MODERN WESTERN

POLITICAL THOUGHT
(POL5 B02)
CORE COURSE

V SEMESTER
B.A. POLITICAL SCIENCE
(2019 Admission Onwards)

UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
School of Distance Education
Calicut University PO, Malappuram, Kerala 67363

19411
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UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
STUDY MATERIAL
Core Course: POL5 B02
V Semester
B.A. POLITICAL SCIENCE
MODERN WESTERN POLITICAL
THOUGHT
Prepared by
Dr. [Link],
Associate Professor,
P.G. Department of Political Science,
Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur.
&
Smt. Fathimath Suhara. K,
Assistant Professor,
SDE, University of Calicut.
Re-arranged as per 2019 syllabus :
Smt. Fathimath Suhara. K,
Assistant Professor.
SDE, University of Calicut.
Re-Scrutinized by:
Sri. Renjith V.T,
Assistant Professor.
SDE, University of Calicut.
DISCLAIMER
“The author shall be solely responsible for the
content and views expressed in this book”

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CONTENTS PAGES
Module – I
5
Machiavelli
Module – II
Liberal Tradition,
 Social 13
Contractualists
 Utilitarians
Module – III
66
Idealists
Module – IV
88
Marxian Tradition
Module – V
20th Century 144
Political Thought

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MODULE 1
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance historian,
politician, diplomat, philosopher, Humanist, and writer born in
May 3, 1469. He has often been called the founder of modern
political science because he firstly separated religion from
politics. He was for many years a senior official in the Florentine
Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs.
He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal
correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was
secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence
from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote
his most reputed work, The Prince in 1513 and first published in
1532. He died in June 21, 1527.
HUMAN NATURE
According to Machiavelli human nature is selfish and full of ego.
Man always think about their own self-interest like the masses
desire safety and security and the ruler wants power, and that they
are very selfish to gain and achieve their motives. As we
mentioned above, human conduct is governed by motives such as
selfishness and egoism. Man use the state and rule for their own
selfish reason, benefit and security, they immediately start
disliking or hating the thing that they can’t gain or is difficult to
gain or is out of their reach and will deliberately tend to avoid or
delay it. The main highlights of Machiavelli’s human nature are
given below.
Selfish : He said that human is self-centered and greedy. He works
for his own benefit and don’t think of the society.

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Aggressive : Man keeps fighting with each other, whether for

food, cloth, shelter or power.
Wicked : Man works against collective interest of society.
Discontented : Man is always unsatisfied with his situation.
Stupid : Man is irrational, easily gets attracted towards illusion
and easily gets manipulated.
Ambitious : Man desire a lot irrespective of whether they deserve
it or not.
According to Machiavelli, human beings are very selfish, wicked,
degenerate, Unscrupulous and opportunists. He says that man is
not social but anti-social and tries to encourage his own interest
every time. To endorse he can do whatever he wants. His human
nature theory is criticized. His description of human nature is
wrong. Human beings all are not wicked. They are neither
completely good nor completely bad.
His theory of human nature leads to some conclusions.
The main reason behind the formation of state is need for people’s
security against aggressions of the strong over the weak. So the
success and failure of a ruler should be evaluated in the light of
security arrangements provided by the state.
The motives behind the sanction of political authority are
selfishness and egoism and, as such, the ruler must care for the
ends, while means are always honorable.
STATECRAFT
Statecraft means the art of conducting state affairs. Machiavelli’s
“Prince and Discourse” given some features to political thought.
These features launch sufficient light on state craft. Let us
examine those features.

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Universal Egoism
Machiavelli did not believe in the essential goodness of human
nature, he held that all men are wicked and essentially selfish.
Selfishness and egoism are the chief motive forces of human
conduct. According to him fear is mightier than love. He focuses
on issue of security since he believes men by nature are
aggressive and acquisitive. Men aim to keep what they already
have and desire to acquire more and there are no limits to human
desires, and all being the same there being a natural scarcity of
things there is everlasting competition and strife. Security is only
possible when the ruler is strong. A Prince must fear about his
surroundings. A feared ruler knows how to stand in relation to
his subjects and aims at the security of their life and property.
Men always commit error of not knowing when to limit their
hopes, therefore, the only way to remedy this evil is to make them
aware of the equal and negative consequences of their actions if
they disobey the ruler. These basic elements of human nature
which are responsible to make him ungrateful, fickle, deceitful
and cowardly along with their evil effects were most prominent
in Italy during Machiavelli’s time. The corruption in all spheres
was the order of the day and all sorts of license and violence,
absence of discipline, great inequalities in wealth and power, the
destruction of peace and justice and the growth of disorderly
ambitions and dishonesty prevailed. So Machiavelli said the only
way to rectify such a situation was the establishment of absolute
monarchy and despotic powers.
Classification of Government
Machiavelli classified governments either as Republican or
Princedoms. According to him government should be one or by
all. Of the two forms of government Machiavelli give preference
to the Republican form to that of the monarchical. In his
classification he gave less importance to the rule of the few that

