist concepts took power in a variety of countries leading to the
formation of socialist states like the Soviet Union. The 20th century also saw the
development of various theoretical variants of Marxism, such as Leninism, Trotskyism
and Maoism. Marx’s notable works include the Communist Manifesto (1848) and
Das Kapital (1867–1894), many of which were co-written with his friend, the fellow
German revolutionary socialist Friedrich Engels. Marx lived in a time where there
were a lot of industrial jobs, and he noticed that there was a big difference between
the quality of life led by property owners and the workers. Marx argued that there
would always be a big gap between property owners and those without property as
long as capitalism existed. The reason was that the point of a business, in a capitalist
system, is to make money. The only way for a business to make money is to pay a
worker less than what he brings to the company. Marx noticed this trend in capitalism,
and believed it was exploitation. He wanted to share that argument with the world,
and he so he laid it out in the Communist Manifesto.
The foundational principles on which Marx based his ideas can be seen in the
carved engraving on his tombstone in London, which bear the messages: ‘WORKERS
OF ALL LANDS UNITE’, and ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world
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Burke, Marx and Lenin in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.’ Today, Marx is typically cited,
along with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects
of modern social science. In a 1999 BBC poll, Marx was voted the ‘thinker of the
millennium’ by people around the world.
NOTES
3.3.1 Brief Life Sketch
Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5th March 1818 in the city of Trier in the Rhineland
province of Prussia into a Jewish family. His father was a moderately well-to-do
lawyer. Marx’s parents were descendants of a long line of Jewish rabbis. However,
his father became a protestant Christian when Marx was six years old. Marx was
also baptized in that faith and changed his middle name from Hirschel to Heinrich.
In 1835, when Marx was seventeen years of age, he began the study of law at the
University of Bonn. However, he soon abandoned the study of law in favour of
philosophy, the study of which he pursued at the University of Berlin and Jena in
1836. He changed his course to philosophy under the influence of the Young Hegelians.
As you learned earlier, Marx had become an active member of Young Hegelians
while he was a student but soon shifted his interest to humanism and ultimately to
scientific socialism. He was also influenced by some of the major movements of his
times.
During Marx’s formative years, the idea of evolution was very much in the
air in one form or the other. One of the versions of it was articulated by Hegel
(Evolution of Absolute Idea or Spirit) while another version was propounded by
Charles Darwin in his famous book Origin of Species. Marx, though accepted
some of the themes propounded by these writers, he also rejected many of them.
He offered an alternative theory of historical evolution which is called the theory of
dialectical materialism. Marx also had polemical arguments with many of his
contemporaries which included Proudhon and Bakunin and various socialist groups.
Marx completed his doctorate in philosophy in 1841. He then married his childhood
sweetheart, Jenny, a daughter of Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, who was his spiritual
guide since his adolescence, in 1843 after a seven year period of courtship. Following
this, he was unable to secure a University appointment as a teacher. Therefore, he
joined the staff of the Rheinnische Zietung, a democratic newspaper in Cologne.
The following year the paper was suppressed by the Prussian Government and
Marx was forced to flee to Paris, then considered the European headquarters of
radical movements. In Paris, he met Proudhan, the leading French socialist thinker,
Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, and Friedrich Engels, who soon became his lifelong
companion and close collaborator. Engels was the first to draw the attention of
Marx to England as a laboratory in which industrial capitalism could be accurately
observed.
To understand Marx’s fascination with industrial capitalism, one must look at
the socioeconomic, political, cultural and intellectual universe which Marx encountered
and entered as a young liberal idealist in western Germany in the mid-late 1830s.
Marx grew up in a society in which a developing industrial economy, based on
modern technology, both confronted and coexisted with a political and cultural complex
inherited from the late medieval world. The year Marx graduated the equivalent of
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high school, in 1835, the first railroad was launched in Germany. In 1837, August Burke, Marx and Lenin
Borsig founded a subsequently famous machinery works in that German city. At the
same time, despite its liberal mask, the Prussian state was an oppressive absolute
monarchy. When the Prussian king died in 1840 and was succeeded by his religious
son, an even more repressive policy toward academic and intellectual life was NOTES
instituted. One consequence was that Marx left Germany and moved to Paris, which
was then the center of the communist and socialist movements. It was then and
there that Marx himself became a communist.
Marx first entered the political scene in 1837 as part of a radical intellectual
circle called the Left Hegelians or Young Hegelians. In 1843, Marx published an
important work in which he called for eliminating the “Middle Ages” in Germany
because the heritage of the Middle Ages was so strongly present in the Germany of
the day. In 1844, while Marx was in Paris, he became interested in the working
class movement and political economy. During that period, Marx and Engels began
working on the German Ideology (1847). Marx was expelled from France in 1845
by the intervention of the Prussian Government, following which he went to Brussels.
It was there that Karl Marx with the aid of his friend Friedrich Engels composed the
most influential of all his writings The Communist Manifesto. Marx actively
participated in the revolutions that took place in France and Germany in 1848; thus,
in 1849 he was expelled again by the Prussian Government. In the late summer of
1849, he went to London where he became a permanent resident for the rest of his
life. In 1848, Marx and Engels helped in the founding of the Communist League,
which existed till 1950. He worked and studied in the British museum from 1850–
1860. In September 1864, Marx was an active member in the formation of the
International Working Men’s Association in London. After moving to London Marx
began contributing articles on the German situation to the New York Daily Tribune.
Some of his other major works included The Holy Family, Poverty of Philosophy
(1847), Critique of Political Economy (1859) and Das Capital, the first volume of
which appeared in 1867. Marx died on March 14, 1883.
3.3.2 Dialectical Materialism
In the Theses on Feuerbach (first published as an appendix to the 1888 edition of
Engels’ Ludwig Feurbach), Marx led the foundation for what he called dialectical
materialism. According to Engels, dialectic is nothing more than the science of the
general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.
Thought itself is a natural process, acting upon and being acted upon by the natural
environment in which it takes place. It is impossible to transcend the natural process
– there are, ‘the general laws of motion and development’ and that is all.
Marx borrowed his dialectical method from German philosopher, G. W. H.
Hegel and sought to combine it with his materialism. Hegel has postulated that
‘idea’ or ‘consciousness’ was the essence of universe, and that all social institutions
were the manifestation of changing forms of idea. Ideas evolved into new forms
because of their inherent tension, exemplified in the clash between thesis (partial
truth) and anti-thesis (again a partial truth) resulting in synthesis (which is nearer the
truth). As long as synthesis itself contains partial truth, it takes the role of thesis and
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Burke, Marx and Lenin undergoes the same process until this process reaches absolute truth, exemplified in
‘absolute idea’ or ‘absolute consciousness’. In Hegelian philosophy, dialectics applied
to the process, evolutions and development of history. He viewed history as the
progressive manifestation of human reason, and the development of a historical
NOTES spirit. History recorded increasing awareness and greater rationality as exhibited in
human affairs. Human consciousness and freedom expanded as a result of conflicting
intellectual forces, which were constantly under tension. Hegel believed in a
movement from a rudimentary state of affairs to a perfect form. The process of
history, for Hegel was marked by two kinds of causation:
 Individual spirit which desired happiness and provided energy
 World spirit which strived for higher freedom that came with the knowledge
of the self
However, though Marx agreed with Hegel that there was a constant movement
in the dialectical process he believed that ‘matter’ and not the ‘idea’ as the essence
of universe, and the social institutions were the manifestation of changing material
conditions. Matter undergoes the dialectical process because of its inherent tensions,
until perfect material conditions, exemplified by a ‘rational mode of production’ come
into existence. Marx emphasized the real rather than the ideal, the social rather than
the intellectual, matter rather than mind. For Marx, the key idea was not the history
of philosophy, but the history of economic production and the social relation that
accompanied it. Marx acknowledged Hegel’s great contributions, which was to
recognize world history as a process- changing, transforming and developing — and
to understand the internal connection between the movement and its development.
From Hegel, Marx also learned that various angles of the developmental process
could not be studied in isolation, but in their relations with one another and with the
process as a whole. Hegel applied dialectics to the realm of ideas. However, Marx
as a materialist believed that consciousness was determined by life, and not the
other way around. Unlike the latent conservatism and idealism of Hegelian philosophy,
Marxism rejected the status quo – capitalism – as intolerable. For Marx, social
circumstances socially changed, with no social system lasting forever. Capitalism
arose under certain historical circumstances, which would disappear in due course
of time. Thus, Marx, like Hegel, continued to believe that dialectics was a powerful
tool. It offered a law of social development and in that sense Marx’s social philosophy
was a philosophy of history like Hegel’s.
Engels, in his book, Anti-Duhring (1878) postulated three laws of material
dialectics or dialectical materialism, which are as follows:
(i) Transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa
(ii) Interpretation of opposites
(iii) Negation of negations
These principles signify the process of resolving contradictions of material
conditions of human life which pave the way for social progress. Class conflict is
also a manifestation of this process.

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 Karl Marx does not systematically explain his theory of dialectical materialism Burke, Marx and Lenin
anywhere in his works. However, he makes it clear that his materialism is dialectical
not mechanical. In mechanical materialism, evolution is the path taken by material
things under the pressure of their environment. In dialectical materialism, evolution
is the development of matter from within, with the environment helping or hindering, NOTES
but neither originating the evolutionary process, nor capable of preventing it from
reaching its inevitable goal. Motion in dialectical materialism is the mode of existence
of matter. The ultimate reality in matter is motion. Moreover, this is a dialectical
process, the reconciliation of opposing movements in an endless effort to achieve a
more perfect harmony. Matter to the dialectical materialist is active not passive and
moves by an inner necessity of its nature. It contains within itself the energy necessary
to transform it. Matter is self-moving or self-determining. The universe is self-
sufficient, self-creating and self- perpetuating. Hegel explained the dialectical process
as the activity of god in the world, Marx borrows the ‘energy’ from Hegel’s immanent
god in the world, dissociates it from god and locates it in matter itself. The dialectical
materialism is more interested in motion than in matter, in a vital energy within
matter in veritably deriving it towards perfect society just as Hegel’s demi-urge
drove forward to the perfect realization of spirit. As Engel said, ‘the dialectical
method grasps things and their images, ideas, essentially in their sequence, their
movement, their birth and death’.
3.3.3 Historical Materialism
While dialectical materialism represents the philosophical bases of Marxism, historical
materialism represents its scientific basis. It implies that in any given epoch, the
economic relations of society – the means whereby men and women undertake
production, distribution and exchange of material goods for the satisfaction of their
needs – play an important role, in shaping their social, political, intellectual and ethical
relationships. Marx applied dialectics to the material or social world consisting of
economic production and exchange. A study of the productive process explained all
other historical phenomena. Marx noted that each generation inherited a mass of
productive forces, an accumulation of capital and a set of social relations which
reflected these productive forces. The new generation modified these forces, but at
the same time, these forces prescribed certain forms of life, and shaped human
character and thought in distinct ways. The mode of production and exchange was
the final cause of all social changes and political revolutions. Marx considered matter
as being active, capable of changing from within. It was not passive, needing an
external stimulus for change, a conception found in Hobbes.
The theory begins with the ‘simple truth, which is the clue to the meaning of
history that man must eat to live’. His very survival depends upon the success with
which he can produce what he wants from nature. Production is, therefore, the
most important of all human activities. Men in association produce more than men in
isolation, and society is thus the result of an attempt to secure the necessities of life.
But society has never accomplished that to the satisfaction of all its members, and
has in consequence, always been subject to internal stresses and strains. The Marxian
interpretation of human history is economic. Marx saw evolutionary changes in the
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Burke, Marx and Lenin ethical, religious, social, economic, and political ideas and institutions of mankind.
According to him, institutions and ideas, and therefore, action are subject to endless
change. The chief motive force which brings about this change in human beings is
not the Hegelian idea but the material conditions of life. Human history, therefore,
NOTES has a material basis.
The Marxist perspective postulates that the structure of society may be
understood in terms of its base (the foundation) and superstructure (the external
build-up). The base consists of the mode of production while the superstructure is
represented by its legal and political structure, religion, morals, social practices,
literature, art and culture etc. The mode of production has two components—forces
of production and relations of production. Forces of production cannot remain static;
they have an inherent tendency of development in the direction of achieving the
perfect society. Forces of production have two components—means of production
(tools and equipments) and labour power (human knowledge and skills). Men and
women constantly endeavour to devise better ways of production. Improvement in
the means of production is manifested in the development of technology. This is
matched by development of human knowledge and skills as required to operate the
new technology. Hence, there is the corresponding development of labour power.
On the other hand, relations of production in any given epoch are given by the
pattern of ownership of means of social production. This gives rise to two containing
classes – haves and have-notes.
Marx talked of four stages of human history—ancient times, medieval times,
modern times and future society based on communism. In earlier stages of historical
development, development of the forces of production fails to make any dent in the
pattern of ownership. In other words, changes in the mode of production bring about
changes in the nature of contending classes but they do not bring about an end of the
class conflict. Change in the nature of contending classes is itself brought about by
a social revolution. When material productive forces of society come in conflict with
the existing relations of production, these relations turn into their fetters. The new
social class which comes to own new means of production, feels constrained by
these fetters and overthrows the old dominant class in a revolution. As a result of
social revolution, an old social formation is replaced by a new social formation. In
this process, world contending classes are replaced by new contending classes but
class conflict continuous on a new plan. This has been the case still the rise of
capitalism, which will be overthrown by a socialist revolution leading to the eventual
emergence of classless society.
Marx, in his analysis of history, mentioned the important role of ideology in
perpetuating false consciousness among people, and demarcated the stages which
were necessary for reaching the goal of communism. In that sense both the
‘bourgeoisie’ (the capitalist wealth owning class) and the proletariat (the working
class) were performing their historically destined roles. In spite of the deterministic
interpretation of history, the individual had to play a very important role within the
historical limits of his time, and actively hasten the process.
Marx had a very powerful moral content in his analysis, and asserted that the
progress was not merely inevitable, but would usher in a perfect society free of
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alienation, exploitation and deprivation. His materialistic conception of history emphasis Burke, Marx and Lenin
the practical side of human activity, rather than speculative thought as the moving
force of history. In the famous speech, Engels claimed that Marx made two major
discoveries—the law of development of human history and the law of capitalist
development. NOTES
3.3.4 The State and Revolution
Marx critically dissected the Hegelian theory of the modern state and its institutions
in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843). According to Marx, Hegel’s
separation of civil society and the state was only relevant in his perception of a
particular historical context. The state was not eternal. It would eventually disappear.
Marx contended that the state was not ‘a march of god on Earth’ as Hegel described,
but an instrument of the dominant economic class exploiting and oppressing the
other sections of society. Marx rejected the dichotomy between civil society and the
state in Hegelian philosophy, and concluded that the state and bureaucracy did not
represent universal interests.
Marxism advocated the class perspective of the state. It treats the state
neither as a ‘natural institution’ nor as an ‘ethical institution’ as the organic theory
has held. It treats the state as an artificial device that is neither a manifestation of
the will of the people, nor as an instrument of reconciliation of conflicting interests.
According to the class theory, the state comes into existence when society is divided
into two antagonistic classes, one owning the means of social production and the
other being constraint to live on its labour. In other words, it is the emergence of
‘private property’ that divides society into two conflicting classes. Those owning the
means of production acquire the power to dominate the other class not only in the
economic sphere but in all spheres of life. In an antagonistic class society the state
is a political instrument, ‘a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another’.
The economically dominant class that possessed the means of production acquires a
powerful instrument for the subjection of the oppressed and exploited in the state.
The state has a clearly defined class character. Being the principal component of
the superstructure founded on the economic basis of society, the state takes every
measure to strengthen and protect this basis.
With the emergence of ‘private property’, society is divided into ‘dominant’
and ‘dependent’ classes. The dominant class, in order to maintain its stronghold on
economic power, invents a new form of power – political power. The state is the
embodiment of political power. It is therefore, essentially subservient to economic
power. Thus, according to the class theory, the state neither originates in the will of
the people, nor does it stand for the benefit of all society, but is an instrument devised
by a dominant class for its own benefit. It is imposed on society from above to serve
the interest of a particular class. The state has not existed from eternity. It came into
existence at a particular stage of historical development. It is a product of the
conscious effort of the dominant class which first acquires the means of production
and there after political power. The state is therefore, by no means, a natural institution
as the organic theory has maintained.