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is aristocracy. In this opinion, the government rule by a few was

worst of all. The best form of government was a regime in which
the great mass of citizens had the controlling power. In his
opinion, the best form of government is ‘Repulican’, but the same
type of government required a ‘virtue’ among the people. In the
absence of virtue, this form of government would breed the
corruption.
State should be a nation state. State is the highest form of social
organization to promote and protect human welfare. The prince
(Ruler) should be most powerful to rule the poor people. Men are
selfish. There is no inherent virtue and goodness in them. They
are ungrateful, fickle, deceitful and coward driven by the motives
of fear, lust for power, vanity and self-interest.
Extension of Dominion
Machiavelli’s work ‘The Prince’ deals with the methods as to
how monarchies could be enlarged while ‘The Discourses’ with
the extension of the republics. ‘The Prince’ and ‘The Discourses’
not only deal with the acquisition of the states, they also deal with
their maintenance.
Machiavelli’s ideas of the dominion of state did not mean the club
of two or more social or political organisations, but the control of
a number of states under the rule of a single prince or
commonwealth. Extension of dominion was easier in one’s own
country, where there was no difficulty of language “or of an
institution to overcome in, the assimilation of conquered people.
The ruler must follow a new social and political order to maintain
the state. It is easy to rule where the rulers and ruled belonged to
the same country. The conqueror has only to remove the line of
the previous ruler while letting the old institutions remain intact.
But where the conqueror and people are different countries it
becomes difficult for the ruler to rule people with different
language, different traditions and races.

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For the stability of the princedoms, he advices the prince to

respect the established institutions and customs of the country,
have a well-trained army and he should be very careful regarding
his attitude towards the public. Force of arms was necessary for
both for political aggrandizement as well as for the preservation
of the state, but force must be applied judiciously combined with
craft.
But, to establish any kind of order a monarchical government is
preferable, especially when the people are thoroughly corrupt and
the laws become powerless for restraint. It becomes necessary to
establish some superior power which, with a royal hand and with
full and absolute powers could put a curb upon the excessive
ambitions and corruption of powerful people.

Political Leadership
Machiavelli offers the theory of leadership which helps create
public order and maintain stability in the society. He also drew
the conclusion that people are governed by two motives: love and
fear. A successful ruler uses both of them. In other words, the
combination of love and fear allows the ruler to influence human
beings.
Machiavelli considered to advocate a rigid leader in his works,
for whom the ‘ends justify the means’. He mentioned that the
world of politics and government is not safe. In order to survive,
a politician must have a strong character and the ability to perform
unsavory acts. The king must take advice from all but decision
should be of his own. The prince should always be ready for war.
The prince should manage the balance of power in international
affairs and maintain diplomatic relations, as far as possible, with
many countries. In his opinion “Power is the end (goal) of the
state.”

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RELIGION AND SECULARISM

Machiavelli separated religion from politics and tried to submit
religion to the state and to make the state non-religious character.
He believed that politics is an independent activity with its own
principles and laws. During his period, it was the time of
uncontrolled corruption and selfishness among the Italian
rulers/church officials. Pope possessed superiority over all the
princes. The feudalism and the church not only destroyed the
identity and importance of the state, but the state was considered
subordinate. Machiavelli argued for a political authority is under
the control of church. He made the state totally independent of the
church by saying that the state has its own rules of conduct to
follow; state is highest, supreme and autonomous. He said the
state is superior to all associations in the human society.
According to Machiavelli religion as man made one and it was
used to create rules for morality. He felt in his home country that
Christianity made men weak and inactive. Moral and religious
considerations cannot bind the prince. He is above and outside the
morality. He can use religion to realize his ends. Religion cannot
influence politics and the church cannot control the state. Politics
cannot be aligned with ethics or religions; when the people cannot
do any good unless they are forced to do so, the ruler need not
count on the social and moral virtues of the people. Ruler should
act. He suggested the separation between religion, morality and
politics.
In political matters the king will have the last word to say and all
other centres must submit to political power. According to him
moral code of individual prescribed by the church cannot provide
guidelines to the ruler. He advised his prince to sacrifice honesty,
morality, religion for the benefit, or, more generally, for the cause
of the state. It would never be regarded prudence on the part of
the prince if he sacrifices the interest of the republic at the altar of
honesty and religion.
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According to him religion is necessary for unity and integrity of

the people within the state. Common religion creates a sense of
unity among people. Religious rites, beliefs establish social
harmony. Decline of respect for religion among the people is a
sign of ruin for the state. Machiavelli said religion cannot
influence politics and the church cannot control the state. In fact
the sovereign state enjoys absolute power over all individuals and
institutions.

As such the church is subordinate to the state. Thus Machiavelli

separated religion from politics and paved way for emergence of
the secular state. It is important to note that though Machiavelli
was anti-church and anti-clergy, but he was not anti-religion. He
measured religion as essential not only for man's social life but
also for the health of the state. He was not against the religion and
morality. According to Machiavelli state is the highest form of
social organisation and the most necessary of all institutions. He
said politics is an independent activity with its own principles and
laws. State is non-religious and secular. It has its own rules of
conduct to follow.