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Burke, Marx and Lenin Marx further observes that at a later stage, when the means of production
are somewhat developed, that is, when the hunting, fishing and food-gathering
economy is replaced by an economy based on animal husbandry, domestic agriculture
and small industry, there is ‘surplus production’ which is cornered by a class owning
NOTES the means of production. As a result, ‘dominant’ and ‘dependent’ classes come into
existence. The structure of society is always determined by the prevalent form of
production. The hand-mill gives one a society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill
gives one a society with the industrial capitalist. The attitudes and outlook of society
– the legal, political and intellectual relations as well as the religious and social
systems are also determined by the material conditions of life. This means that
whatever the form of the state, it is invariably an instrument of the dominant class.
Bourgeois ideologists claim that the state does not have a class character and
is merely an arbiter called upon to resolve disputes which arise between people
regardless of their class affiliation. Such a theory of the state solved to justify the
privileges of the bourgeois and the existence of exploitation and capitalism. Marx
and Engels, in the Communist Manifesto (1848), observed, ‘Political power, properly
called is, merely the organized power of one class for oppressing other’. Thus, in
contrast to bourgeois ideologists, Marx demonstrated that the state is not something
introduced into society from outside, but is a product of society’s internal development.
The state was brought into being by changes in material production. The succession
of one mode of production by other causes a change in the state system. According
to Marx, the state has not always existed. Primitive society which had no private
property and no classes had no state either. Naturally there were certain social
functions, but they were performed by men chosen by all of society which had the
right to dismiss these people at any time and to appoint others. In those distant times
relations between people were regulated by public opinion. However, the further
development of productive force, led to the disintegration of primitive society. Private
property appeared, accompanied by classes – slaves and slave-owners. It became
necessary to protect private property, the role and security of its owners, and this
brought the state into being. The birth of the state and its further development were
accompanied by a fierce class struggle. It is, thus, evident that the state is a product
of class society. It arose with the appearance of classes and it will vanish with the
disappearance of classes. But this will happen only under communism. The alternative
that Marx envisaged was a classless, stateless society of true democracy and full of
communism, in which the political state disappeared.
According to the Marxist view, the main feature of the state is the existence
of public authority representing the interest of the class which dominates economically
and not of the entire population. This authority rests on the armed forces – the army
and the police. In a society divided into hostile classes, the armed forces are in the
hands of the ruling class and are used to suppress the people, to subordinate theme
to a handful of exploiters. Representative bodies (parliaments), the huge bureaucratic
machine with a whole army of official, intelligence agency, the courts, procurators
offices and prisons – are all used for the same purpose. All of them combined make
of the political authority of the exploiting state.

90 Self-Instructional Material
 As class contradictions deepen and the class struggle intensifies, the state Burke, Marx and Lenin
machinery expands. The process is particularly intensive in contemporary capitalist
society where the state machine and the armed forces have grown to an
unprecedented size. The maintenance of these colossal state machine and the armed
forces is a heavy burden for the people, especially when imperialist circles are NOTES
engaged in an arms race. The state, therefore, is ‘an executive committee of the
bourgeoisie’ serving the interest of the capitalist class; this state will have no reason
for existence in a classless society. A classless society based upon the doctrine
‘from everyone according to his ability and to everyone according to his needs, will
come into existence’. According to Marx, the state, regardless of the forms of
government, is an evil, because it is a product of a society saddled with irreconcilable
class struggles. It belongs to the realm of the super structure, as it was conditioned
and determined by its economic base. In the course of history, each mode of
production would give rise to its specific political organization, which would further
the interest of the economically dominant class.
For Marx and Engel, the state expressed human alienation. It was an instrument
of class exploitation and class oppression, as in a state, the economically dominate
class exploited and oppressed the economically weaker class. The state apparatus
served the ruling class, but acquired independence and became autonomous when
adversarial classes were in a state of temporary equilibrium. This phenomenon was
described as Bonapartism. In such a situation, the dictator with the support of the
state apparatus became its guardian.
In his book Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Marx
denounced the bureaucratic and all-powerful state advising the proletariat to destroy
it. Thus, Marx advocated a violent revolutionary seizure of power and the establishment
of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, in countries with democratic
institutions, the transition from capitalism to socialism could be peaceful. Marx and
Engels elaborated that a communist society would eliminate all forms of alienation
for the human individual from nature, from society and from humanity. It does not
merely mean consumer satisfaction, but the abolition of all forms of estrangement,
the liberation of human forces and enhancement of personal creativity. The institution
of private property and division of labour identified as the source of alienation would
be destroyed as a pre requisite for the new and truly human phase in history. Marx
and Engels viewed the proletariat as an agent and not as a tool in history, and their
liberation would result in the liberation of society.
The transitional phase, the phase between the destruction of the bourgeois
state and the inauguration of a communist state or society, symbolized by the
dictatorship of the proletariat, generated a great deal of controversy in Marxist
political theory. Interestingly, one of the well-known utopias was the least delineated.
Marx’s cautious productions were imposed by his own epistemological premises.
The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat held the key to the understanding
of Marx’s theory on the nature of communist society and the role of proletarian
state. Marx and Engels spoke about the political rule of the proletariat, advising the
workers to capture the state, destroy all privileges of the old class, and prepare for
the eventual disappearance of the state. Marx and Engels were convinced that
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Burke, Marx and Lenin existing state whether as instruments of class domination and oppression, or ruled
by bureaucratic forces on the whole of society, would grow inherently strong and
remain minority states representing the interests of the small, dominant and powerful
possessing class. It was only when the proletarian majority ceased the states structure
NOTES that the state became truly democratic and majoritarian. Irrespective of the form
the state assumed, it was a fight with which the proletariat had to contend with
during the revolution.
3.3.5 Social Revolution
On the basis of the scientific analysis of the system of capitalism, Marx had declared
that a social revolution was inevitable. Revolution was certain to come because the
forces of discontent would eventually accumulate and break through all obstacles.
Marx had no doubt about the inevitability of revolution but questions remained as to
how it would come and what would follow. For these questions, Marx had definite
answers. For Marx, the proletariat had to organise for political action and make
revolution. The Communist Manifesto declared that all the presiding classes that
got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society
at large to their conditions of appropriation. In such a scenario, the working class
could not become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing
their previous mode of appropriation.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the
interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent
movement of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of the society,
cannot stir, cannot rise itself of without the whole super incumbent strata of official
society being sprung into the air. Therefore, the first step in the revolution by the
working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the
battle of democracy.
According to Marx, social progress would have to come about through a
violent struggle between the classes. By progress, Marx meant the expansion of the
productive capacity of both society and individual human beings. This would ultimately
lead to greater freedom and equalities and to the realization of man’s capacity. Marx
observes the dramatic conflict of classes, intensified during a period of social upheaval,
reached its climax in a political revolution. The fundamental cause of any revolution
was the desire and endeavour of a subject class to capture state power from the
ruling class by force and to reorganize the state apparatus to suit its own specific
needs. The final struggle takes place in the political realm by social and economic
objective which divide the warring class formation are really the true cause of
revolution. A successful revolution would remove those social, economic and political
institutions which obstruct the development of the class for whose benefit the
revolution has been carried out.
The Marxist Theory of Revolution is the consequence and the concentrated
expression of Marx’s view of historical development, that is to say, of the sequence
of social formation in history. He saw the driving force of social development in the
historical tendency towards establishing property relations which corresponded to
the level of development and character of the technique used in production at a
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particular period. Marx found the key to understand the sequence of the various Burke, Marx and Lenin
modes of production in the law of motion, which was activated by social classes
whose interest coincided with the developing tendency. For Marx, social revolution
is an ongoing process in which causes and effect are dialectically related. According
to Marx, ‘in the social production of their life, men enter into definite relation that are NOTES
indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond
to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces…..At a certain
stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict
with the existing relations of production, or what is but a legal expression for the
same thing – with the property relation within which they have been at work hitherto.
From forms of development of the productive forces relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an epoch of social revolution.’ Marx also observed that, ‘what is the
basis of a partial, purely political revolution? It is that a part of civil society emancipates
itself and attains universal domination, that a particular class undertakes the general
emancipation of the society from its particular situations. This class frees the whole
of society but only under the pre-supposition that the whole of society is in the same
situation as this class, that it possesses, or can equally acquire for example, money
and education.’
It is necessary to remember that Marx emphasized the human causes of
revolution. He said, ‘of all the instrument of production, the greatest productive
force is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of the revolutionary elements
as a class presupposes the existence of all the productive forces that could be
endangered in the womb of old society’. But the proletariat had to undergo a massive
transformation through its own education in the school of class struggle before it
could become a fit agent of revolution. In the revolution, the proletariat will acquire
the capacity of undertaking the task of socialist reconstruction. The name that Marx
gives to this activity is ‘revolutionary praxis’. It embodies through a dialectical unity
of theory and practice, the subjective and objective causes of revolution. He sums
this up in the following words, ‘in revolutionary activity the changing of oneself
coincides with the changing of circumstances’. It implied that the proletariat must
become a class ‘for itself’ by developing class consciousness which is necessary
cause and precondition of a successful revolution.
By 1851, Marx was convinced of the primacy of economic factors in
determining the possibilities of revolution. His considered view about revolution now
was that only a severe economic crisis caused by a falling rate of capitalist profits in
a slump could precipitate it. The effective cause of revolution has to be located in
economic situation and nowhere else and new revolution is possible only as a
consequence of a worsening trade cycle leading to increasing misery of the proletariat.
Marx became so convinced of economic determinism of the revolutionary process
that he was prepared to dissolve to Communist League when it appeared to be
falling under the control of leaders who believed in attempting a revolution irrespective
of the economic situation. During the next decade, he expected the capitalist crisis
to breakout that would provoke a socialist revolution.
Marx’s materialist view of history would indicate that it was most likely to
breakout in the most advanced industrial countries like Britain, France or the United
Self-Instructional Material 93
Burke, Marx and Lenin States. In a letter to Engels in 1859, Marx mentioned that ‘revolution is imminent on
the continent and will immediately assume a socialist character. Can it avoid being
crushed in the small corner, because the moment of bourgeois society is in the
ascendant over much larger areas of the earth?’. However, Marx also believed that
NOTES in some developed countries such as Germany, a bourgeois revolution could spark of
a subsequent socialist revolution. Later in his life, he came to believe that backward
Russia might prove the starting point of a new European revolution, initially bourgeois
but ultimately proletarian in character. Lenin implemented this Marx’s theory of
two-stage revolution in his own way in the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Mao did
the same in his own characteristic way in bringing about the Chinese Revolution.
While Marx generally regarded force as the midwife of the revolution, he conceded
that socialism could come about as a culmination of a peaceful mass movement in
some of the capitalist democracies.
Marx was opposed to the use of revolutionary terror as it weakened the
cause of revolution. He strongly criticizes the use of terror by the Jacobins in the
French revolution. Physical force, however, as opposed to terror, was to Marx a
perfectly acceptable revolutionary weapon provided the economic, social and political
conditions were such as to make its use successful. It was also Marx’s view that a
successful revolution in one country could not be stabilized if it remained confined to
the borders of a single country.
Marx’s Vision of Socialism
Marx’s concept of socialism follows from his concept of man. For Marx, socialism
is not a society of regimented individuals, regardless of whether there is equality of
income or not, and regardless of whether they are well fed and well clad. It is not a
society in which the individual is subordinated to the state, to the machine, to the
bureaucracy. In fact, as Marx says quite clearly in the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts, ‘communism as such is not the aim of human development.’ What,
then, is the aim? Quite clearly the aim of socialism is man. It is to create a form of
production and an organization of society in which man can overcome alienation
from his product, from his work, from his fellow man, from himself and from nature;
in which he can return to himself and grasp the world with his own powers, thus
becoming one with the world. Socialism for Marx was, as Paul Tillich put it, ‘a
resistance movement against the destruction of love in social reality.’
Socialism, for Marx, is a society which permits the actualization of man’s
essence, by overcoming his alienation. It is nothing less than creating the conditions
for the truly free, rational, active and independent man; it is the fulfilment of the
prophetic aim: the destruction of the idols. A socialist society, for Marx, is a society
which serves the real needs of man. Man’s real needs are rooted in his nature; this
distinction between real and false needs is possible only on the basis of a picture of
the nature of man and the true human needs rooted in his nature. Man’s true needs
are those whose fulfilment is necessary for the realization of his essence as a human
being. As Marx himself stated, ‘The existence of what I truly love is felt by me as a
necessity, as a need, without which my essence cannot be fulfilled, satisfied, complete.’

94 Self-Instructional Material
 Burke, Marx and Lenin

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

3. Who were the young Hegelians?
4. What is the Marxist notion of historical materialism? NOTES
5. For Marx, what are the four stages of human history?
6. What is Marx’s understanding of socialism?

3.4 VLADIMIR LENIN

Vladimir Lenin was the architect of the first communist state in the world, i.e., the
Soviet Union. Along with Marx, he also became a philosopher and a guide for
communists and revolutionaries all over the world. According to the author and
scholar Professor C.C. Maxey, ‘Lenin, now the beatified saint of Bolshevism was
not only a revolutionary leader of great sagacity and practical ability, but was also a
writer and thinker of exceptional penetration and power.’ Long before the Russian
Revolution, Lenin had a positive and coherent political philosophy, and this philosophy
after he became head of the Russian state, governed all his public decisions and
acts. It became and has remained to a very large degree of the political road map of
Russian communism. Lenin brought updated and adapted Marx’s philosophy to unique
Russian conditions. Let us now discuss Lenin’s contribution to Marxist thought at
length.
3.4.1 Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
Lenin’s ‘Theory of Imperialism’ is found in his book Imperialism, the Highest State
of Capitalism. Lenin regards imperialism as the highest form of capitalism. He
argues that as capitalism develops, industries unite and become bigger and then
begin collaborating and acting like cartels to create what is known as monopoly
capitalism. In the financial world a similar process takes place. When banks combine
and become the master of capital, they assist industrialists with the capital, thus
encouraging the transformation of monopoly capitalism into finance capitalism.
Monopoly and finance capitalism have a great tendency of expanding very rapidly
and aggressively. The primary export of finance capitalism is money or capital, and
the consequences of its enforcement are the exploitation of colonial people, whom it
oppresses and subjects to the law of the capitalist society, thus increasing misery
amongst the people and destroying their liberty and freedom. As Lenin stated, ‘If it
were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should
have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.’
According to Lenin, ‘Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in
which the domination of monopoly and finance capital has taken shape, in which the
export of capital has acquired pronounced importance in which the division of the
world by international trusts has begun, and in which the portion of all the territory of
the earth by the great capitalist countries has been completed.’

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Burke, Marx and Lenin Lenin identified five distinct features of imperialism, which can be stated as
follows:
 The concentration of production and capital develops to such a high stage
that it creates monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
NOTES
 The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on
the basis of this finance capital, of a financial oligarchy.
 The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities
acquires exceptional importance.
 The formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share
the world among themselves.
 The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist
powers is completed.
Lenin claimed that imperialism in spite of being the highest stage of capitalism
also contains various contradictions within itself, which shall destroy capitalism and
bring in socialism. The first contradiction is that of the antagonism between the
labour and capital. The labour is exploited by the capital, thus feelings of revolution
would be ignited in exploited workers. If it will be materialized, the spirit of socialism
will start. He also identified another feature of imperialism- the decay of capitalism.
Lenin asserted that imperialism is not only the period of monopoly capitalism, but it
is also the period of decaying capitalism- the decay resulting from its monopolistic
character. As he stated, ‘the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is the feature
of monopoly, continues, and in certain branches of industry, in certain countries, for
certain periods of time, it becomes prominent’.
3.4.2 Theory of Party
The greatest contribution of Lenin to Socialism is his theory of the party. While
Marx laid too much emphasis on the development of class consciousness among the
workers, Lenin laid emphasis on the party organization. According to him, ‘The
proletariat has no other weapon in the struggle for power except organization.’
Constantly pushed out of depths of complete poverty, the proletariat can and
will inevitably become the unconquerable. The party is needed not only before the
revolution to arouse the revolutionary spirit in the proletariat but also after the revolution
to annihilate the capitalist state so that the dictatorship of proletariat can be established.
According to Lenin, workers do not become socialists automatically. They
become trade unionists. Socialism has to be brought to them from outside and this is
done by the party which is in reality the ‘vanguard of the proletariat’. It must be able
to lead the proletariat to elevate them to the level where they can understand their
class interests and purpose with great vigour and determination. The party must act
as the General Staff of the Proletariat. Lenin wrote thus, ‘The Communist Party is
a part of the working class, the most advanced most class conscious and hence the
communist party has no other interests other than the interests of the working class
as a whole. The Communist Party is differentiated from the working class in its
totality. The Communist Party is the organizational and political lever which the
96 Self-Instructional Material
most advanced sections of the working class use to direct the entire mass of the Burke, Marx and Lenin
proletariat and the semi-proletariat along the right road.’
Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Lenin described the proletariat dictatorship as the stage which would come during NOTES
the transitional period of the state, i.e. when the state would transform into socialism
from capitalism. Lenin accepted Marx’s doctrine of proletariat dictatorship in full
but he succeeded in converting it to the dictatorships of the communist of socialist
ideological party.
Tactics of Revolution
According to Sabine, ‘No principle of Marxian strategy was better settled than the
rule that it’s impossible to make a revolution by force of conspiracy before the time
is ripe, that is, before the contradictions in a society have produced a revolutionary
situation.’ It was this principle which distinguished Marx’s scientific socialism from
Utopianism or mere adventurism. This view led to the emergence of two views in
Russia, one held by the Mensheviks and the other by the Bolsheviks, regarding the
tactics of socialist revolution and the slow growth of the proletariat into a majority.
The other group was led by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. According to Trotsky, it is
easier for the proletariat to take over the ruling class in an economically backward
country then in a country where capitalism has reached the advanced stage.
Lenin thought in terms of tactics. According to him, insurrection is an art
which can be taught. His tactics came to have certain maxims such as:
(i) Never play at uprising but once it is begun remember firmly that you
have to go to the very end
(ii) One must strive to take the enemy by surprise to take advantage of a
moment when his troops are scattered’.
Lenin was opposed to a large diffused party and he wanted the party to
consist of professional revolutionaries and must be organized as secretly as possible.
According to Lenin, a revolution becomes possible only when the lower classes do
not want the old way and the upper classes cannot continue with the old way.
3.4.3 Socialism in One Country
For Lenin, with the concept of the vanguard party and of imperialist capitalism, the
theory of communism as a logical structure was complete, yet it lacked what proved
to be its main driving force as a political system. This was the ‘concept of socialism
in one country’ developed by Joseph Stalin, which was his sole venture into theory.
In a sense this was a normal capstone to Leninism—at least to the concept of
Leninism developed in this way. For Lenin’s achievement as it has been described
here, was to produce a version of Marxism applicable to an industrially
underdeveloped society with an agrarian peasant economy. Socialism in one country,
therefore, completed the divergence between Lenin’s Marxism and the Marxism of
Western Europe, which had been conceived by Marx and Marxists as a theory to
transform a highly industrial economy from a capitalist to a socialist society.
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Burke, Marx and Lenin Industrial and military power
Socialism in one country became the operative factor in Leninism. Under this slogan,
communist Russia emerged as a great industrial and military power. Initiated in
1928, four years after Lenin’s death. the first of the five-year plans began a revolution
NOTES
with far greater long-term political and social consequences than Lenin’s revolution
of 1917. By harnessing communism to the tremendous driving force of Russian
nationalism, the five-year plans became the first great experiment with a totally
planned economy. Due to its success, Russian communism became a model likely to
be followed by peasant societies with national aspirations all over the world. In
1924, Stalin put forward very abruptly the thesis that Russia ‘can and must build up
a socialist society.’ Only a few months before he had repeated the conventional
opinion, current since 1917 and before, that the permanence of socialism in Russia
depended on Socialist Revolutions in Western Europe. Stalin argued that the only
obstacle to a complete socialist society in Russia was the risk created by ‘capitalist
encirclement’ (the intrigues), the ‘espionage nets,’ or the intervention of the capitalist
enemies. There was nothing new, of course, in the belief that communist and capitalist
states could not permanently coexist.
Lenin held this opinion, but this was not the obstacle, from the standpoint of
Marxism, for completing socialism in Russia. Marxists had supposed that socialism
required an economy with a high level of production and hence, an industrial society,
which Russia was not. Stalin did not meet this argument but argued instead that
socialism could be built in a country of great extent with large natural resources. In
effect, he neglected the economic argument normal to Marxism and substituted a
political argument. Stalin assumed that, given adequate resources, an adequate labour
force, and a government with unlimited power, a socialist economy could be
constructed as a political policy. This of course is what socialism in one country
became, and in theory it is quite different from the supposed dependence of politics
on the economy which had been a principle of Marxism. On the other hand, Stalin’s
assumption fitted rather easily with some elements of Leninism.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

7. What is the primary export of finance capitalism?
8. Why is imperialism a period of decaying capitalism?
9. What is the greatest contribution of Lenin to Socialism?
10. Why is the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ considered significant in
Marist thought?

3.5 SUMMARY

 Edmund Burke was a British conservative thinker from the 18th century. He
is perhaps best known for his vehement criticism the French Revolution of
1789.
98 Self-Instructional Material
 The main argument that Burke makes against the French Revolution is that it Burke, Marx and Lenin
was based on abstract ambiguous principles, which for him ignored the
complexities of human nature and society.
 Burke was an Irish political elite. His thoughts on politics must be seem
corresponding to the ideas of the members of his class. NOTES
 In his political philosophy, Burke represents a decisive break from the ideas
of John Locke, who had dominated the political theories of the 18th century.
 Burke attacked the individualistic doctrine of the ‘rights of man’ inherited
from Locke, considering it totally ambiguous.
 Karl Marx was a German philosopher, sociologist, historian, political economist,
political theorist and revolutionary socialist, who developed the socio-political
theory of Marxism.
 Karl Marx with the aid of his friend Friedrich Engels composed the most
influential of all his writings The Communist Manifesto.
 In the Theses on Feuerbach (first published as an appendix to the 1888
edition of Engels’ Ludwig Feurbach), Marx led the foundation for what he
called dialectical materialism.
 Although Marx agreed with Hegel that there was a constant movement in
the dialectical process he believed that ‘matter’ and not the ‘idea’ as the
essence of universe, and the social institutions were the manifestation of
changing material conditions. Matter undergoes the dialectical process because
of its inherent tensions, until perfect material conditions, exemplified by a
‘rational mode of production’ come into existence.
 Marx emphasized the real rather than the ideal, the social rather than the
intellectual, matter rather than mind.
 Karl Marx does not systematically explain his theory of dialectical materialism
anywhere in his works. However, he makes it clear that his materialism is
dialectical not mechanical.
 While dialectical materialism represents the philosophical bases of Marxism,
historical materialism represents its scientific basis.
 Historical materialism implies that in any given epoch, the economic relations
of society – the means whereby men and women undertake production,
distribution and exchange of material goods for the satisfaction of their needs
– play an important role, in shaping their social, political, intellectual and ethical
relationships.
 The Marxist perspective postulates that the structure of society may be
understood in terms of its base (the foundation) and superstructure (the
external build-up).
 The base consists of the mode of production while the superstructure is
represented by its legal and political structure, religion, morals, social practices,
literature, art and culture etc.

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Burke, Marx and Lenin  Marx talked of four stages of human history—ancient times, medieval times,
modern times and future society based on communism.
 Marxism advocated the class perspective of the state. It is different from the
mechanistic theory as well as from the organic theory of the state.
NOTES
 According to the class theory, the state comes into existence when society is
divided into two antagonistic classes, one owning the means of social
production and the other being constraint to live on its labour. In other words,
it is the emergence of ‘private property’ that divides society into two conflicting
classes.
 Marx and Engels provided a blue print for a future state which would be
based on communism. They elaborate that communist society would eliminate
all forms of alienation for the human individual from nature, from society and
from humanity.
 On the basis of scientific analysis of the system of capitalism, Marx had
declared that a social revolution was inevitable. Revolution was certain to
come because the forces of discontent would eventually accumulate and
break through all obstacles.
 According to Marx, social progress would have to come about through a
violent struggle between classes. By progress Marx meant the expansion of
the productive capacity of both society and individual human beings. This
would ultimately lead to greater freedom and equalities and to the realization
of man’s capacity.
 Marx did not believe in revolutionary prophecy. He did not go into detail
concerning the exact nature strategy and tactics of the socialist revolution he
thought to be imminent.
 A socialist society, for Marx, is a society which serves the real needs of man.
Man’s real needs are rooted in his nature; this distinction between real and
false needs is possible only on the basis of a picture of the nature of man and
the true human needs rooted in his nature.
 Man’s true needs are those whose fulfilment is necessary for the realization
of his essence as a human being. As Marx himself stated, ‘The existence of
what I truly love is felt by me as a necessity, as a need, without which my
essence cannot be fulfilled, satisfied, complete.’
 Vladimir Lenin was the architect of the first communist state in the world,
i.e., the Soviet Union. Along with Marx, he also became a philosopher and a
guide for communists and revolutionaries all over the world.
 Lenin regards imperialism as the highest form of capitalism. He argues that
as capitalism develops, industries unite and become bigger and then begin
collaborating and acting like cartels to create what is known as monopoly
capitalism.
 According to Lenin, ‘Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in
which the domination of monopoly and finance capital has taken shape, in

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 which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance in which the Burke, Marx and Lenin
division of the world by international trusts has begun, and in which the portion
of all the territory of the earth by the great capitalist countries has been
completed.’
 The greatest contribution of Lenin to Socialism is his theory of the party. NOTES
While Marx laid too much emphasis on the development of class consciousness
among the workers, Lenin laid emphasis on the party organization.
 According to Lenin, workers do not become socialists automatically. They
become trade unionists. Socialism has to be brought to them from outside and
this is done by the party which is in reality the ‘vanguard of the proletariat’.

3.6 KEY TERMS

 Laudator temporis acti: It is a Latin phrase literally meaning a praiser of

time past, i.e., someone who does not like the present and prefers the things
of the past.
 Tithe: A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a
religious organization or compulsory tax to government.
 Alienation: In Marxist analysis, alienation is the systemic result of living in a
socially stratified society, because being a mechanistic part of a social class
alienates a person from his and her humanity.
 Dialectical Materialism: It is a strand of Marxism, synthesizing Hegel’s
dialectics, which proposes that every economic order grows to a state of
maximum efficiency, while simultaneously developing internal contradictions
and weaknesses that contribute to its systemic decay.
 Primitive Communism: It is a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
to describe what they interpreted as early forms of communism. As a model,
primitive communism is usually used to describe early hunter-gatherer societies
that had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.
 Proletariat: Workers or working-class people, regarded collectively.
 Class struggle: The conflict of interests between the workers and the ruling
class in a capitalist society, regarded as inevitably violent.
 Vanguard: It refers to a group of people leading the way in new developments
or ideas.

3.7 ANSWERS TO ‘CHECK YOUR PROGRESS’

1. The core of Burke’s philosophical ideas was the promotion and retention of
customary social institutions.
2. The main argument that Burke makes against the French Revolution is that it
was based on abstract ambiguous principles, which for him ignored the
complexities of human nature and society.
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Burke, Marx and Lenin 3. In the 19th century Hegel’s influence on philosophy was such that later
philosophers in Germany came to be divided into left-wing and right-wing
Hegelians. The left-wing Hegelians included Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels
and Marx. They were also referred to as the Young Hegelians.
NOTES 4. Historical materialism implies that in any given epoch, the economic relations
of society – the means whereby men and women undertake production,
distribution and exchange of material goods for the satisfaction of their needs
– play an important role, in shaping their social, political, intellectual and ethical
relationships.
5. Marx talked of four stages of human history—ancient times, medieval times,
modern times and future society based on communism.
6. Socialism, for Marx, is a society which permits the actualization of man’s
essence, by overcoming his alienation. It is nothing less than creating the
conditions for the truly free, rational, active and independent man. A socialist
society then is a society which serves the real needs of man.
7. The primary export of finance capitalism is money or capital, and the
consequences of its enforcement are the exploitation of colonial people, whom
it oppresses and subjects to the law of the capitalist society, thus increasing
misery amongst the people and destroying their liberty and freedom.
8. Lenin asserted that imperialism is not only the period of monopoly capitalism,
but it is also the period of decaying capitalism- the decay resulting from its
monopolistic character. As he stated, ‘the tendency to stagnation and decay,
which is the feature of monopoly, continues, and in certain branches of industry,
in certain countries, for certain periods of time, it becomes prominent’.
9. The greatest contribution of Lenin to Socialism is his theory of the party.
While Marx laid too much emphasis on the development of class consciousness
among the workers, Lenin laid emphasis on the party organization. According
to him, ‘The proletariat has no other weapon in the struggle for power except
organization.’
10. Socialism in one country completed the divergence between Lenin’s Marxism
and the Marxism of Western Europe, which had been conceived by Marx
and Marxists as a theory to transform a highly industrial economy from a
capitalist to a socialist society.

3.8 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short-Answer Questions
1. Write a short note on Burke’s critique of the French Revolution.
2. What did Stalin mean by the phrase ‘Socialism in one country’?
3. What did Marx’s theory of alienation state?
4. Why, according to Marx, was a social revolution inevitable?

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 5. How did Lenin define imperialist capitalism? Burke, Marx and Lenin

6. What does Marx’s mean by class conflict?

7. Write a short note on the life of Karl Marx.
Long-Answer Questions NOTES
1. Discuss Edmund Burke’s political ideas.
2. How were Marx’s thoughts similar to those of G. W. H. Hegel?
3. What was Marx’s main thesis?
4. What do you understand by dialectical materialism of Marx?
5. Explain the concept of historical materialism.
6. With the emergence of ‘private property’, society is divided into ‘dominant’
and ‘dependent’ classes. Discuss.
7. Describe the concept of socialism according to Lenin.

3.9 FURTHER READING

Jha, Shefali. 2010. Western Political Thought: From Plato to Marx. New Delhi:
Pearson Education India.
Strauss, Leo and Joseph Cropsey. 1987. A History of Political Philosophy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Mcclelland, J.S. 1998. A History of Western Political Thought. London: Routledge.
Coleman, Janet. 2000. A History of Political Thought. New Delhi: Wiley-Blackwell.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 2011. Communist Manifesto. New Delhi: Penguin
Classics.
Singer, Peter. 2000. Marx: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

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 Mao and Gramsci

UNIT 4 MAO AND GRAMSCI

Structure NOTES
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Unit Objectives
4.2 Mao Tse-tung
4.2.1 The Political Thoughts of Mao
4.2.2 Historical Background: The Struggle for Socialism
4.2.3 New Democracy or New Socialism
4.2.4 The Cultural Revolution
4.3 Antonio Gramsci
4.3.1 State and Civil Society
4.3.2 Gramsci on Hegemony
4.4 Socialism
4.4.1 Utopian Socialism: Robert Owen
4.4.2 Anarchist Socialism
4.4.3 Fabian Socialism
4.4.4 Guild Socialism and Syndicalism
4.5 Summary
4.6 Key Terms
4.7 Answers to ‘Check Your Progress’
4.8 Questions and Exercises
4.9 Further Reading

4.0 INTRODUCTION

In this unit, you will learn about the theories of Mao Tse-tung and Antonio Gramsci.
Mao Tes-tung was the father of the People’s Republic of China. As a political
theorist, politician and revolutionary, Mao not only moulded the destiny of over a
billion Chinese citizens, he also became one of the most important Marxists political
theorists of the twentieth century and gave the Asiatic version of Marxism to the
world.
Antonio Gramsci was an extremely influential Italian Marxist and also a
socialist theorist. Gramsci is known for using the term hegemony to denote the
predominance of one social class over others. This represents not only political and
economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of
seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as ‘common
sense’ and ‘natural’.
The final section of the book discusses non Marxist socialist movements in
Europe like Utopian Socialism and Fabian socialism. These movements provide a
bridge between the thoughts of the liberal philosophers of the 19th century like Mill
and Bentham and the revolutionary philosophies of theorists like Marx. The section
also discusses anarchism, another radical philosophy.

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Mao and Gramsci
4.1 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

NOTES  Discuss the basic principles of Maoism
 Examine Gramsci’s conception of civil society
 Describe Gramsci’s notion of hegemony
 Discuss the anarchist view of the state
 Examine the major tenets of Henry George’s philosophy