For him, religion was a social force; it played a crucial role

because it appealed to the self-centeredness of man through its
principle of reward and punishment, thereby inducing proper
behaviour and good conduct that was necessary for the well-being
of a society. Machiavelli strongly advocated a separation between
politics and religion and stated that without this separation the
state could not reach its goal. Hence Machiavelli is credited for
laying the foundation of secular state. Machiavelli is considered
as the father of modern political theory and political science.
Apart from conjecturing about the state, he also given meaning to
the concept of sovereignty.

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Machiavelli's position was in providing an outlook that accepted

both secularisation and a moralisation of politics. The absence
of religious arguments in Machiavelli led the theorists who
followed to challenging issues like order and power in strictly
political terms. Thus Machiavelli was the first who gave the idea
of secularism. Hence Machiavelli was the first rationalist or
realist in the history of political thought.

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MODULE II
LIBERAL TRADITION,
SOCIAL CONTRACTUALISTS
Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1679)
Thomas Hobbes is really the first Englishman who wrote
comprehensively on political philosophy and made valuable
contributions to it. He is one of the most controversial and
important figures in the history of western political thought. His
status as a political thinkerwas not fully recognised until the 19th
century. The philosophical radicalism of the English utilitarians
and the scientific rationalism of the French Encyclopedists
incorporated in a large measure Hobbes mechanical materialism,
radical individualism and psychological egoism. By the mid- 20th
century Hobbes was acclaimed as “probably the greatest writer
on political philosophy that the English speaking people have
produced”. According to Micheal Oakeshott, “the Leviathan is
the greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece ofpolitical philosophy
written in the English language”.
Hobbes lived at a time of great constitutional crisis in England
when the theory of Divine Right of Kings was fiercely contested
by the upholders of the constitutional rule based on popular
consent. It is he who for the first time systematically expounded
the absolute theory of sovereignty and originated the positivist
theory of law. Though he was not a liberal, modern commentators
believe that his political doctrine has greater affinities with the
liberalism of the 20th century than his authoritarian theory would
initially suggest. From a broad philosophical perspective, the
importance of Hobbes is his bold and systematic attempt to

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assimilate the science of man and civil society to a thoroughly

modern science corresponding to a completely mechanistic
conception of nature. His psychological egoism, his ethical
relativism and his political absolutism are all supposed tofollow
logically from the assumptions or principles underlying the
physical world which primarily consists of matter and motion.
Hobbes was prematurely born in 1588 in Westport near the small
town of Malmesbury in England at a time when the country was
threatened by the impending attack of the Spanish Armada. His
father was a member of the clergy (vicar) near Malmesbury .His
long life was full of momentous events. He was a witness to the
great political and constitutional turmoil caused by English civil
war and his life and writings bearclear imprint of it. After his
education at Oxford, Hobbes joined as tutor to the son of William
Cavendish, who was about the same age as Hobbes. The
association of Cavendish family lasted, with some interruptions
until Hobbes’ death. Through his close connection with the royal
family he met eminent scholars and scientists of the day such as
Bacon Descartes, Galileo etc. His first publication was translation
in English of ThucydidesHistory of the Peloponnesian War in
1629. Besides just before he died, at the age of 86, he translated
Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad into English. The important works of
Hobbes include De Civie and the Leviathan.
Hobbes’ political philosophy in the Leviathan (1651) was a
reflection of the civil war in England following the execution of
Charles I. According to William Ebenstein the Leviathan is not an
apology for the Stuart monarchy nor a grammar of despotic
government but the first general theory of politics in the
English language’ What makes Leviathan a masterpiece of
philosophical literature is the profound logic of Hobbes’
imagination, his power as an artist. Hobbes recalls us to our
morality with a deliberate conviction, with a subtle and sustained
argument.
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State of nature and Human nature