4.2 MAO TSE-TUNG

Mao Tse–tung, also known as Mao Zedong, the father of modern communist China,
was not only an important political leader who moulded the destiny of the Chinese
people and made China as one of the most powerful nations of the world, but he also
an important Marxian philosopher who gave Marxism its Asiatic form.
Mao was born in a family of peasant farmers in the Huan province in 1893.
As a child, Mao was required to work hard in the fields and thus was forced to give
up his education at the age of 13. However, as someone who was keen on having an
education, Mao rebelled against his family and left to pursue his education in the
neighbouring county. There he came in contact with revolutionaries ideas of Chinese
thinkers like the nationalist Sun Yet-sen. He also started reading historical books on
Rousseau, Gladstone and Napoleon. He also studied the histories of various countries.
No sooner had he started reading revolutionary texts, the Chinese revolution of 1911
against the Chinese Emperor started. Mao soon enlisted as a soldier in the
revolutionary army and spent six months fighting for the democratic revolution against
absolute monarchy. After the Republic of China came into being with Dr. Sun Yet-
sen as president, Mao once again started to pursue his education. In 1919, Mao
joined the elite Peking University. It was here that he came into contact with two
people who were to influence his thoughts and ideas greatly - Li Dazhao and Chen
Duxiu. Both Dazhao and Duxiu were principal figures in the formation of the
Communist Party of China (CPC). Moreover, Mao attended Peking University at a
time when the May Fourth Movement was taking place. The May Fourth Movement
was to a considerable extent the fountainhead of all of the changes that were to take
place in China in the ensuing half century. Soon Mao came to be influenced by the
teachings of Marx and the revolutionary uprising that had taken place in the Soviet
Union. Mao’s life as a revolutionary began in 1921, when he attended the first
congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
As a revolutionary, Mao strived to bring about a cultural, economic and political
revolution in China. His goal was to create a new society and state by establishing
the tenets of socialism for China. His definition of a new society and state were
designed to have a new political structure and a new economy, along with a new
culture. He wanted China to come out of political oppression and economic exploitation
and gain political freedom and economic prosperity. In order to understand the Socialism
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that Mao formulated, it is important to understand the socio-economic conditions Mao and Gramsci
that prevailed in China in the first half of the twentieth century.
4.2.1 The Political Thoughts of Mao
The political theory espoused by Mao Zedong is known as Maoism. The followers NOTES
of Mao’s political theory, known as Maoists, consider Maoism as an anti-Revisionist
form of Marxism-Leninism. Maoism was developed during the 1950s and 1960s
and was widely applied as the guiding ideology of the Communist Party of China
(CPC). However, it must be noted that the term Maoism is never used by the
Communist Party of China as it believes that Mao did not change, but rather developed
further the theory of Marxism-Leninism.
The model for Mao’s theory of revolution was the Chinese Communist
insurgency against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in the late 1920s and
1930s, which resulted in Communist Party of China becoming a powerful fighting
force strengthened on the backs of the colossal support that the CPC enjoyed among
the rural peasantry. The CPC eventually overthrew the Nationalist government in
1949 and came to power. Mao’s dependence on the rural peasantry rather than the
urban working to instigate a socialist revolution distinguishes him from his predecessors
like Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. As Mao himself was from a peasant family, he was
able to cultivate his reputation among the farmers and peasants and introduced them
to Marxist revolutionary ideologies. Mao jotted down his thoughts on revolution in
his two most famous essays, both written in 1937, called ‘On Contradiction’ and
‘On Practice’. The essays, part of his famous ‘Red Book’, are concerned with the
practical strategies of a revolutionary movement and emphasize the importance of
practical, grass-roots knowledge, which can only be obtained through experience.
Written during the Second Sino-Japanese War, both essays reflect the guerrilla roots
of Maoism in the need to build up support in the countryside against a Japanese
occupying force and emphasise the need to win over hearts and minds through
‘education’. The essays warned against the behaviour of the blindfolded man trying
to catch sparrows, and the ‘Imperial envoy’ descending from his carriage to ‘spout
opinions’.
Let us now look at the basic principles of Maoist theory.
One of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism is the belief that the
urban proletariat or the working class is the main source of revolution. This is because
Marxism believes that a true socialist society can only emerge after capitalism has
been firmly established. Thus, in Marxism-Leninism, the rural countryside, consisting
of landless peasants, is largely ignored. On the other hand, Mao, perhaps because of
his own upbringing as a peasant, believed that the peasantry could be shaped into a
revolutionary force under the knowledge, leadership and guiding principles of a
communist party. Another significant characteristic of Mao’s belief was his concept
of people’s war to achieve socialism. Mao wanted the simultaneous execution of
two revolutions, one against imperialism and the colonial rule and the other against
the feudal landlords. He was sure that it was not possible for the rule of the feudal
landlords to end until the rule of imperialism was overthrown. On the other hand, it
was not possible to form a powerful contingent to overthrow imperialism, unless the
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Mao and Gramsci farmers were assisted in overthrowing the feudal landless class. Mao emphasised
that these two front wars were to be fought by the masses that were politically
structured, rather than by representing the masses. He considered people to be
more important than the weapons and wrote, ‘Weapons are an important factor in
NOTES war but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive.’
Moreover, unlike the other forms of Marxism-Leninism where large-scale
industrial development is seen as a positive force, Maoism prioritised rural
development. For Mao, such a strategy was the most logical taking into account the
fact that in a developing country like China the majority of the population were not
the industrial urban proletariat, but rather the rural peasantry. Another major difference
of Maoism from other socialist and Marxist theories is the Maoists contains an
integral military doctrine and explicitly ties its political ideology with military strategy.
Mao in his ‘Red Book’ stated that, ‘political power comes from the barrel of
the gun’ and the peasantry can be mobilized to undertake a ‘people’s war’ of armed
struggle involving guerrilla warfare in three stages. The three stages are:
 The First Stage – Mobilisation and organisation of the peasantry
 The Second Stage - Setting up of a rural base and increasing coordination
among the guerrilla organizations
 The Third Stage – Transitioning into conventional warfare
According to Mao, ‘Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a
painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle,
so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an
insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.’ The military
doctrine of Maoism equates Maoist guerrillas to fish swimming in a sea of peasants
who provide logistical support to them. Another key feature of Maoism is that Mao
emphasised the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses, i.e., the physical mobilisation
of the majority of the people in the struggle to defeat capitalism and create socialism.
Maoist theory applies the Marxian Theory of Productive Forces – the theory that
changes in the means of production will result in changes in the relations of production
– to village-level industries which are independent of the outside world. In Maoism,
deliberate organizing of massive military and economic power is necessary to defend
the revolutionary area from outside threat, while centralization keeps corruption
under supervision, amid strong control.
Mao once famously stated, ‘the bourgeoisie in a socialist country is right
inside the Communist Party itself’, implying that the Communist Party may become
corrupted and start subverting the path of socialism. Thus, Mao believed that even
when the proletariat has seized state power through a socialist revolution, the potential
remains for the bourgeoisie class to restore capitalism. This is another key concept
that contrasts Maoist theory with Marxism and other left-wing revolutionary ideologies.
Maoism believes that because of the essential antagonistic contradiction between
capitalism and communism, class struggle continues throughout the entire socialist
period. This fundamental belief of Mao resulted in the Cultural Revolution in China
from 1966 to 1976 where Mao exhorted the public to ‘Bombard the [Party]
headquarters!’ and wrest control of the government from bureaucrats perceived to
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be on the capitalist road. The Cultural Revolution in China had disastrous effects for Mao and Gramsci
the population of China and resulted in the persecution of millions of Chinese citizens.
Criticisms
Today, in the People’s Republic of China, Mao’s theories have largely been repudiated. NOTES
This is because of the disastrous consequence of the two major initiatives of Mao
after seizing power – The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Both of
these initiatives resulted in the deaths of millions of people. After the death of Mao,
Deng Xiaoping, the most influential leader of China who led China into the path of
the market economy stated that, ‘Mao was 70% good, 30% bad’. He believed that
Maoism showed the dangers of ‘ultra-leftism’, manifested in the harm perpetrated
by the various mass movements that characterized the Maoist era.
According to one biographer of Mao, ‘Mao turned China from a feudal
backwater into one of the most powerful countries in the World ... The Chinese
system he overthrew was backward and corrupt; few would argue the fact that he
dragged China into the 20th century. But at a cost in human lives that is staggering.’
Some political philosophers, such as Martin Cohen, have seen in Maoism an attempt
to combine the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism and Socialism to create ‘a third
way between communism and capitalism’. The Marxist-Leninist theorist Enver Hoxha
criticised Mao considering his theory of the three worlds as ‘counter-revolutionary’
and questioned Mao’s guerrilla warfare methods.
4.2.2 Historical Background: The Struggle for Socialism
For a long part of his life, Mao struggled to bring about a cultural, economic and
political revolution. His goal was to create a new society and state by establishing
the tenets of socialism for China. His definition of a new society and state were
designed to have a new political structure and a new economy, along with a new
culture. He wanted China to come out of political oppression and economic exploitation
and gain political freedom and economic prosperity. He also wanted that China
should come out of the ignorance and backwardness of the old culture, and transform
to become enlightened and progressive. The aim of Mao Zedong was to create a
novel cultural sphere for China.
China’s Historical Characteristics
Ideologically, every culture reflects the way the economy and politics of the society
functions. But it is true that both politics and economics go hand-in-hand. They both
play an important role in the determination of culture. Marx said, ‘It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary their social
being that determines their consciousness.’ He further added, ‘The philosophers
have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.’
In the history of mankind, for the first time, these scientific formulations have proved
accurate in resolving the problematic aspects of the relations between the existence
and the human consciousness. And these formulations are the fundamental ideas
and concepts that underline the dynamic and radical theory of knowledge, as
something that reflects the material reality of the world, which so vigorously explained
and expanded by Lenin.
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Mao and Gramsci It is important to keep these fundamental concepts in mind while discussing
the problems pertaining to China’s culture. Thus, it is evident that Mao wanted to
remove those elements from the old national politics, which reacted to the tenets of
the old national culture. On the other hand, the new national culture which he had in
NOTES mind was interlinked with the new national politics and economics. The old culture
was based on the ideas of old politics and economy of the China. Similarly, the new
politics that Mao had in mind was based on the new kind of economic and political
models, which was to become the foundation a new culture in China.
China’s Old Politics, Economics and Culture
Since the rule of the Chou and Chin, the society of China was feudal, just like its
politics, economy and dominant culture. There had been various changes of a colonial,
semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature in Chinese society, ever since it was invaded
by foreign capitalism. China in the first half of the twentieth century was both feudal
and semi-feudal in the areas which were occupied by Japan. Mao stated that the
political and economic characteristics of the Chinese society were prevalently colonial,
semi-colonial, and semi-feudal, and also the reverent culture, which was the reflection
of political and economic image, was also feudal and colonial in nature. The revolution
that Mao had in mind specifically focused on the eradication of these prevalent
economic, political, and cultural forms.
Mao wanted to create a new kind of politics and economy, which then would
give rise to a new kind of culture. According to Mao, in the course of its history,
there were two stages through which it was important for the Chinese revolution to
go through: the first stage was that of democratic revolution, and the second stage
was the socialist revolution. It is important to understand that both the stages are
different from each other. In this case, the first category does not include democracy.
It can be said that the new politics, the new economy, and the new culture of China
emerged from new democracy. It is not possible for any political group, party or
individual, who had no understanding of such themes, to direct the revolution to
victory.
As stated above, Mao believed that the Chinese revolution is divided into a
democratic revolution and a socialist revolution. Democracy here does not mean the
general democracy, but it refers to the Chinese form of democracy. This
characteristic was not an abrupt development as the result of the Opium War, rather
it was shaped after the Second World War and the Russian Revolution. Thus, we
can divide the Chinese revolution into two stages: the first stage was the transformation
of the colonial and feudal aspect of the society into a democratic form of society,
and the second stage was the continuation of the revolution for the establishment of
socialist form of society. This can be called the trend in the development of socialism.
The first stage of this revolution began to shape up after the Opium War of
1840, i.e. when feudal China began to undergo transformations. It began to change
into a partially colonial and a partially feudal society. This was followed by the
various movements of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Sino-French War, the Sino-
Japanese-War, the Reform movement of 1898, the Revolution of 1911, the May 4th

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Movement, the Northern Expedition, the War of the Agrarian Revolution and the Mao and Gramsci
War of Resistance against Japan. In combination, all these movements consumed
an entire century by representing the struggles of the people of China on various
occasions and in different degrees against both the imperialist and the feudal forces
in order create a free and democratic state, and thereby completing the first stage of NOTES
the revolution. Socially, the nature of this first stage of revolution is not that of
proletariat-socialist, but bourgeois-democratic. But still, it required continued efforts,
since it is still confronted with strong resistance of the feudal ruling classes. When
the first president of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-Sen said, ‘The revolution is not
yet completed, all my comrades must struggle on,’ he referred to the bourgeois
Democratic Revolution. Changes in the China’s democratic revolution began to
take place after the outbreak of the First World War, and the establishment of socialism
in Russia after the Russian Revolution. Prior to these happenings, the bourgeois-
democratic revolution of China was part of the bourgeois democratic world revolution.
This revolution underwent changes after these happenings.
4.2.3 New Democracy or New Socialism
Mao thought that it would be best if the economy of China followed the path of
capital regulation and landownership equalization. He advocated that the economy
must never be owned by few individuals, and that a few capitalists and landlords
should never be allowed to dominate the livelihood of the people. This type of economy
that Mao advocated is known as New Socialism of Mao Zedong in China. Its politics
are concentrated expressions of the economy of New Democracy.
Opposition to Capitalism
Like Marx, Lenin and Stalin, Mao was also against capitalism. He emphasized the
inability of true peace or accommodation to exist, along with capitalism. This was
because the two systems contradicted each other. A dynamic tussle struggle between
these two antagonistic systems was unavoidable, though it was likely to be averted
for the time-being through mutual restrain. However, Mao was flexible in his belief
pertaining to the inevitability of conflict between the capitalists and the socialists.
People’s War
Another significant characteristic of Mao’s belief was his concept of people’s war
to achieve socialism. Mao wanted the simultaneous execution of two revolutions,
one against imperialism and the colonial rule and the other against the feudal landlords.
He was sure that it was not possible for the rule of the feudal landlords to end until
the rule of imperialism was overthrown. On the other hand, it was not possible to
form a powerful contingent to overthrow imperialism, unless the farmers were assisted
in overthrowing the feudal landless class. It was emphasized by Mao that these two
front wars were to be fought by the masses that were politically structured, rather
than by representing the masses. He considered people to be more important than
the weapons and wrote that ‘Weapons are an important factor in war but not the
decisive factor, it is people, not things, that are decisive.’ Thus, he stressed on the
theory of total revolution by the totality of the masses.

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Mao and Gramsci If it is not possible to follow the capitalist road of bourgeois dictatorship, Mao
suggested, then it is possible that one can follow the road that leads to the socialist-
proletarian dictatorship. He said that the ongoing relationship is the first step, which
soon will pave way for the second stage of the revolution, which will be the arrival
NOTES of socialism. Mao believed that the people of China could only be happy when they
entered the socialist era. However, until feudalism was not eradicated, it was not
right to impose socialism in society. According to Mao, the first important task was
to combat the imperialist forces and establish a democratic society. Only after this
task is accomplished, socialism can prevail. There can be no Chinese revolution
without both, new democracy and socialism. New democracy will take much time
and is not an easily achievable task. Mao said that ‘we are not utopians and cannot
divorce ourselves from the actual conditions confronting us.’According to the Marxist
view of the development of the revolution, the two stages are consecutive without
any intervention of the dictatorship of the bourgeois. Mao considered this is a utopian
ideal, which the true revolutionary cannot accept.
4.2.4 The Cultural Revolution
Mao’s ‘Hundred Flowers Policy’ forms the part of the new ideology which Mao
advocated during the period of the Cultural Revolution. Mao asserted that it would
be wrong to think that in any society there should be only one ideology or only one
state. He held that ‘each thinking was a flower and let such hundred schools of
thought contend.’ Through his theory of hundred flowers, Mao was asserting that
society had the capacity to find out the rotten and outdated ideas and get rid of the
same only if all the ideas were permitted in free expression. In short, this policy
emphasized that coercion should not be used in ideological matters. However, in
practice, during the Cultural Revolution, coercion was routine.
The Cultural Revolution itself was basically a social-political movement that
took place in the People’s Republic of China from 1966 through 1976. The stated
goal of the Cultural Revolution was the enforcement of communism in the country
by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to
imposing Maoist orthodoxy within the Chinese Communist Party. This revolution
should be seen in the context of Mao’s beliefs that because of the essential
antagonistic contradiction between capitalism and socialism, class struggle continued
throughout the entire socialist period. The Cultural Revolution had disastrous effects
on China. Millions of people were oppressed in the violent struggles that ensued
across China, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation,
arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. What is the model for Mao’s theory of revolution?
2. State one difference between Maoism and Marxist-Leninism.

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 Mao and Gramsci
4.3 ANTONIO GRAMSCI

Antonio Gramsci was born on 22 January 1891 in the town of Ales, an island in
Sardinia, which was one of the poorest regions of Italy. He was the fourth of seven NOTES
children born to Francesco Gramsci and Giuseppina Marcias. His relationship with
his father was never very close, but he had a strong affection and love for his
mother, whose resilience, gift of story-telling and pungent humour made a lasting
impression on him. Of his six siblings, Antonio enjoyed a mutual interest in literature
with his younger sister Teresina, and seems to have always felt a spiritual kinship
with his two brothers, Gennaro, the oldest of the Gramsci children, and Carlo, the
youngest. Gennaro’s early embrace of socialism contributed significantly to Antonio’s
political development.
Antotio Gramsci’s father was a minor public official who worked as a land
registrar and his mother belonged to a local landowning family. His father had faced
many financial problems and also had difficulties with the police. So as a family they
were always forced to move from one village to another in Sardinia City. Finally the
family settled in a village called Ghilarza. Gramsci’s father was associated with
politics but was unsuccessful in the parliamentary election which was held in 1897.
In that period corruption and local disputes played a major role in Sardinian politics
and Gramsci’s father laid himself open to reprisal. When Gramsci was a small child
his father was arrested and sentenced to five years of imprisonment on embezzlement
charges because of which Gremsci and his family had to face a lot of problems.
One to financial problems Gramsci was taken out from his school at the age of
eleven. After some elementary education Gramsci started working in an office. He
worked as a tax officer in Ghilarza to help his family. After that he had worked in
many casual jobs until his father’s release from the prison in 1904.
Gramsci continued his studies privately during that period. When his father
was not at home the family lived in utter poverty. During this time, Gramsci suffered
physical deformity and developed a hunchback. Due to his ill health Gramsci was
plagued by various internal disorders throughout his life. He later wrote that the
doctors had given up on him and until about 1914 his mother kept a small coffin and
little dress which he would wear after his death. His sickliness and the visibility of
his disorder in health left Gramsci particularly in vulnerable condition to the harshness
of village life and made him an introvert.
Gramsci’s personality would resurface at regular intervals throughout his life.
Gramsci described himself as a worm inside a cocoon that was unable to unwind
itself. After his father was released from prison their financial conditions improved
and again he went to school for completing his education.
At the age of 17, Gramsci and his elder brother moved to Cagliari which was
the capital of the island. Gramsci completed his secondary school in Cagliari where
he was studying with his elder brother Gennaro. His brother was a soldier who
believed in socialist thinking. Because of this he was known as the militant socialist
in his mainland. In 1911 he won a scholarship and joined the university which was

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Mao and Gramsci situated in Turin. Gramsci was in Turin at the time when it was called the red capital
of Italy. It was the home to the most advanced industry in the country and above all
it was described as the motor manufacturer. During the period of the First World
War almost 30 per cent of the population was industrial workers and despite this
NOTES almost 10 per cent of the populations were in army. Turin was on the brink of
witnessing countless demonstrations and general strikes for the next twenty years
and later in 1919 there began a movement for the occupation of the factories and
also setting up of factory councils. Gramsci encountered all these upheavals when
he went to Turin for his higher studies which invariably affected his thinking for the
rest of his life.
When Gramsci was in the University of Turin he had come in contact with
the thoughts of famous people like Antoni Labriola, Giovanni Gentile, Rodolfo
Mondolfo and Benedetto Croce. Benedetto Croce was the most famous and a
highly respectable intellectual in Italy of his time. These thinkers promoted the thought
of Hegelian Marxism and for which Antoni Labriola had given the name as a philosophy
of praxis. But Gramsci had later used this term to escape the prison censors. His
relationship with this phrase was mainly to develop the current thought which was
ambiguous throughout his life. Gramsci’s writings were famous from his study period
and in 1914 onwards he started writing for the socialist newspaper Grido del Popolo.
His writings made him famous and he gained his position as a notable journalist. He
was an articulated and prolific writer of political theory. He also proved a formidable
commentator and his writings were based on all aspects of Turin’s social and political
life.
Lots of problems were taking place in Cagliari relating to working class
movement and many people lost their lives due to this unrest. At the time Gramsci
reached Cagliari for his studies his elder brother Gennaro was the secretary of the
local socialist party. After reaching Cagliari Gramsci met a friend called Raffa Garzia
who was also his teacher at that school. His friend Garzia was also involved in the
movement and commissioned articles from the students for the newspaper called
Sardinian Nationalist. Gramsci was also influenced by the thoughts of radical
socialist Gaetano Salvemini. He argued against the exploitation of the Mezzagiorno
group in the northern side.
Gramsci met Julka Schucht in Russia who was a violinist and also a member
of the Russian Communist Party. Eventually he married her and had two sons named
Delio and Giuliano. Gramsci joined the socialist party in 1913 by becoming the general
secretary of the newly formed Italian Communist Party in 1921. Although he was
elected as a member of parliament, he was imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926. On 9
November 1926, the fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws
that were taking as an alleged attempt on Mussolini’s life.
As mentioned earlier, Gramsci was the supporter of socialist thoughts and
this increased further by reading pamphlets which were sent from Sardinia by his
elder brother. His political thought was enlarged by his experiences at the university
and also in his new city where his family was staying. At that time Gramsci had the
work to mainly develop and organize political activities. He became the first Marxist

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theorist to work with the problems and also deal with them. He had to also deal with Mao and Gramsci
the revolutionary changes which were taking place in the twentieth century of Western
European society and was the first to identify the importance of the struggle against
the Bourgeois values such as ideological and cultural struggle.
Gramsci’s stress on informal education was mainly based on three aspects. NOTES
Firstly, his exposition of the notion of hegemony provides a way to understand the
context in which the informal educators can easily function and have the possibility
to criticize and transform. Secondly, his concern was essential for the role of organic
intellectuals which helped the people to understand about the place and also informal
educators. Lastly, his interest in schooling and also in more traditional forms of
education system points towards the need to dismiss more traditional forms. Gramsci
enrolled as the faculty of letters. He met Angelo Tasca and other people in Turin
University with whom he shared struggles first in the Italian Socialist party and also
after the split that took place in January 1921.
Gramsci was a great academic scholar who became an active member of
the Socialist Party. In 1915, he also started a journalistic career that made him one
of the most feared and critical voices in Italy of that period. His writings in the Turin
edition called Avanti were widely read by many people. He used to talk to the
workers in Turin during his stay in the university. He discussed many topics such as
novels of Romain Rolland with whom he felt great affinity, The Paris Commune, the
French and Italian Revolutions and also the writings of Karl Marx.
It was done at that time when the war dragged on and the Italian intervention
had become a bloody reality. At that time, Gramsci had taken an undecided stand
but he knew that the basic position was that the Italian socialists should use these
interventions as an occasion which turned Italian national’s sentiments in a
revolutionary way rather than towards chauvinist direction. During 1917 and 1918
he began to predict that the need of integration was essential between political and
economic actions with cultural work. This took the form of a proletarian cultural
association in Turin. In October 1917, the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution further
stirred his revolution and a reminder of the war. After few years Gramsci identified
himself closely although not entirely with the methods and aims of the Russian
Revolution.
In 1919, Gramsci made contact with other scholars such as Angelo Tasca,
Umberto Terracini and Togliatti. They started a periodical called The New Order: A
weekly Review of Socialist Culture which within a few days became an influential
periodical and later on a bi monthly periodical for almost five years. This periodical
was famous among the radicals and also with the revolutionary left in Italy. The
review of the periodicals gave much attention to political and literary thinking of the
people in Europe, USSR and also in United States of America. At that time, Gramsci
devoted most of his time for the development of the factory council movement for
next few years. He was known as the militant journalist and sided with the communist
minority within the PSI at the Party’s Livorno Congress. He became the member of
PCI’s Central Committee but did not play any significant role for several years. He
was among the most prescient representatives of the Italian left at the inception of

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Mao and Gramsci the fascist movement. Many occasions predicted that unless the unified action taken
against the rise of Mussolini’s movement, Italian Democracy and also Italian socialism
would suffer a disastrous defeat.
The period between 1921 and 1926 is called the ‘year of iron and fire’ and
NOTES Gramsci called them more eventful and productive. In 1924, Gramsci lived in Moscow
as an Italian delegate to the Communist International election mainly to the Chamber
of Deputies and also his assumption of the position of general secretary of the PCI.
Gramsci was arrested on 8 November 1926 in Rome. This was done mainly
in accordance with a series of exceptional laws which enacted by the fascist
dominated Italian legislature who committed to solitary confinement at the Regina
Coeli prison. He was in jail for almost 10 years with lots of physical and psychic pain
He died in 1937 at the Quisisana hospital in Rome at the age of 46 years. His ashes
are buried in the protestant Cemetery of Rome. His book Notebooks, written in
1929 to 1935, tried to counterbalance the emphasis within orthodox Marxism on
scientific determinism by stressing the importance of the political and intellectual
struggle. Although proponents of Eurocommunism have claimed him as an influence,
he remained throughout his life a Leninist and a revolutionary.
4.3.1 State and Civil Society
In the history of political thought the concept of civil society is quite old. However,
over a period of time, this concept has undergone a considerable change. Originally
the terms civil society and political society were used as conterminous. Thus, the
term civil society was applied synonymously with state. But under the complex
conditions of present day society it is necessary to recognize the distinctive feature
of civil society.
Antonio Gramsci sought to distinguish civil society from political society in
the context of his analysis of capitalist society. Conventional Marxist theory had
held that economic mode of production of any society constituted its base while the
legal and political structure and various expressions of its social consciousness
including religion, morals, social customs and practices constituted its superstructure.
It believed that 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 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
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 capitalist 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 including police, judiciary, prison, and
so on, comes within its purview. The structures associated with this part of
superstructure are called structure of coercion.

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  Civil society which resorts to obtaining consent of the citizens to maintain its Mao and Gramsci
domination. This part of superstructure is closer to the base and is relatively
autonomous. The structures associated with this part are called structures of
legitimation.
Gramsci pays special importance to this part of the superstructure. According NOTES
to Gramsci, the institutions of civil society like the 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 led legitimacy to the rule of
capitalist 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
capitalist 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.
Gramsci points out that the structures of legitimation within the capitalist society
tend to prevent any challenge to its authority. Capitalist 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.
This analysis leads us to the conclusion that 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 mind of the people. According to
Gramsci, it would be futile to hope that true socialism would automatically grow
from the ashes of capitalism.
Gramsci tried to convince Marxist theorists that they should emerge from the
spell of economics and continue their ideological warfare in the field of culture, art,
literature and philosophical debates. The revolutionaries must infiltrate the autonomous
institutions of civil society and create a new mass consciousness informed by the
socialist value system.
Gramsci was primarily a humanist. He was opposed to any type of tyranny.
He did not want to use revolution in order to set up a coercive state, but wanted to
democratize all institutions. In fact he sought to replace the state by regulated society
where all decisions would be made through consensus and not by means of coercion.
Gramsci followed Marx and tried to develop his theory of state which takes
into account the reality of civil society. His main proposition is that one cannot
understand the state without understanding the civil society. He says that the state
should be understood as not only the apparatus of government but also the private
apparatus of hegemony or civil society. Building on the Marxian nation of the state,
Gramsci makes a distinction between the state as a political organization and the
state as government. The integral state keeps reproducing itself in the practices of
everyday life through activities situated in civil society. It is hegemony which provides
moral and intellectual leadership to practices in civil society. Hegemony, for Gramsci,
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Mao and Gramsci works for both for the dominant as well as the subaltern class in civil society.
According to Gramsci each class must hegemonise social relations in society before
seizing power.
Gramsci enriched the concept of civil society to a great extent. Retaining
NOTES Marx’s idea of class war, he focused as much on war as on class. He understood
politics as a kind of war and used metaphors from military warfare to explain its
many processes. But unlike in military warfare, in politics, the battles are not limited
to the use of sheer force. Although force is used as well, the battle in the field of
ideas is most important. Civil Society for Gramsci is a space where this battle for the
control of ideas takes place. According to him, the dominance of the ruling classes is
not maintained solely on the basis of their control of the coercive apparatus of the
state, namely the police and the army. They also need to acquire a dominant intellectual
and moral leadership in civil society.
In Gramsci’s view, exploitative class relations of capitalist society have to be
made to appear right and proper in order to establish legitimacy of the ruling exploitative
class. In other words, the ruling classes need to create a false perception among the
working classes of their own social situation. Since human beings define themselves
in terms of ideals and values, the ruling classes need to control those institutions
where ideas, ideals and values are formed. This function according to Gramsci’s
conception is performed by the various institutions of civil society. These civil society
institutions are churches, parties, trade unions, universities, the press, publishing houses
and voluntary associations of all kinds. By disseminating the ideology of the dominant
class the institutions ensure its cultural and moral supremacy over the subordinate
classes. In this way the ruling class obtains the consent of the latter of their own
subordination.
The theory of hegemony given by Gramsci is tied to his conception of the
capitalist state. Gramsci does not understand the term state in the narrow sense of
the government. He has done a division between state and economy. The political
society was the arena of the political institutions and also legal constitutional control.
The civil societies commonly seen as the private or non-state sphere mediates between
the state and the economy. But Gramsci stressed on the division which is purely
conceptual and in reality often overlap. Gramsci claims that the capitalist state rules
through the force with consent such as political society is the realm of force and civil
society in the area of consent. Gramsci said that under modern capitalism the
bourgeoisie can maintain its economic control by making certain demands which
was made by trade unions and also by mass political parties within the civil society
that would be met by the political sphere. Thus it can be said that the bourgeoisie
engages in a passive revolution which was going beyond its immediate economic
interests and also allowing the forms of hegemony to change. Gramsci said that the
movements such as reformism and fascism as well as the scientific management
was also the assembly line methods of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford.
Gramsci in his writing The Modern Prince argues that the revolutionary
party is the force that will allow the working class mainly to develop the organic
intellectuals and also an alternative hegemony within the civil society. Gramsci has

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given a description about the complex nature of modern civil society which means Mao and Gramsci
war of position. This was carried out by the revolutionaries through political agitation,
trade unions, advancement of proletarian culture and also other ways to create an
opposing civil society. This was necessary because of the ‘war of manoeuvre’ which
means a direct revolution. This was in order to have a successful revolution without NOTES
any danger for a counter revolution or degeneration. Despite many claims, Gramsci
rejects the state of worship which results from identifying the political society with
civil society which was mainly done by the Fascists and Jacobins. Gramsci believes
that the proletariats have always done historical task that was mainly to create a
regulated society and also mainly to define the withering away of the state for the
full development of civil societies and the ability to regulate itself.
Gramsci defined civil society as the vast range of institutions which were also
super structural in nature. Gramsci also argues that the state provides an important
mechanism for connecting the civil society with economy but also in another way
civil society becomes a more encompassing term. Gramsci has given the widest
term of definition on civil society of an ensemble of organisms that are commonly
called private. It is therefore described as a matter of individual behaviour, tastes
and values as it is the matter of regulated institutions. This is the model which was
clearly known as the superstructure which is far removed from Marx’s assertion
and also it is the set of institutions which transmit a monolithic bourgeois ideology.
The civil society has many definitions as it includes the legal apparatus but it also
includes other things such as children parties, shopping trips and going on holidays.
As you know, the civil society is involved with the everyday life so it’s very
difficult to recognize and also have some connection with the operations of power.
Thus, civil society overlaps significantly with Gramsci’s category of common sense.
The civil society can be expressed in terms of other social divisions such as gender,
age, etc. rather than class. So it is precisely in this private sphere that the ruling
values seem to be more natural and also unchangeable. The outcome of this is
mainly for the transformative politics which could thoroughly enter this sphere in
both successful and durable ways. The civil society therefore absolutely
acknowledges that there are issues in circulation which are different than class. So
it can be said that the earlier version of the concept of civil society as was defined is
only useful for sustaining an unequal society. For this Gramsci argues that a complex
and well-articulated civil society would be necessary even after revolutionary action.
4.3.2 Gramsci on Hegemony
Hegemony is in its simplest sense means the ascendency or domination of one
element of a system over others. In Marxist theory, the term is used in a more
technical and specific sense. In the writings of Antonio Gramsci, hegemony refers
to the ability of a dominant class to exercise power by winning the consent of those
it subjugates as an alternative to the use of coercion. As a non-coercive form of
class rule, hegemony is typically understood as a cultural or ideological process that
operates through the dissemination of bourgeois values and beliefs throughout the
society. However, it also has a political and economic dimension: consent can be
manipulated by pay increases or by political or social reform.
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Mao and Gramsci Gramsci drew attention to the degree to which the class system is upheld not
simply by unequal economic and political power, but also by bourgeois hegemony.
This consists of the spiritual and cultural supremacy of the ruling class, brought
about through the spread of bourgeois values and beliefs via civil society: the media,
NOTES the churches, youth movements, trade unions and so forth. What makes this process
so insidious is that it extends beyond formal learning and education into the very
common sense of the age. The significance of Gramsci’s analysis is that in order for
socialism to be achieved a battle of ideas has to be waged through which proletarian
principles, values and theories displace or at least challenge bourgeois ideas.
Gramsci used the term hegemony to describe all the process through which
the dominant class attained this intellectual and moral leadership. Through the concept
of hegemony he also emphasized that the ruling classes rely more on the institutions
and civil society than those of the state for obtaining the consent of the subordinated.
The coercive apparatus of the state is used only where spontaneous consent has
failed. The concept of hegemony has a strategic importance in Gramsci’s own political
practice. He argued that in order to properly fight the revolutionary battle for the
working classes and peasantry, communist parties in different countries need to
contest the hegemony of the ruling classes in civil society.
Gramsci admired the Bolshevik revolution of Russia as a victory of people’s
will power over economic conditions. He also warned that this strategy would not
be suitable under the conditions prevailing in the western society where the working
class had come to accept the existing arrangements. He set aside certain assumptions
of classical Marxism and produced a new analysis of the bourgeois state. Previously
the term hegemony was described and also used by the famous Marxists such as
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He used this term to symbolize the political leadership of the
working class for the democratic revolution. After that Gramsci greatly expanded
this concept for developing a sharp analysis for the ruling capitalist class and also for
the bourgeoisie which establishes and maintains its control in the society. Orthodox
Marxism always predicted that the socialist revolution was inevitable for capitalist
societies. This type of revolution was popular in the advanced nations by early
twentieth century. The concept of capitalism seemed even more fixed than ever in
Western societies. Thus, according to Gramsci, in such societies capitalism was
maintained through ideology and not just through violence, political and economic
coercion. At that time, the bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture which mainly
propagated its own values and norms. This was mainly done so that the vales of the
bourgeoisie become the common sense of values for all. The people who were in
the working class identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie class.
Thus, the working class helped the bourgeois maintain the status quo rather than
revolt.
He said that the bourgeois class had the values which represented natural
and normal values for the society and this helped them to maintain control of the
working class; thus, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own in
opposition to this ‘hegemonic’ culture. Lenin held that the culture was ancillary to
political objectives, but for Gramsci it was fundamental for the attainment of power.
In his view a class in a society cannot dominate conditions without advancing its
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own economic interests. This domination did not come about through either force or Mao and Gramsci
coercion. So it can be said that it must have intellectual and moral leadership and
also make compromises and alliances through a variety of forces. Gramsci calls this
union of social forces ‘historic blocs’ a term taken from the famous philosopher
Georges Sorel. This bloc forms mainly on the basis of consent for making a certain NOTES
social order which produces and also reproduces the hegemony of the dominant
class. This was mainly done through a nexus of institutions, social relations and also
their ideas. For this, Gramsci developed a theory which emphasized the importance
of the political and ideological superstructure which was mainly for maintaining and
fracturing relations of the economic base.
Ideological Hegemony
Gramsci in his book Prison Notebooks, written between 1929-35, emphasized the
degree to which capitalism was maintained not merely by economic domination, but
also by political and cultural factors, and he called this ideological hegemony. He
accepted the description of capitalism put forward by Marx earlier and also accepted
that the struggle between the ruling class and the subordinate working class was the
main driving force which moved towards the society at that time. People did not
accept the traditional Marxist view. Traditional Marxists mainly believed how the
ruling class ruled at that time. Gramsci made a great contribution towards modern
thought by thoughts on his ideology. The term ideology was mainly seen as a simple
system of ideas and also beliefs. But the term was closely tied with the concept of
power and also the definition which was given by another philosopher called Anthony
Giddens. Giddens gave the definition of ideology was easy to understand by the
masses. According to Giddens, the term ideology was defined as the shared ideas or
beliefs which serve to justify the interests of the dominant groups. He also said that
the relationship to power is mainly to legitimize the differential power that the groups
hold. This is mainly to distort the real situation that the people find themselves within
it. It is said that the traditional Marxist theory of power was one sided and was
based on the role of force and coercion as the basis for the ruling class for domination.
This was mainly reinforced by Lenin during the success of Russian Revolution in
1917. During that time, Gramsci felt that there was something missing and that may
be the understanding of the subtle but pervasive forms of ideological control and
manipulation which affected all the repressive structures.
Gramsci identified two different forms of political control such as:
 The domination which referred the direct physical coercion by the police
and the armed forces.
 The hegemony which referred to both ideological control and more crucially
consent.
He also assumed that no regime, how authoritarian it might be, could sustain
itself through the organized state power and also the armed forces. If we think
about the long process then it had to have some popular support and also legitimacy
in order to maintain stability. Gramsci thought that hegemony meant the permeation
throughout the society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality
that effected the status quo in power relations. So hegemony in this sense might be
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Mao and Gramsci defined as an organized principle that is diffused by the process of socialization
which is focused in every area of social life. It can also be said to an extent that this
prevailing consciousness is internalized by the population which becomes the part of
the common sense so that the culture, philosophy and the morality of the ruling class
NOTES comes to appear as the natural order of things. As according to Marx, the basic
division of society is mainly the base represented by the economic structure and a
superstructure represented by institutions and beliefs prevalent in society and accepted
by many Marxists followers. Gramsci took this belief a step further and he divided
the superstructure into those institutions that were overtly coercive and also those
that were not. The coercive ones are basically those which were the public institutions
such as the governments, armed forces, police and the legal system. He also said
that the state or political society and the non-coercive ones were those he regarded
as civil society. To some extent schools come into both the categories. As we all
know that the parts of school life are quite clearly coercive but some others are not
like the hidden curriculum of the school. So for this, Gramsci said that the society
was made up of the relations of production, the state or the political society and the
civil society.
Gramsci’s analysis about the society went much further than the Marxist
theory which provides a clear understanding of why the European working class
had failed totally to develop the revolutionary consciousness after the First World
War and had instead moved towards reformism. This can be understood through
some example such as tinkering with the system rather than working towards
overthrowing the system from its existing place. It was a very subtle theory of
power and went a long way to explain how the ruling class ruled during that period.
So if the hegemony of ruling capitalist class resulted from an ideological bond between
the rulers and the ruled then what will be the strategy which was needed by the
employed persons? The answers to these questions were mainly those who wished
to break that ideological bond and had to build up a counter hegemony for the ruling
class. They had to see the structural changes as part of the same struggle. It is
mentioned that the labour process was the main class struggle but it was the ideological
struggle that had to be addressed. Workers should be allowed questioning their
political and economic masters for right to rule. It was the popular consensus in the
civil society that had to be challenged and this can be seen as a role for the informal
education. It’s said that overcoming popular consensus is not easy. At that period
there were many complaints raised about the ways things were run and people
looked for improvements and reforms. But the basic belief and also the value system
underpinning in the society were seen as general applicability in the class structure
of the society. Marxists may have seen that the people in the society are always
asking for bigger role in the society or higher responsibility in the government sector.
For this Gramsci used the term hegemony as a tool for analysing the historical and
political issues of the society. As we have already seen that Gramsci used this term
in many ways and it also changed according to time and relations to his subject.
Before his arrest by Italian fascists Gramsci wrote that some aspects of the Southern
question are unambiguous about the nature of hegemony. Again he said that the
working class becomes a leading and dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in
creating a system of class alliances. So this alliance allows it to mobilize the majority
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of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois state. As the struggle Mao and Gramsci
which rose in Italy was mainly because of historical development in the society it did
not have any proper impact on the economic inequality. It is essential to understand
properly the working class movement issues which were culturally important to the
peasants mainly because it would help to lead the other groups within the working NOTES
population of Italy.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