Hobbes’ political theory is derived from his psychology which in
turn is based on hismechanistic conception of nature. According
to Hobbes’, prior to the formation of commonwealth or state, there
existed state nature. Men in the state of nature were essentially
selfish and egoistic. Contrary to Aristotle and medieval thinkers,
who saw human nature as innately social, Hobbes viewed human
beings as isolate egoistic, self interested and seeking society as a
means to their ends. Unlike most defenders of absolute
government, who start out with the gospel for inequality,
Hobbes argues thatmen were naturally equal in mind. This basic
equality of men is a principal source of trouble and misery. Men
have in general equal faculties; they also cherish like hope and
desires. It they desire the same thing, which they cannot both
obtain, they become enemies and seek to destroy each other. In the
state of nature, therefore men are in a condition of war, of every
man against every man and Hobbes adds that the nature of the
war consists not in actual fighting “but in the known disposition
there to” force and fraud the two cardinal virtues of war , flourish
in this atmosphere of perpetual fear and strife fed by three
Psychological causes: competition, diffidence and glory. In such a
condition, there is no place for industry, agriculture, navigation ,
trade; there are no arts or letter; no society , no amenities of
civilised living, and worst of all, there is continual fear and danger
of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short’.
According to Hobbes, there can be no distinction between right
and wrong in the state of nature. Any conception of right and
wrong presupposes a standard of conduct, a common law to judge
that conduct and a common law giver. Again there is no distinction
between just and unjust in the state of nature, for where there is no
common superior, there is no law and where there is no law there
can be no justice.
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Hobbes asserted that every human action, feeling and thought was
ultimatelyphysically determined. Though the human being was
dependent on his life, on the motion of his body he was able to
some extent, to control those motions and make his life. This he
did by natural means, ie, by relying partly on natural passions and
partly on reason. It was reason, according to Hobbes, that
distinguished human beings from animals. Reason enabled the
individual to understand the impressions that sense organs picked
up from the external world, and also indicated an awareness of
one’s natural passions. He mentioned a long list of passions, but
the special emphasis was on fear, in particular the fear of death,
and on the universal and perfectly justified quest for power. ‘‘
Hobbes contended that life was nothing but a perpetual and
relentless desire and pursuit of power, a prerequisite for felicity.
He pointed out that one ought to recognise a general inclination of
all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power
that ceased only in death. Consequently, individuals were averse
to death; especially accidental death for it marked the end of
attainment of all felicity. Power was sought for it represented a
means of acquiring those things that made life worthwhile and
contented. The fact that all individuals sought power distinguished
Hobbes from Machiavelli. Hobbes observed that human beings
stood nothing to gain from the company of others exceptpain.
A permanent rivalry existed between human beings for honor,
riches and authority, with life as nothing but potential warfare, a
war of every one against the others.
Hobbes human relationships is as those of mutual suspicion and
hostility. The only rule that individuals acknowledged was that
one would take if one had the power andretain as long as one
could. In this “ill condition” there was no law, no justice, no notion
of right and wrong. Thus according to Hobbes, the principal cause
of conflict was within the nature of man. As mentioned earlier,
competition, diffidence and glory were the three reasons that were
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quarrel and rivalry among individuals. “The first, make the men
invade for Gain; the second, for safety and the third, for reputation.
The first use violence, to make themselves Masters of other men’s
persons…. the second to defend them; the third,for trifles…”
In a state of nature, individuals enjoyed complete liberty,
including a natural right to everything, even to one another’s
bodies. The natural laws were not laws or commands.
Subsequently, Hobbes argued that the laws of nature were also
proper laws, since they were delivered in the word of God. These
laws were counsels of prudence. Natural laws in Hobbes’ theory
did not mean eternal justice, perfect morality or standards to judge
existing laws as the Stoics did.
It is clear from above observations that what is central to Hobbes’
psychology is nothedonism but search for power and glory, riches
and honor. Power is, of course, the central feature of Hobbes’
system of ideas. While recognising the importance of power in
Hobbesian political ideas, Michael Oakeshott wrote thus: “Man is
a complex of power; desire is the desire for power, pride is illusion
about power, honour opinion about power life the unremitting
exercise of power and death the absolute loss of power “
Thus Hobbes in his well known work, ‘The Leviathan’ has
presented a bleak and dismal picture of the condition of men in
the state of nature. However, Hobbes does not extensively discuss
the question of whether men have actually ever lived in such a
state ofnature. He noted that the savage people in many places of
America have no government and live in the brutish and nasty
manner. John Rawls thinks that Hobbes’ state of natureis the
classic example of the “prisoner’s dilemma” of game – theoretic
analysis.

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Social contract
After presenting a horrible and dismal picture of the state of
nature, Hobbes proceeds to discuss how man can escape from such
an intolerably miserable condition. ‘In the second part of the
Leviathan, Hobbes creates his commonwealth by giving new
orientation to the old idea of the social contract, a contract between
ruler and ruled. Hobbes thus builds his commonwealth. ‘the only
way to erect such a common power as may be able to defend them
( i.e, men) from the invasion of foreigners and the injuries of one
another is to confer all their power and strength upon one Man or
upon one Assembly of men that may reduce all their wills, by
plurality of voices unto one will the sovereign himself stands
outside the covenant. He is a beneficiary of the contract, but not a
party to it. Each man makes an agreement with every man in the
following manner’
“I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man
or to this assembly of man on the condition that thou give up thy
right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This is
the generation of that great Leviathan or rather ( to speak more
reverently) of that mortal god, to which we owe under the
immortal God, our peace and defence.’ It is clear from the above
statement that no individual can surrender his right to self-
preservation.
In order to secure their escape from the state of nature, individuals
renounce their natural rights to all things, and institute by common
consent, a third person, or body of persons, conferring all rights of
him for enforcing the contract by using force and keeping them all
and authorising all his action as their own. According to Hobbes,
the social contract institutes an office which may be held by one
man or an assembly of men but which is distinct from the natural
person of the holder. By the transfer of the natural rights to each
man, the recipient becomes their representative an is invested with
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authority to deliberate, will and act in place of the deliberation will

and action of each separate man. The multitude of conflicting
wills is replaced, not by a common will but a single representative
will.
According to William Ebenstein, Hobbesian, social contract is
made between subjects and subjects and not between subjects and
sovereign. The sovereign is not a party to the contract, but its
creation. This contract is a unilateral contract in which the
contracting individuals obligate themselves to the resultant
sovereign. Then again it is an irrevocable contract owe the
individuals contract themselves into a civil society, they cannot
annual the contract. They cannot repudiate their obligation.
Repudiation of a contract is an act of public will of the individuals
which they had surrounded at the time of the original contract.
Thus Hobbesian contract is a social and not governmental
contract. In this conception of social contact, the sovereign cannot
commit any breach of covenant because he is not a party to it. By
participating in the creation of the sovereign the subjectis author
of all the ruler does and must therefore not complain of any of the
rulers’ actions, because thus he would be deliberately doing injury
to himself. Hobbes concedes that the sovereign may commit
iniquity but not “injustice or injury in the proper signification”,
because he cannot by definition, act illegally; he determines
what is just and unjust andhis action is law.
Nature and attributes of state
The heart of Hobbes’ political philosophy is his theory of
sovereignty. He was not the first to use the term sovereignty in its
modern sense. It is beyond dispute that before and after Thomas
Hobbes the doctrine of sovereignty has been defended by various
scholars on various grounds. Hobbes was perhaps the first thinker
to defend the sovereignty of the state on scientific grounds Hobbes
freed the doctrine of sovereignty of limitations imposed by Jean
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Bodin and Hugo Grotius.

Hobbes saw the sovereign power as undivided, unlimited,
inalienable and permanent. The contract created the state and the
government simultaneously. The sovereign power was authorised
to enact laws as it deemed fit and such laws were legitimate
Hobbes was categorical that the powers and authority of the
sovereign has tobe defined with least ambiguity.
The following are some of the major attributes of Hobbesian
sovereign.
1. Sovereign is absolute and unlimited and accordingly no
conditions implicit or explicit can be imposed on it. It is not
limited either by the rights of the subjects orby customary
and statutory laws.
2. Sovereignty is not a party to the covenant or contract. A
sovereign does not exist prior to the to the commencement of
the contract. Contract was signed between men in the state of
nature mainly to escape from a state of war of every man
against every man. The contract is irrevocable.
3. The newly created sovereign can do no injury to his subjects
because he is their authorised agent. His actions cannot be
illegal because he himself is the sole source and interpreter of
laws.
4. No one can complain that sovereign is acting wrongly
because everybody has authorised him to act on his behalf.
5. Sovereign has absolute right to declare war and make peace,
to levy taxes and toimpose penalties.
6. Sovereign is the ultimate source of all administrative,
legislative and judicialauthority. According to Hobbes, law
is the command of the sovereign.

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7. The sovereign has the right to allow or takes away freedom of

speech and opinion.
8. The sovereign has to protect the people externally and
internally for peace and preservation were basis of the creation
of the sovereign or Leviathan. Thus Hobbesian sovereign
represents the ultimate, supreme and single authority in the
state and there is no right of resistance against him except in
case of self defense. According to Hobbes, any act of
disobedience of a subject is unjust because it is against the
covenant. Covenants without swords are but mere words.
Division or limitation of sovereignty means destruction of
sovereignty which means that men are returning to the old state
of nature where life will be intolerably miserable.
By granting absolute power to the sovereign, some critics went to
the extent of criticising Hobbes as the ‘spiritual father of
totalitarian fascism or communism’ However, William Ebenstein
in his well known work ‘ Great Political Thinkers’ has opposed
this charge on following grounds. First, government is set up
according to Hobbes, by a covenant that transfers all power. This
contractual foundation of government is anathema to the modern
totalitarians second; Hobbes assigns to the state a prosaic
business; to maintain orderand security for the benefit of the
citizens. By contrast, the aim of the modern totalitarian state is
anti-individualistic and anti hedonistic. Third, Hobbesian state is
authoritarian, not totalitarian. Hobbes’ authoritaritarianism lacks
one of the most characteristic features of the modern totalitarian
state: inequality before the law, and the resultant sense of personal
insecurity. Fourth, Hobbes holds that the sovereign may be one
man or an assembly of men, whereas modern totalitarianism is
addicted to the leadership principle. The Hobbesian sovereign is a
supreme administrator and law giver but not a top rabble rouser,
spellbinder, propagandist, or showman. Fifth, Hobbes recognises
that war is one of the two main forces that drive men to set up a
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state. But whenever he speaks of war, it is defensive war, and there

is no glorification of war in the Leviathan. By contrast,
totalitarians look on war as something lightly desirable and
imperialist war as the highest form of national life.
Thus it is clear from the above observations that Hobbes’ theory
of sovereignty is the first systematic and consistent statement of
complete sovereignty in the history of political thought. His
sovereign enjoys an absolute authority over his subjects and his
powers can neither be divided nor limited either by the law of
nature or by the law of God.
Hobbes’ Leviathan is not only a forceful enunciation of the theory
of sovereignty but also apowerful statement of individualism. As
Prof. Sabine has rightly pointed out; in Hobbesian political
philosophy both individualism and absolutism go hand in hand.
Granting absolute and unlimited power to the state is, in essence,
an attempt to provide a happy and tension free life to the
individuals.