3. According to Gramsci, what is the purpose of institutions like the school,
church and the family?
4. How does Gramsci define hegemony?
5. According to Gramsci, what are the two forms of political control?

4.4 SOCIALISM

Let us now study the different types of socialist ideas that have been espoused by
various philosophers. Let us begin with utopian socialism.

4.4.1 Utopian Socialism: Robert Owen

When in the latter half of the 19th century, the revolutionary dogmas of Marx and
his school had become most conspicuous in the social movement, the earlier systems
became known, by way of distinction, as Utopian socialism. Under this term were
included the doctrines and projects of Robert Owen. The name was in some sense
justified by the ideal societies that were advocated and put to all practical tests by
these thinkers and their followers. But while Plato and Thomas Moore and Tommaso
Campanella had constructed their fanciful commonwealths with no expectation of
their being realized, the 19th century Utopians were profoundly convinced that their
several systems were destined in no distant future to effect an entire transformation
of social life. In the governmental reforms that were so much at issue in their time,
these philosophers had little or no interest. According to them, the political would
disappear with the social evils when society should be reorganized on the proper
principles. These utopian socialists believed that all the schools found in history
evidence that the normal course of mankind in progress toward its goal had been
checked and deflected by ignorance and error concerning the principles of collective
life - a correct understanding of those principles would bring naturally the resumption
of progress.
All agreed that an important, if not the most important, source of the ills that
afflicted mankind was poverty and its consequences. All agreed that the ‘prevalence
of poverty was due largely, if not exclusively, to the exaggerated recognition of self-
interest as the ‘mainspring of human action, and that the existing system of industry
and commerce, based upon this principle and operating by unrestricted competition,
must unendingly increase the misery of the race. All scored the injustice of unearned
wealth as vehemently as they lamented the sufferings of undeserved poverty.’ All
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Mao and Gramsci denounced the existing capitalistic system. Robert Owen, however, found capital
indispensable, subject to the regulations imposed by his system. Owen maintained
that when his simple rational laws for the creation of what is good for men should
prevail, there would be no ‘useless private property’; but St. Simonians announced
NOTES as the most important means to the realization of social justice that the right to
unearned property, so far as it depended on inheritance, must be abolished. The
error that has led men astray, so the Utopians, all argued, has been the assumption
that nature designed the individual rather than the group to be the basis of social
existence. Society is not a deliberately created service of previously isolated men
for the promotion of their several selfish interests; it springs from the feeling not
from the reason of mankind. Sympathy the ‘sense of alikeness — brings men’
inevitably together; ‘benevolence — willing the good of all — is the ‘natural ‘principle
of association. ‘These basic factors have been almost wholly lost sight of in the
theory and practice of social life. Rivalry, competition, strife and war,’ (The unit of
this new order is to be a community of with the endless exploitation of the weaker
by the stronger have become the accepted methods for determining the relations of
individuals and of peoples to one another. The internal affairs of the community are
to be directed to one another. To change all this and restore the reign of nature’s
peace and order to humanity, is the proclaimed purposes of all the Utopians).
The projects of the various schools for the achievement of this end had some
things in common, but were; for the most part widely divergent from one another.
Owen and the Owenites chiefly devoted themselves to the improvement of conditions
in the industrial’world. Philanthropic devices for the benefit of the labourers were
managed by precept and by example upon the obdurate British factory owners, and
the legislation that was at last secured, against the bitter opposition of the laissez-
faire economists, received hearty support from the Owenites. The most characteristic
feature of their work, however, was the establishment among the working classes
of cooperative societies for the supply of their needs. This form of voluntary
association for the production and exchange of commodities, attained great prominence
and wide vogue in the 1820s and the 1830s. Cooperation was hailed as the much-
desired expedient for escaping the evils of the strife between capital and labour. The
success of this device confirmed Owen in his belief that he had solved the problem
of society in general, and he set forth with fanatical fervour his scheme of a
reorganized world.
The unit of this new order is to be a community of families numbering from
500 to 3000 persons, living on a tract of land large enough to support the members.
The internal affairs of the community are to be directed by a council consisting of all
the members from thirty to forty years of age; relations with other communities are
in the charge of a like council of the members from forty to sixty years. Unions of
these primary communities will be constituted under similar councils for larger areas.
All the councils are to act in conformity to the code that Owen formulates, the basis
of which is the fundamental law of nature that the individual’s character is not
formed by himself, but is the result of the circumstances and education to which he
has been subjected. The chief prescriptions of the code are those that insure the
‘same general routine of education, domestic teaching and employment’ to all children
of both sexes, who are put from birth under the care of the community. Members
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who, despite their education, fail to act rationally are to be removed to the hospitals Mao and Gramsci
for physical, mental or moral invalids, where their cure is to be affected by the
mildest possible treatment. If any directing council contravenes the fundamental
laws of human nature it will be supplanted by a new one consisting of the members
of the community between twenty and thirty or over sixty years of age. It is not NOTES
explained how this substitution is to be effected, and there is nowhere in the scheme,
save in the clause referring to the hospitals, any suggestion of coercive government.
What is to become of the existing political systems of the world is not discussed, but
the thought is not obscure that they will fade, imperceptibly away in the light of the
new order.
Robert Owen’s project for escape from the evils of civilization took shape in
that form of communal life which became famous as the phalange. His primary
concern was with agricultural rather than industrial production, with the household
rather than the factory. The true principles of association he worked out in an elaborate
system wherein much acute and suggestive reflection was made useless by incoherent
presentation and pedantic terminology. The outstanding feature of his social philosophy
was the doctrine of what he has called passionate attraction. According to this
doctrine, the passions or feelings of men, rather than their reason, must be considered
the basis of every kind of association, and particularly of that cooperative union
through which the primary needs of physical life are satisfied. Naturally ‘all men
dislike the incessant, monotonous labour that produces’ the necessities of life.
Naturally every man finds ‘relative if not absolute pleasure in some species of labour
or in some alternation in species of labour’. Ignorance or disregard of these basic
facts accounts for the evils of social life whether in ancient or in modern times.
Slavery, serfdom and the wages system, with the governmental institutions that
accompany and sustain them, are but different forms of the distortion that results
from the effort of certain classes, by deliberate liberate association, ‘to put all the
repellent labour of social life upon others and retain the agreeable for themselves
alone.
Robert Owen said that the way out is to transform the social organization in
the light of the principles that Owen has discovered. Labour must be made attractive,
and therefore productive beyond all comparison with earlier ages. Every variety of
taste, talent and other endowment must be recognized and utilized in the proportion
that science shows to be requisite for the harmony of the whole and the happiness
of the individual members. The typical association for this end is a group of five
hundred families, fifteen to eighteen hundred persons, voluntarily united in a community
which Owen called, true socialism. It should include capitalists, labourers and persons
of talent, each contributing as he is able to the productiveness and agreeableness of
the community’s life. Through the organization and specialization of the functions
essential to the industries carried on, occupations suited to every taste would be
available with the result that every member would labour with the zest of pleasure.
‘Passional attraction’ rather than competitive greed for gain would rule the community
life. No wages should appear in the system. Every species of necessary labour must
be performed by the members, participation of all in the generally repulsive kinds
being stimulated in various in genius ways. Every member of the community must
be a shareholder, whose part in the profits shall be determined in accordance with a
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Mao and Gramsci scale that assigns a fixed proportion to capital, to labour and to talent. But every
member must be guaranteed a minimum return sufficient to free him from anxiety
for himself or his family, and every member must possess the right to labour in such
occupations as are adapted to his preference and his capacity.
NOTES In the words of Robert Owen, with the establishment of such a system of
social organization Owen believes that poverty will disappear, true liberty will be
assured to every individual, the real natural rights of man will be recognized, happiness
and order will be universal, and consequently government, so far at least as its
coercive activities are concerned — armies, scaffolds, prisons, courts of justice —
will have no longer any cause for existence. There never appears in Owens writings
the slightest suggestion of revolutionary violence. His conviction is unfaltering that
the great truths he has revealed will make their way by their own virtue.
4.4.2 Anarchist Socialism
Anarchism is an extreme theory regarding the necessity and the function of the
state. The theory is hostile to the ‘coercisive state’ and wants to see it abolished.
Anarchism asserts that political authority, in any of its forms is unnecessary and
undesirable. In recent anarchist theory, theoretical opposition to the state has usually
been associated with opposition to the institution of private property and also with
hostility to organized religious authority. For the Russian philosopher Peter Kropotkin,
the most intellectual exponent of the doctrine, the essential feature of the anarchistic
regime is that there will be no compulsion, no law, and no government exercising
force. In the words of the author Richard Garner, ‘the anarchist is opposed to every
existing system of government not only because it exercises compulsion upon the
individual without his consent and is therefore an enemy to liberty and genuine self-
government, but also because all governments without exception have proved
themselves inefficient; they are arbitrary and tyrannical and therefore hateful; they
are conducted in the interests of the privileged classes; the alleged equality of treatment
which they profess to mete out to all has no real existence. The essential features of
anarchism are the abolition of all constituted authority and the complete emancipation
of the individual from every form of control political, social or religious’. Thus
anarchists represent the extreme school of individual rights who are hostile to all
forms of authority.
Thomas Hodgskin was another English Utopian anarchist who made ‘the
theory of an ultimate and underlying harmony’, assumed by the classical economists,
as the central point of his teaching. As an extreme individualist, he believed that the
whole universe ‘is regulated by permanent and invariable laws’ and dispensed with
the need for legislation or planning by a duly constituted authority.
Proudhon, a Frenchman, was probably the first to call himself an anarchist.
He came in contact with radical socialists in Paris and served a brief prison term for
writing seditious articles following the revolution of 1848. Basing his doctrine on the
Golden Rule and the natural law of justice, he derived there from the right of everyone
to the full product of his own labour. He declared property to be theft and political
authority to be an enemy of justice, reason and fair deal. His specific complaint

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against the state was that it had evolved out of the system of private property. He Mao and Gramsci
condemned property made up of accumulations from profits, interest and rent and
proposed to eliminate the monopolistic and exploitative features from private property.
Max Stirner, the ablest German exponent of individualistic anarchism, was a
‘young Hegelian’ who maintained that the individual was the only reality and his NOTES
rights entitled him to overthrow any authority whatsoever by violent means. Most of
the American anarchists of the mid-nineteenth century were individualists who derived
their ideas directly from older intellectual traditions and they developed their ideas in
direct reference to American social questions like slavery and the labour problems
arising from the rapidly developing industrialism. Henry David Thoreau urged both
passive and active resistance to the American government in the struggle against
slavery. He advocated civil disobedience and non-payment of taxes. More systematic
anarchist doctrines were set forth by Josiah Warren, and his disciple Stephen Pearl
Andrews, and later by Benjamin R. Tucker. Tucker made intelligent self-interest the
foundation of his doctrine. He made a strong plea for the elimination of political
authority for at all periods of history, the state had violated the principle of liberty. He
believed that when coercive government disappears, crimes will disappear. Leo
Tolstoy of Russia was a philosophical anarchist whose ideas were imbued with
Christian ethics. The anarchist thinkers discussed so far are called individualist
anarchists who were content with philosophical and literary exposition of their
doctrine. They had sublime faith in the individual and invested him with property
rights acquired through fair means.
The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakunin is regarded as the founder of an
extensive movement of anarchism among proletarian group of Europe in the later
nineteenth century. He founded his doctrine upon scientific basis. Human history, he
wrote ‘consists in the progressive negation of man’s original bestiality, the evolution
of his humanity’. Anarchism is the natural goal of man’s moral evolution. Political
authority, private property, and religion, belong to the lower stages of man’s
development for they are associated in one way or another, with physical desires
and fears. The state perpetuates inequitable economic conditions and debase morality.
‘The State makes tyrants or egoists out of the few and servants or dependents out
of the many’. He advocated that the state’s place is to be taken by a free society
based on contract and voluntary association. The goal of anarchism is to be attained
both through evolution and revolution, i.e., by education and intrigue.
Bakunin’s ideas were adopted by Prince Kropotkin. He stated his ideas in
terms of biology and ‘human geography’. He stressed the cooperative principle in
men and animals as against the competitive. He believed in a society of mutual aid.
Bakunin thought that the state, private property and religious authority stood in the
way of realization of the anarchistic goal. The misery of the many and the plenty for
the few, he associates with the political system. Laws formulated by the state have
a class bias. He advocated the replacement of the state by a web of freely functioning
groups. Economically the new order will be that of complete communism. Each
man is to choose his [Link] and put in four to five hours of labour at some useful
social service. Man, left to himself prefers work to idleness, order to disorder, social
morality to conventional morality and natural religion to dogmatic religion. In all that
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Mao and Gramsci he wrote he placed emphasis on man’s sense of social responsibility, his feeling for
human brotherhood.
Anarchists picture the vision of a new society characterized by the absence
of every form of authority. They highlight the cooperative and social nature of man.
NOTES They hold that human nature is essentially good but is corrupted by evil institutions.
The English philosopher C.E.M Joads enumerates three sources of authority from
which anarchism would emancipate the individual.
(a) It would free man as a producer from the yoke of the capitalism.
(b) It would free man as a citizen from the yoke of the State.
(c) It would free man as an individual from the authority of religious morality
derived from hypothetical, metaphysical entities such as an omnipotent
God.
Anarchism emphasizes the worth of individual personality finds its close ally
in nineteenth century positive liberalism. In its opposition to private property it picks
up the thread of socialist thought. Anarchism thus aims ‘to fuse the ideals of liberalism
and socialism, the two great currents of nineteenth century social reform .It taught
that liberty without socialism resulted in special privilege, and that socialism without
liberty led to autocracy and slavery’. Anarchists claim that only in an anarchist
society would the individual be able to develop his full nature and to realize his
potentialities.
Anarchism dispenses with the need for any government. On the economic
side, anarchism expresses itself in the belief in a universal communism, which is
stated by Kropotkin as follows: ‘All belongs to everyone and provided each man and
woman contributes his or her share for the Production of necessary objects, they
have a right to share in all that is produced by everybody’. Government in any form
is not necessary to ensure that everybody’s share is just. On the contrary, the chief
function of government hither to has been to ensure that everybody’s share is unjust.
Governments have been ensuring less for the workers and more for the employers
by maintaining an unfair economic system.
Anarchists find no justification for the state. For them, the state has no rational
purpose to serve; no impartial role to play. The state, as it exists today, is used by the
few as an instrument to protect their unjust property which rightfully belongs to the
whole society. The state can never be seized and used, as some socialist suggest;
for the purpose of ushering in a new socio-economic order.
They point out the inherent fallacy of representative government. The state
as a nationally representative body cannot seek the will of the people on any and
every question as it arises. No man can adequately represent another man, much
less a group of other men. The representative seldom possesses the required
knowledge to enable him to deal adequately with all the questions that arise for
decision. Moreover, the common will expresses itself differently with regard to each
one of the questions that the state has to settle.
Political power has a corrupting influence. The exercise of power over other
men inevitably corrupts the best intentioned persons. No man and no body of men
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should be entrusted with governmental authority over other men. Governments from Mao and Gramsci
their very nature use force, force to separate men who are naturally friends. For
them, ‘Government is based on egotism and fear, anarchy on fraternity’.
Anarchists look upon the state as a superfluous institution. It is not necessary
for education either as voluntary educational societies can perform better. State is NOTES
not necessary for defense. Standing armies, says Kropotkin, are always beaten by
invaders who have historically been repulsed only by spontaneous uprisings. State
does not really guarantee security. It creates criminals through its inequitable economic
system. In art, science, and in business, voluntary organizations, clubs, academies
and societies do better, because they rely upon free cooperation.
As substitutes for the existing state and its government, anarchists advocate
a web of free associations formed ad hoc for the carrying out of special purposes.
The autonomous associations, both territorial and vocational, will perform the essential
functions of society which are at present undertaken by the state. For them, ‘anarchy
is not the absence of order; it is the absence of force’. There will be few occasions
for conflict, disharmony and competition among various groups and associations.
With proper education, elimination of inequality and abolition of the state, interests
will rarely conflict and occasions of disharmony will be few. Bereft of governmental
grand motherliness and governmental interference people will develop freely. It is
competition which breeds enmity; if we eliminate it, men’s natural friendliness will
grow and deepen.
Regarding the methods by which anarchistic goal, is to be achieved there is
no unanimity among its authors. The philosophical anarchists believe in the methods
of persuasion, discussion and propaganda. Revolutionary or communistic anarchists
advocate violent and terroristic methods for realizing their vision of an emancipated
society. As Levine writes: “The anarchists saw only one way of bringing about the
emancipation of the working class; namely, to organize groups, and at an opportune
moment to raise the people in revolt against the state and the propertied classes;
then destroy the State, expropriate the capitalist class and reorganize society on
communist and federalist principles. Thus, anarchism in its emphasis on violent
methods of Social change, bears close resemblance to revolutionary syndicalism.
Anarchistic theory is essentially utopian in character. It has an attractive
qualities in but its supporters are unable to fill in the details. The picture of an anarchist
society remains an unattainable ideal. The assumptions on which the edifice of the
new society is sought to be built up are unrelated to hard and complex realities.
Its assumption of human nature is one-sided. Most anarchist doctrines rest
upon assumptions of the predominance of the social and cooperative, not the self-
seeking and competitive, instincts of man. Anarchists ignore the irrational forces
determining human behaviour.
Their view of the coercive state is grossly exaggerated. State functions through
both consent and coercion. Modern states render many welfare services to individuals
in the form of aid and assistance which involve no compulsion.
The substitutes which anarchists propose to take the place of the state would
wholly prove inadequate to meet the needs and problems which exist in the complex
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Mao and Gramsci societies of today. The anarchist belief in automatic harmony in a society of
autonomous groups is utopian. State as a common agency is indispensable for
maintaining social order and stability. The state in some form, whatever may be said
in criticism of its mistakes, its inefficiency, its abuse of power, is and always will be
NOTES an absolute necessity among civilized men. Voluntary associations would be found
totally inadequate for the purpose of defence, police protection, enforcement of
contracts etc.
State action does not mean a complete destruction of moral values. State
cannot directly promote morality; yet it can so order external conditions as to make
it possible for the individual to live the good life. The anarchist is mistaken in thinking
that liberty is the greatest of all political goods. Liberty is not an end in itself. Collective
life implies some restraint upon individual freedom. Liberty degenerates into tyranny
of the strong without some controlling agency like the state. It remarked, whatever
in human history is great or admirable has been found in governed communities, that
is, it has been the result of the imposition of restrictions upon liberty. The anarchist
vision of unlimited liberty defies realization.
Anarchism highlights the dangers of overgrowth of political power. It is a
protest against the glorification of the state and its institutions. In all states there are
social, economic and political evils, due in large measure to bad, inefficient and
corrupt government, which have tended to discredit the state in the minds of the
governed. Brown remarks, ‘Anarchism confronts our sense of citizenship with a
challenge which we should do well to take seriously, and the believer in political
institutions should seek to make them more worthy of popular allegiance’.
Anarchism is first and foremost a plea for decentralization, both territorial
and functional. It stresses the need for dispersal and decentralization of power. Man
through membership of small and closely-knit groups and associations can become
aware of his role in society and exercise his real freedom through active participation.
Anarchism draws our attention to the urgent need for socio- economic reforms in
the existing system. It pictures an ideal society free from inequality, injustice,
oppression and exploitation. There is truth in the anarchistic view that true morality
is largely self-earned. It encourages individual self-help based on cooperation with
fellow-beings.
4.4.3 Fabian Socialism
Fabianism is an English version of evolutionary socialism, which was conceived in
agreement with the new conditions and developments that came over England at
the end of the 19th century. This English version of socialism is essentially pragmatic
in outlook, flexible in approach and democratic method. It is the brain child of a
group of British intellectuals and differs sharply from Marxism in that it believes in
attaining socialism by slow, peaceful and flexible methods. E.M. Burns thus writes:
Perhaps the most important variety of contemporary socialism which does not
trace the paternity of its doctrines to Marx is Fabian socialism. The principal
sources of Fabian socialism were British and American. They included the writings
of Henry George, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill. The most dominant idea
derived from these sources was the premise that most forms of unearned wealth
are created by society.
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 Fabianism originated in England in the last quarter of the 19th century. Increasing Mao and Gramsci
democratization in the political sphere and the growth of collectivist legislation in the
economic sphere provided a congenial atmosphere for the evolution of a new brand
of socialism suited to the needs, temperament and traditions of the English people.
Between the years 1865 and 1885 Great Britain had entered on a period of change. NOTES
The British constitution was turned into a democracy. A democratic state which
was prepared to take upon itself social reform duties, a working class with
economic influence and power, a nation with a growing social conscience, could
not be treated from the stand point of revolution and class struggle. The
fundamental socialist concepts required a new basis and new methods more in
harmony with new conditions.
In the early eighties several socialist movements got under way in England.
Several organizations, active in the propagation of socialist ideas were formed of
which the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist League, the Independent Labour
Party, and the Fabian Society were more prominent. The Fabian Society saw the
light of the day on 4 January, 1884, ‘a group of intellectuals who envisaged the
emergence of a socialist society in England. The society was named after Roman
general Fabius who, while fighting Hannibal adopted the policy of ‘wait, and hit hard
at the right moment’. Its prominent members included Sidney Webb, G.B. Shaw,
Graham Wall as, Sidney Olivier, A. Besant, H. Bland, W. Clark and E. R. Pease,
etc. They were highly educated men and women, widely read in economics, politics
and ethics. Thus the Fabian Society could boast of having on its rolls distinguished
scholars, administrators and statesmen. The Fabians were primarily influenced by J.
S. Mill, Henry George, and Karl Marx.
Henry George was considered as an American Social reformer. His
contribution to the study of Fabianism is very much significant. George is well known
for his book Progress and Poverty (1879). His far-reaching contribution to the
study of Ricardian theory of rent is commendable. He played a very pivotal role in
the field of British socialism. George’s seminal ideas influenced the thought of Marx
and Engels. Sydney Oliver, George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Web, H. G. Wells also
have played a very significant role under the ideas of Henry George. Particularly
the Fabians were attracted in terms of poverty and disparity of incomes. To him,
poverty is an evil concept and was found from parochial loyalties, economic stagnation
and political breakdown. Poverty can be prevented with the help of state action and
intervention. The Fabian Society was established in 4 January, 1884.
Rejection of Marxian Theory of Class Struggle
Henry George rejected Marxian theory of class struggle and revolutionary method
and he was influenced by his concern for social justice and a society free from all
forms of exploitation. Henry had developed socialist leanings in the later part of his
life. He wrote that ‘The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to
unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw
materials of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined
labour’. Henry George, the American philosopher, who wrote Progress and Poverty
in 1879, lectured in England in 1881 and greatly influenced the English socialist
thinkers. According to Lancaster, George influenced the Fabians in two ways.
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Mao and Gramsci  Firstly, George’s glowing picture of a society without want fired their enthusiasm
for getting rid of unearned wealth.
 Secondly, George’s hint led them to find, quite readily, differential values other
than economic rent — in profits, salaries, and dividends, all of which were
NOTES unearned to precisely the same degree as the rent appropriated by landlords.
Henry George was fully engaged and was committed to intensive and extensive
studies and research. In 1906, the he started the Fabian Summer School to have
lectures and discussions on politics and economics. The Fabian Research Department
was instituted in 1912 to study the various socio-economic problems created by
industrial capitalism. Henry said that ‘The object of the Fabians have been to spread
the socialist doctrine as they understand it, throughout the educated middle class and
to persuade the national and local governments of Great Britain to put the doctrine
gradually into practical operation.’
Major Tenets of Henry George
(a) Emancipation of land and industrial capital
Henry George stated that the Fabian Society had democratic socialists as its members.
The basis of Fabianism was hammered out in 1887 and was restated in 1919 with
slight modifications. Henry George wanted to reorganize the society by the
emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual ownership, and the vesting
of them in the community for the general benefit. The society accordingly works for
the extinction of private property in land the prevention of appropriation of rent by
individuals. The society further, works for the transfer to the community of the
administration of such industrial capital as can be conveniently managed socially.
Such transfer was deemed imperative as industrial capital had become a monopoly
in the hands of a class of proprietors on whom the majority depended for a livelihood.
Labour should be duly rewarded. The idle class living on the labour of others could
be eliminated when rent and interest are not allowed to go into their pockets, but are
made the rewards of labour. ‘For the attainment of these ends the Henry George
looks to the spread of socialist opinions and the social and political changes consequent
thereon, dissemination of knowledge as to the relation between the individual and
society in the economic, ethical and political aspects’.
(b) Democratic State
Unlike syndicalists and guild socialists, Henry George was confident of the fairness
and effectiveness of action by the State — the democratic state. He looked upon
the democratic state as the ‘representative, and trustee of the people’, ‘their guardian,
their man of business, their manager, their secretary, even their stockholder’. He
suggested the following measures to make the state ‘trustworthy’: (a) Broadening
the suffrage; (b) Securing a better trained civil service, and (c) Equalizing educational
opportunities. The state, according to them, was the state civil service and it was the
bounden duty of the civil service to act efficiently and in a manner responsive to
public wishes.

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(c) Gradual reforms along ordinary parliamentary lines Mao and Gramsci

George rejected the Marxian theory of class struggle and the method of revolution
and expressed firm faith in achieving a socialist society through gradual reforms
along ordinary parliamentary lines. Fabian socialists advocated peaceful and tempered
social changes. Land, industry and financial institutions are to pass from private NOTES
ownership to the state by peaceful, gradual methods. While Marxism is revolutionary,
Fabianism is evolutionary. Instead of the Marxian theory that the history of all hither
to existing societies is the history of class struggle, Henry George maintained that
history demonstrates the ‘irresistible progress of democracy’ and ‘almost continuous
progress of socialism’.
(d) Transition from capitalism to socialism
Henry George regards the transition from capitalism to socialism as a gradual process.
He looks forward to the socialization of industry by peaceful economic and political
agencies already at hand. Fabians see in the middle class a group that can be utilized
in developing the technique of administration on behalf of the new social order. They
also feel that an important step in the attainment of socialism is the rise of the social
conscience of the community in favour of the socialist ideal.
(e) Economic basis of Fabianism
Henry George, also analyzing the economic basis of Fabianism, rejected the labour
theory of value of both the classical economists and Marx and maintained that the
community as a whole, and not labour alone, creates value. The aim of socialism, as
Henry conceived it, is to obtain for all members of society the values which society
creates, and this aim is to be achieved by gradually transferring land and industrial
capital to the community, while making the state more fully representative of the
community. Thus, its aim is to transfer ownership, not to the workers as a class, but
to society, for general benefit.
Socialism maintained that democracy and socialism are complementary to
each other, because both are based on the ideas of equality and justice. Through
democratic processes, the socio-economic, cultural and political system of the society
would gradually change paving the way for socialism. Socialism should be brought
gradually, not through the short-circuiting path of revolutionary method. The Fabian
strategy is one of permeation, ‘Resolved to permeate all classes it has not preached
class antagonism. Resolved gradually to permeate it has not been revolutionary, it
has relied on the slow growth of opinion.’
Henry George favours decentralization of power and greater municipalisation.
He writes that, ‘A democratic state cannot be a social democratic state unless it has
in every centre of the population a local governing body as thoroughly democratic in
constitution as the Central parliament’. Under the aegis of the state local self-bodies
should be allowed greater opportunities to work.
(f) Theory of land and rent
Henry George opposed the revolutionary theory of Marxism. He holds that social
reforms and socialist permeation of existing political institutions can bring about the