CONCLUSION
The Leviathan of Hobbes has been regarded as one of the
masterpieces of political theoryknown for its style, clarity and
lucid exposition. He has laid down a systematic theory of
sovereignty, human nature, political obligation etc. Hobbes saw
the state as a conciliator of interests, a point of view that the
Utilitarian’s developed in great detail. Hobbes created an all
powerful state but it was not totalitarian monster.
Hobbes is considered as the father of political science: His method
was deductive and geometrical rather than empirical and
experimental. His theory of sovereignty is indivisible, inalienable
and perpetual. Sovereign is the sole source and interpreter of laws.
Before and after Hobbes, political absolutism has been defended
by different scholars on various grounds. Hobbes was perhaps the
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first political thinker to defend political absolutism on scientific

grounds.
JOHN LOCKE
John Locke’s first works were written at Oxford, namely the Two
Tracts on Government in 1660-1662, and the Essays on the Law
of Nature in Latin in 1664. In both these writings he argued against
religious toleration and denied consent as the basis of legitimate
government. Locke published his Two Treatises of Government
in 1690. The same year saw the publication of his famous
philosophical work The Essay Concerning Human understanding.
Locke’s other important writings were the Letters Concerning
Toleration and Some Thought Concerning Education.
The Two Treatises of Government consists of two parts- the first
is the refutation of Filmer and the second, the more important of
the two, is an inquiry into the ‘true original, extent and end of civil
government’. The work was ostensibly written to justify the
glorious revolution of 1688. According to William Ebenstein,
Locke’s two treatises of government is often dismissed as a mere
apology for the victorious Whigs in the revolution of 1688. The
two treatises exposed and defended freedom, consent and
property as coordinal principles of legitimate political power.
Locke saw political power as a trust, with the general community
specifying its purposes an aims.
STATE OF NATURE
In order to explain the origin of political power, Locke began with
a description of the Stateof Nature. Locke’s description of State of
Nature was not as gloomy and pessimistic as Hobbes’. As all of us
know, the State of Nature is the stock in trade of all contract
theories of the state. It is conceived as a state prior to the
establishment of political society. Locke believes that man is a
rational and social creature and as such capable of recognizing and
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living in a moral order. He is not selfish, competitive and

aggressive.
The Lockean state of nature, far from being a war of all is a state
of ‘Peace good will, mutual assistance and preservation”. It
represents a pre-political rather than a pre-social condition. Men
do not indulge in constant warfare in it, for peace and reason
prevail in it. The state of nature is governed by a law of nature.
This law “obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches
all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm one another in his life, health,
liberty or possessions for men being all the workmanship of one
omnipotent and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of sovereign
master, sent into the world by his order, and about hisbusiness;
they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last
during his, not one another’s pleasure ”
In the Lockean state of nature men has equal natural rights to life,
liberty and property together known as Right to Property. These
rights are inalienable and inviolable for they are derived from the
Law of Nature which is God’s reason. Everyone is bound by
reason not only to preserve oneself but to preserve all mankind in
so far as his own preservation does not come in conflict with it.
Men are free and equal and there is no commonly acknowledged
superior whose orders they are obliged to obey. Everybody is the
judge of his own actions. But though the natural condition is a state
of liberty, it is not a state of license. Nobody has the right to
destroy himself and the destroy the life of any other men. Because
there is no common judge to punish the violation of natural law in
the state of nature, every individual is his own judge and has
executive power of punishing the violators of law of nature.
William Ebenstein in his ‘Great Political Thinkers’ wrote that the
law of nature in the Lockean state of nature is deficient in three
important points. First, it is not sufficiently clear. If all men were
guided by pure reason they would all see the same law. But men
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are biased by their interests and mistake their interests for general
rule of law. Second, there is no second party judge who has no
personal state in dispute. Third,in the state of nature the injured
party is not always strong enough to execute the law. Inother
words, in the Lockean state of nature there are some short comings
and inconveniences. Absence of a law making body law enforcing
agency and an impartial judicial organ in the state of nature where
the serious short comings in the state of nature. Thus we find that
the state of nature, while it is not a state of war is also not an idyllic
condition, and, therefore, it has to be superseded sooner or later.
Conflict and uncertainties are bound to arise on account of the
selfish tendencies in human nature. Thestate of nature is always in
danger of being transformed into a state or war. Where everyone
is the judge in his own case and has the sole authority to punish
peace is bound to be threatened.
SOCIAL CONTRACT
John Locke social contract theory also begins with the state of
nature. But in his state of nature there was peace, good will, mutual
assistance and, preserve. Men enjoyed complete freedom and
equality in it. Each man lived according to his own wishes and
desires. There was the law of nature, which was based on reason
and justice. People enjoyed certain rights such as life, liberty and
property. In the state of nature every man was his own policeman
and his own judge. People were happy and peaceful in the state of
nature, even though they enter to contract because of some
difficulties faced by the people. Let us examine the same reasons.
[Link] law of nature was not clear. Each individual gave his own
interpretation, which created difficulties
[Link] were no impartial judges to interpret the law of nature
[Link] was no common and competent authority to enforce the
law of nature
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This was the reason that when once a dispute started in the state of
nature, it could not come to an end. This compelled man to create
civil society or the state to remove the inconveniences. So the
people made a contract. Although John Locke does not clearly say
so, yet one can feel that there were two contracts. The first was
between the individuals and the society as a result of which they
created the government. The other was between the society and
the government. Unlike Hobbes’ ruler whose authority was
limited, the people reserved the right to remove the ruler any time
lie failed to fulfill the terms of the contract.
Significance of John Locke Social Contract Theory
John Locke seems to be the first philosopher to introduce a new
element in the field of Political Science that was the consent or the
will of the people. A government can remain in power and be
strong so long as it enjoys the support of the people or governs
according to the will of the people. In this way Locke gave the
theory of limited sovereignty or constitutional government. If the
government fails to protect the life, liberty and property the
people, the people have the right to remove it and appoint a new
government.
Besides, Locke also gave the idea of natural rights. He says that
liberty and property are the rights of every individual and they are
inalienable. The basic duty of the state is to protect these rights.
Limitations of John Locke Social Contract Theory
Although John Locke social contract theory appears to be perfect
in every respect yet lie did not say anything about the legal
sovereign. Besides, he fails to understand that revolution is
desirable but it is also dangerous and under normal circumstances
illegal.

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Natural Rights and Private Property

The conception of Natural rights and the theory of property was
one of the important themes in Locke’s political philosophy.
According to Locke, men in the state of nature possessed natural
rights. These rights are: Right to life liberty and property. Liberty
means an exemption from all rules save the law of nature which is
a means to the realisation of man’s freedom.
Locke spoke of individuals in the state of nature having perfect
freedom to dispose of their possessions, and persons, as they
thought fit. He emphatically clarified that since property was a
natural right derived from natural law, it was therefore prior to the
government. He emphasised that individuals had rights to do as
they pleased within the bounds of the laws of nature. Rights were
limited to the extent that they did not harm themselves or others.
According to Locke, human beings are rational creatures, and
“Reason tells us that Men, being once born have a right to their
preservation, and such other things as nature affords for their
subsistence”. Rational people must concede that every human
being hasa right to life, and therefore to those things necessary to
preserve life. This right to life and those things necessary to
preserve it, Locke calls it property. The right to life, he argues,
means that every man has property in his own person. This nobody
has any right to but himself “Logically, the right to property in
person means that all human beings have a right to property in
those goods and possessions acquired through labour that are
necessary to preserve their person.
Locke argues that the “Labour of his body, and the work of his
Hands are properly his. What so ever then he removes out of the
state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his
labour with, and joined to it something that is his won and
thereby makes it his property”. Since human beings have

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property in their persons and hence a right to life, it follows that

they have property in those possessions that they have
legitimately laboured to obtain. In other words, property in both
person and possessions is a right that belongs to every human
being as human being. It is a right all people possess whether they
be in a state of nature or in political society. Locke thus says that
the great and chief end of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and
cutting themselves under government is the preservation of their
property”. Consequently, Government has no other end but the
preservation of people ‘Lives, liberties, and Estates”Liberty is a
property right for Locke because to have property in one’s person
implies the right to think, speak and act freely. Locke has argued
that in the state of nature propertyis held in common until people
mix their labour with it at which point it becomes their private
property. A person has right to appropriate as much common
property as desired so long as “there is enough and as good left in
common for others”
It was the social character of property that enabled Locke to
defend a minimal statewith limited government and individual
rights, and reject out right the hereditary principle of government.
Locke also wanted to emphasise that no government could deprive
an individual of his material possessions without the latter’s
consent. It was the duty of the political power to protect
entitlements that individuals enjoyed by virtue of the fact that
these had been given by God. In short, Locke’s claim that the
legitimate function of the government is the preservation of
property means not just that government must protect people’s
lives and possessions, but that it must ensure the right of unlimited
accumulation of private property. Some scholars have argued that
Locke’s second treatise provides not only a theory of limited
government but a justification for an emerging capitalist system as
well. Macpherson argued that Locke’s views on property made
him a bourgeois apologist, a defender of the privileges of the

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possessing classes. As Prof. William Ebenstien has rightly pointed