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Mao and Gramsci expected development of socialism. He paid little attention to trade unionism and
other labour movements. He recognized the major tenet of Marxian philosophy
which was the abolition of private property. George questioned why there was chronic
poverty in spite of advancement of technology. He himself gave the answer, stating
NOTES that with the advance of technology, population grows. With the growth of the
population, land grows in value. The growing share of the output and development
of market economy is siphoned off by the owners of land and natural resources.
In this context, many English economists had criticized the philosophy and
ideas of Henry George. T.E. Cliff Leslie, Alfrad Marshall has vehemently criticized
his basic ideas on economy. George Bernard Shaw attempted to adopt Henry
George’s view of land rent and is considered as a huge and mounting subtraction
from the income of workers. George said that a tax is levied upon the production of
a thing that must constantly be produced by human labour. This labour will make
supply more difficult, raise prices, and the man who pays the tax is constantly able to
push the tax upon the consumer. Land has no role to constantly supply in order to
meet the demand. Its price is always a monopoly value and the tax falls upon the
land value which does not fall upon all land but only upon valuable land and that its
proportion to its value.
4.4.4 Guild Socialism and Syndicalism
In its origins, guild socialism was a purely English theory. It was set forth by English
intellectuals in the first and second decades of the twentieth century. It is a socialist
system and movement aiming at industrial self-government and functional democracy.
It is the intellectual child of English Fabianism and French Syndicalism. It is ‘a kind
of anaemic version of French syndicalism’. Some describe it as a half-way house
between syndicalism and collectivism. It does not agree with syndicalism in wanting
to abolish the state by direct action; nor does it want the state to control all of
industry, as does collectivism. But like the syndicalists, the guild socialists were the
most ardent advocates of workers’ control in industry. Unlike collectivists (State
socialists) they advocate withdrawal of state control from the economic sphere.
Guild socialists aim at the achievement of socialism with the guild as its foundation.
They want to extend the democratic principle to any and every form of social action
and in especial, to industrial and economic full as much as to political affairs. The
object of guild socialism is to make work more interesting and the whole economic
structure of society more democratic. The fundamental demand of guild socialism is
that the whole structure of society should be made democratic.
It was not until 1909 that the guild-socialist theory assumed a more practical
form. The Trade Unions played a prominent part in the great labour unrest during
the years 1909-12. Writers like AR. Orage and S.G. Hobson put forward the proposal
in the columns of the New Age that the guild idea should be adapted to modern
conditions on the basis of the existing Trade Union Organization. They made vigorous
attacks upon modern capitalism, criticized also the centralized collectivism of
contemporary socialism, and gradually reshaped the original Orage-Penty proposals,
for a restoration of medieval guilds, into an elaborate scheme for national guilds,
properly adjusted to modern political and economic conditions. Their articles were
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later published in the book National Guilds, An Enquiry into the Wage System Mao and Gramsci
and the Way out. Penty, Orage and Hobson were members of the Fabian Society
and the Independent Labour Party, until they became disillusioned with these
organizations, upholding centralized political socialism.
NOTES
Main Tenets of Guild Socialism
Guild socialism offers an indictment of present society, based on industrialism. They
protest against the contemporary capitalist method of exploitation in which the surplus
value is pocketed by the capitalist. In return for the minimum wage, the workers
surrender all control over the organization of production. They advocate the abolition
of the present system which produces slave mentality in the workers. They argue
wages, profits, rents, and interest should be apportioned upon a fundamentally
different principle. They criticize the acquisitive nature of the mode economic system
which separates ownership from service to munity. Right to property exists for its
owner’s sake, unrelated to any full social function. They protest against the
dehumanizing consequences of the machine system. They attempt to devise a system
that develop workers not merely skill but also pride in their work. Again, they criticize
the contemporary political democracy based on the principle of territorial
representation.
The goals at which the National Guilds League aims are described the abolition
of the Wage-system, and the establishment by the workers Self-Government in
industry, through a democratic system of Nation - Guilds, working in conjunction
with other democratic functional organizations in the community. The general
principles on which this statement of aims is founded may be reduced to the following
three:
 The principle of Functional Democracy
 The principle that industry should be administered by the common action
of workers both of hand and brain who carry on the industry
 The principle that power and responsibility in society should be related
and proportional to the importance of the functions which individuals
perform in the service of the community.
They advocate the setting up of guilds or cooperative associations in the
economic sphere. Each industry and each technical and cultural service would be
managed and controlled by guild which is defined by Drage as ‘a self-governing
association of mutually dependent people organized for-the responsible discharge of
a particular function of society’. The guild is a Trade Union modified in two ways: it
will be inclusive of all workers in an industry the unskilled workers as well as the
clerical, technical and managerial workers - and its chief function would be not to
protect the interests of its members, nor merely to secure better conditions of work,
but to carry on and control the industry. While trade union is organized for militant
purposes in a hostile society, the Guild will be organized for peaceful purposes in a
friendly society. With regard to prices of commodities, where the interests of the
consumers are involved, the Consumers’ Councils in collaboration with the guilds
will make the decisions.
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Mao and Gramsci State can exercise power only in a limited field such as defence, justice,
education, taxation and international relations. In general the National Guilds League
adopts a hostile attitude to the state. There is a tendency to relegate the State to the
role of an association of consumers, represented on a number of bodies elected on
NOTES a national basis for the purpose of negotiating with the big producing Guilds, but
according to Hobson, the state continues to be the representative of the community
at large. He ascribes a superior position to the state. As supreme authority the state
should settle disputes between guilds in the capacity of a court of final appeal; when
the guild congress proves unable to settle them.
They believe in the evolutionary methods of achieving socialism. The present
trade unions will be the guilds of tomorrow and become instruments of transformation.
The present trade unions have to perfect and strengthen themselves and pursue the
method of ‘encroaching control’ which is ‘wresting bit by bit from the hands of the
possessing classes the economic power, by a steady transference of functions and
rights from their nominees to representatives of the working class’. In this respect
they differ from syndicalists who advocate direct action and general strike.
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a form of revolutionary socialism which is essentially a French school
of thought of the French labour movement. It is both a body of social doctrine or
theory of social organization, and a plan of action.
Syndicalism, loosely defined, holds that the workers alone must control the
conditions under which they work and live; the social changes they need can be
achieved only by their own efforts, by direct action in their own associations, and
through means suited to their peculiar needs. Syndicalism places positive emphasis
on the trade and industrial union movement as the basis of the new industrial structure
and on the producer rather than the consumer.
The exponents of syndicalism were both the active leaders of the trade Union
movement and a group of brilliant intellectuals. While activists like Fernard Pelloutier,
Emile Pouget and others formulated the main tenets of syndicalism, Georges Sorel,
Hubert Lagardelle and Edouard Berth with their intellectual brilliance provided its
philosophical foundation. Sorel, the philosopher par excellence of syndicalism,
attempted to work out a synthesis between the proletarianism of Marx, the anti-
political associationism of Proudhon and the intuitionism of Bergson. Socialism,
according to Sorel, required organization of the proletariat and not of the economic
system. He was in favour of establishing an industrial self-government of the working
class.
According to syndicalism, workers should organize a general strike and
paralyze the state. From the French revolutionary tradition, syndicalists acquired
their methods of violence and their emphasis on the role of militant elite in the
process of social transformation. Syndicalists called themselves a ‘new school’ of
socialism. This variety of socialism is marked by certain distinct features and tenets.
Syndicalism is uncompromisingly opposed to the State and looks upon it as a
bourgeois and middle class institution. Irrespective of its form, the state is an instrument
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of capitalist exploitation. All states are instruments of class rule. The territorial, Mao and Gramsci
military state reflects the ideals of property-owners and serves their interests. Workers
cannot emancipate themselves unless they destroy the power of the state. Reforms
and concessions conceded by the state are mere palliatives. The state, the syndicalists
argued, is theoretically wrong because it embodies an impossible ideal of social NOTES
unity. Society is essentially pluralistic, and no political constitution can make it
otherwise.
Syndicalists not only dislike the middle-class state but also distrust middle-
class socialism which is a product of clever middle-class intellectuals out of touch
with the needs of the working class. Syndicalism claims to be the only school of
socialism which is the product of the workers them- selves. It keeps alive among
workers an intense class consciousness and forbids any rapprochement between
the workers and the bourgeois. It is distrustful of the-middle class leadership and its
primary objective is to put the workers in power. Since the workers as producers
create value, they should be the controllers of society.
Syndicalists are deadly opponents of wars which they consider as the outcome
of the conflicting interests of the capitalists. The workers must keep out of wars and
unnecessary bloodshed and bend their energy for their own upliftment. The police
and the defence forces uphold the interests of the ruling capitalist class by breaking
strikes of workers and by fighting wars with other nations. The oppressed working
class have no country of their own; they have no need for patriotism as such national
spirit is as assiduously created by the ruling class to mollify proletarian radicalism.
Syndicalism is a form of revolutionary socialism. Syndicalists are distrustful
of political methods as a means of achieving their desired society. They do not
believe in peaceful, constitutional methods. They advocate violent and revolutionary
methods which they would call ‘direct action’. Strike, sabotage and boycott are their
chief forms for achieving direct action.
Syndicalists differ from Marxists in believing that the time is not far off when
the working class would rise in revolt against the capitalist class. Marx, they believe,
was unduly optimistic in prophesying that capitalists would fight the workers and
thereby bring about own destruction.
What the capitalists would do is to make comprises and bargains for their
survival. In these circumstances the workers must carryon perpetual offence against
the employers through strikes, sabotage, destruction of machinery, boycott, label,
spoiling work through ‘go-slow’ methods.
Syndicalists are ardent believers in direct action. It is the only means of
educating the workers and preparing them for the final struggle. The general strike
is the chief weapon.
The general strike is the final and mighty weapon which would paralyse the
state and make the workers the masters of society. The general strike is not
necessarily a striker of all workers. What is required is a strike on the part of a
sufficient proportion of the workers in key industries to secure the paralysis of the
capitalist system. Syndicalists rely on a conscious, militant minority who would inspire

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Mao and Gramsci and provide leadership to the otherwise passive majority. The syndicalists’ stress on
elitism is akin to Lenin’s. In Sorel’s language, the general strike is to be a ‘myth’ to
the workers. A myth being an idea which fills men with ardour and belief in a better
future.
NOTES Sabotage is a policy of injuring an employer’s property or enterprise through
sluggish, bungling, wasteful, or positively damaging acts: done either while the worker
remains on the job or in connection with strikes. It may take the non-violent form of
slow work for long hours, poor work for low pay, revealing the secrets of the employer
etc. The boycott of goods produced by non-union labour and the placing of the
Union label produced by syndicates themselves are some of the other methods
advocated by the syndicalists. All of this is in preparation for the general strike
which may fail today, but ‘today’s failure is a preparation for tomorrow’s success’.
The syndicalist plan of action is direct, vigorous, and well defined, but the
structure of society which it seeks to achieve is extremely vague and nebulous.
Syndicalism is primarily a creed of opposition; its thrust is negative. As Coker aptly
put it, syndicalism offered a policy primarily of revolution, not of administration.
Under syndicalism, the syndicate is to be the basis of industrial organisation.
Syndicalists picture the future society as a free and flexible federation of autonomous
and distributive associations based on collective ownership and carrying on the
activities in accordance with the needs of the community. Workers assume control
of production and private capital is to be replaced by collective capital. Thus
syndicalists share the collectivist concept of property, the communistic principle of
distribution according to needs and the anarchist goal of statelessness. All means of
production, distribution and exchange will belong to the community and should be
controlled and managed by the syndicates of workers. National services like highways,
railways and post offices are to be placed in the hands of the National Federation of
Workers. Prisons and Courts are to be abolished, and punishment is to take the form
of social boycott.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

6. What was the primary concern in Robert Owen’s theories?
7. For Peter Kropotkin, what is the essential feature of an anarchist regime?
8. What do you understand by Syndicalism?

4.5 SUMMARY

 Mao Zedong, also known as Mao Tse-tung, was the father of the People’s
Republic of China.
 As a political theorist, politician and revolutionary, Mao not only moulded the
destiny of the People’s Republic of China, he also became one of the most
important Marxists political theorists of the twentieth century and gave the
Asiatic version of Marxism to the world.
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 The political theory espoused by Mao Zedong is known as Maoism. The Mao and Gramsci
followers of Mao’s political theory, known as Maoists, consider Maoism as
an anti-Revisionist form of Marxism-Leninism. Maoism was developed during
the 1950s and 1960s and was widely applied as the guiding ideology of the
Communist Party of China. NOTES
 The model for Mao’s theory of revolution was the Chinese Communist
insurgency against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in the late 1920s
and 1930s, which resulted in Communist Party of China becoming a powerful
fighting force strengthened on the backs of the immense support that the
CPC enjoyed among the rural peasantry.
 Mao jotted down his thoughts on revolution in his two most famous essays,
both written in 1937, called ‘On Contradiction’ and ‘On Practice’. The
essays, part of his famous ‘Red Book’, are concerned with the practical
strategies of a revolutionary movement and emphasize the importance of
practical, grass-roots knowledge, which can only be obtained through
experience.
 One of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism is the belief that the
urban proletariat or the working class is the main source of revolution. This is
because Marxism believes that a true socialist society can only emerge after
capitalism has been firmly established. Thus, in Marxism-Leninism, the rural
countryside, consisting of landless peasants, is largely ignored. On the other
hand, Mao, perhaps because of his own upbringing as a peasant, believed
that the peasantry could be shaped into a revolutionary force under the
knowledge, leadership and guiding principles of a Communist party.
 Unlike the other forms of Marxism-Leninism where large-scale industrial
development is seen as a positive force, Maoism prioritised rural development.
For Mao, such a strategy was the most logical taking into account the fact
that in a developing country like China the majority of the population were not
the industrial urban proletariat, but rather the rural peasantry.
 Today, in the People’s Republic of China, Mao’s theories have largely been
repudiated. This is because of the disastrous consequence of the two major
initiatives of Mao after seizing power – The Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution. Both of these initiatives resulted in the deaths of millions
of people.
 Antonio Gramsci was the famous Italian Marxist philosopher of the 20th century.
 Gramsci made the distinction between the state and civil society which must
be maintained in order to prevent authoritarianism.
 Gramsci’s conception of hegemony always revolves around the maintenance
of the fundamental groups and also around the mechanism by which the
subaltern groups accepts the leadership of another group.
 The idea of power described as hegemony was also influenced by many
debates about the civil society.

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Mao and Gramsci  In the writings of Antonio Gramsci, hegemony refers to the ability of a dominant
class to exercise power by winning the consent of those it subjugates as an
alternative to the use of coercion.
 As a non-coercive form of class rule, hegemony is typically understood as a
NOTES cultural or ideological process that operates through the dissemination of
bourgeois values and beliefs throughout the society.
 Utopian socialism is a concept that is used to describe the initial currents of
modern socialist thought. It differs from the later socialist thought as it is
based on idealism instead of materialism.
 The Utopian socialist Robert Owen’s most prominent contribution to socialist
thought was the belief that the social behavior of human beings is not rigid or
complete and that human beings have the liberty to settle themselves into any
kind of society that they liked.
 Anarchism is an extreme theory regarding the necessity and the function of
the state. The theory is hostile to the ‘coercisive state’ and wants to see it
abolished.
 Anarchism asserts that political authority, in any of its forms is unnecessary
and undesirable.
 Fabianism is an English version of evolutionary socialism, which was conceived
in agreement with the new conditions and developments that came over
England at the end of the 19th century.
 This English version of socialism is essentially pragmatic in outlook, flexible in
approach and democratic method.
 Guild socialism is a socialist system and movement aiming at industrial self-
government and functional democracy.
 Syndicalism, loosely defined, holds that the workers alone must control the
conditions under which they work and live; the social changes they need can
be achieved only by their own efforts, by direct action in their own associations,
and through means suited to their peculiar needs.

4.6 KEY TERMS

 Political Society: Gramsci described the term political society as the arena
of the political institutions and legal constitutional control.
 Hegemony: Hegemony is in its simplest sense the ascendency or domination
of one element of a system over others. In Marxist theory the term is used in
a more technical and specific sense. According to Antonio Gramsci the term
hegemony refers to the ability of a dominant class to exercise power by
winning the consent of those it subjugates as an alternative to the use of
coercion.
 Ideological hegemony: Gramsci in his book Prison Notebooks emphasised
the degree to which capitalism was maintained not merely by economic
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 domination, but also by political and cultural factors, and he called this Mao and Gramsci
ideological hegemony
 Cultural Revolution: The Cultural Revolution was a social-political
movement that took place in the People’s Republic of China from 1966 through
1976. Started by Mao Zedong, the stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was NOTES
the enforcement of communism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional
and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to imposing Maoist orthodoxy
within the Party.
 Red Book: Also known as ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao’ is a book
containing selected statements and writings of the father of the People’s
Republic of China, Mao Zedong.
 Fabianism: It is a type of socialism that is to be established by gradual
reforms within the law.

4.7 ANSWERS TO ‘CHECK YOUR PROGRESS’

1. The model for Mao’s theory of revolution was the Chinese Communist
insurgency against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in the late 1920s
and 1930s, which resulted in Communist Party of China becoming a powerful
fighting force strengthened on the backs of the colossal support that the CPC
enjoyed among the rural peasantry.
2. One difference between Maoism and Marxist-Leninism is that Mao, perhaps
because of his own upbringing as a peasant, believed that the peasantry could
be shaped into a revolutionary force under the knowledge, leadership and
guiding principles of a communist party. Marxists traditionally ignored the
rural peasantry.
3. According to Gramsci, the institutions of civil society like the 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.
4. In the writings of Antonio Gramsci, hegemony refers to the ability of a dominant
class to exercise power by winning the consent of those it subjugates as an
alternative to the use of coercion.
5. Gramsci identified two different forms of political control such as:
 The domination which referred the direct physical coercion by the police
and the armed forces.
 The hegemony which referred to both ideological control and more crucially
consent.
6. In Robert Owen’s writings, the primary concern was with agricultural rather
than industrial production, with the household rather than the factory.
7. For Kropotkin, the essential feature of the anarchistic regime is that there will
be no compulsion, no law, and no government exercising force.

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Mao and Gramsci 8. Syndicalism, loosely defined, holds that the workers alone must control the
conditions under which they work and live; the social changes they need can
be achieved only by their own efforts, by direct action in their own associations,
and through means suited to their peculiar needs.
NOTES
4.8 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Short-Answer Questions
1. Write a short note on the Cultural Revolution in China.
2. Write a short note on Utopian Socialism.
3. What are the sources of authority from which anarchism claims to emancipate
the individual?
4. How does Fabian Socialism reject the Marxist theory of class struggle?
5. Differentiate between guild socialism and syndicalism.
Long-Answer Questions
1. Discuss the basic principles of Maoism.
2. Antonio Gramsci sought to distinguish civil society from political society in
the context of his analysis of capitalist society. Discuss.
3. How is Gramsci’s theory of hegemony tied to his view of the capitalist state?
4. Discuss the Anarchist view of the state.
5. Examine the major tenets of Henry George’s philosophy.

4.9 FURTHER READING

Thomas, Peter D. 2009. The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and

Marxism. Leiden: Brill Books.
Strauss, Leo and Joseph Cropsey. 1987. A History of Political Philosophy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Vaughan, Edwin C. and Zhang Chunhou. 2002. Mao Zedong As Poet and
Revolutionary Leader: Social and Historical Perspectives. Maryland:
Lexington Books.
Mcclelland, J.S. 1998. A History of Western Political Thought. London: Routledge.
Coleman, Janet. 2000. A History of Political Thought. New Delhi: Wiley-Blackwell.
Jha, Shefali. 2010. Western Political Thought: From Plato to Marx. New Delhi:
Pearson Education India.

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