out, Lockean theory of property was later used in defense of
capitalism, but in the hands of pre-Marxian socialists it became a
powerful weapon of attacking capitalism.
Limited Government
In order to explain the origin of political power, Locke began with
a description of the state of nature which for him was one of
perfect equality and freedom regulated by the laws of nature.
Locke’s description of state of nature was not as gloomy and
pessimistic as Hobbe’s. The individual in the Lockean state of
nature was naturally free and becomea political subject out of free
choice. The state of nature was not one of license, for though the
individual was free from any superior power, he was subject to
the laws of nature. From the laws of nature, individuals derived
the natural rights to life, liberty and property (Together known as
Right to Property). The laws of nature known to human beings
through the power of reason, which directed them towards their
proper interests.
Locke believes that man is a rational and a social creature capable
of recognising and living in a moral order. Thus Lockean men in
the state of nature led a life of mutual assistance, good will and
preservation. Locke cannot conceive of human beings living
together without some sort of law and order, and in the state
of nature it is the law ofnature that rules. The law of nature
through the instrument of reason , defines what is right and
wrong,; if a violation of the law occurs, the execution of the
penalty is in the state of nature, ‘put into every man’s hands,
whereby everyone has right to punish the transgressors of that law
to such a degree, as may hinder its violation’ Locke penetratingly
notes that in the law of nature the injured party is authorised to the
judge in his own case and to execute the judgment against the
culprit. In other words, in the Lockean state of nature, there was
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no organised govt. Which alone can protect and enforce the natural
rights.
According to William Ebenstein, Lockean law of the state of
nature is deficient in three important points. First, it is not
sufficiently clear. Second, there is no third party judge who has
no personal stake in disputes. Third, in the state of nature the
injured party is not always strong enough to execute the just
sentence of the law. Thus the purpose of the social contract is to
establish organised law and orders so that the uncertainties of the
state of nature will be replaced by the predictability of known laws
and impartial institutions. After society is set up by contract,
government is established, not by a contract, but by fiduciary trust.
For the three great lacks of the state of nature - the lack of a known
law, of a knownjudge, of a certain executive power – the three
appropriate remedies would seem to be establishment of a
legislative, of a judicial, and of an executive authority. In civil
society orthe state, Locke notes the existence of three powers, but
they are not the above. There is first of all the legislative, which
he calls’ the supreme power of the commonwealth.’ The
legislative power was supreme since it was the representative of
the people, having the power to make laws. Besides the legislative
there was an executive, usually one person, with the power to
enforce the law. The executive which included the judicial power
has tobe always in session. It enjoyed prerogatives and was
subordinate and accountable tothe legislature. The legislative and
executive power had to be separate, thus pre- empting
Montesquieu theory separation of powers. The third power that
Locke recognises is what he calls the federative- the power that
makes treaties, that which is concerned with the country’s
external relations. Locke realises the great importance of foreign
policy, and knows that its formulation, execution and control
presents a veryspecial kind of problem to constitutional states.

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Characteristics of Lockean state

The first and foremost feature of Lockean state is that it exists for
the people who form it, they do not exist for it. Repeatedly he
insists that ‘the end of government is the good of the community’.
As C.L. Wayper has rightly pointed out the Lockean ‘ state is a
machine which we create for our good and run for our purposes,
and it is both dangerous and unnecessary to speak of some
supposed mystical good of state or country independent of the
lives of individual citizens.
Locke further insists that all true states must be founded on
consent. Further, the true state must be a constitutional state in
which men acknowledge the rule of law. For there can be no
political liberty if a man is subject to the inconstant, uncertain,
unknown, arbitrary will of other man. Government must therefore
be established standing laws, promulgated and known to the
people, and not by extemporary decrees.
The most important characteristic of Locke’s true state is that it is
limited, not absolute. It is limited because it derives power from
the people, and because it holds power in trust for the people. As
only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, its authorityis
confined to securing those ends. It is limited moreover, by
Natural law in particular. The state should exist for the good of
the people, should depend on their consent, should be
constitutional and limited in its authority,
Besides, Lockean state is a tolerant state which will respect
differences of [Link] is a negative state which does not seek to
improve the character of its citizens nor to manage their lives.
Again, Lockean state is also a transformer state, transforming
selfish interest into public good.

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Limitations of Government
John Locke advocated a limited sovereign state, for reason and
experience taught himthat political absolutism was untenable.
Describing the characteristics of a good state Locke said it existed
for the people who formed it and not the vice- versa. It had to be
based on the consent of the people subject to the constitution and
the rule of law. It is limited since its powers were derived from the
people and were held in trust.
Locke does not build up a conception of legal sovereignty. He
abolishes the legal sovereignty in favour of popular sovereignty.
He has no idea of absolute and indivisible sovereignty as
presented by Thomas Hobbes. Locke is for a government
based on division of power and subject to a number of limitations.
His limited government cannot command anything against public
interests. It cannot violate the innate natural rights of the
individuals. It cannot govern arbitrarily and tax the subjects
without their consent. Its laws must conform to the laws of Nature
and of god. It is not the government which is sovereign but law
which is rooted in common consent. Its laws must conform to the
laws of Nature and of God. It is not the government which is
sovereign but law which is rooted in common consent. A
government which violates its limitations is not worthy of
obedience.
Most important in terms of limiting the power of government is
the democratic principal itself. The legislature is to be
periodically elected by the people. It could be no other way, in
fact, since legitimate government must be based upon the consent
of the governed according to Locke, and direct election of
representatives to the legislature makes consent a reality. And
since elected representatives depend of popular support for their
tenure in office, they have every interest in staying within legal
bounds.
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A further limitation upon the legislative power recommended by

Locke is limiting of the duration of legislative sessions because,
he argues constant frequent meetings of the legislative could not
but be burdensome to the people”.
In Locke’s mind, the less frequent the meetings of the legislature
the fewer the laws passed and consequently, the less chance that
mischief will be done.
Another crucially important structural principle in limiting the
power of government is the separation of powers. Between the
legislative and executive, the logic behind this principle,
according to Locke, is that “It may be too great a temptation to
human frailty aptto grasp at power of the same persons who have
the power of making laws, to have alsoin their hands the power
to execute them’. Locke, however, does not go so far as to make
the separation of powers an absolute condition for limited
government.

Civil Society
According to Locke what drives men into society is that God put
them “under strongObligations of necessity, convenience, and
inclination”. And men being by nature all free, equal and
independent , no one can be put out of this estate ( State of nature)
and subjected to political power of another without his own
consent. Therefore, the problem is to form civil society by
common consent of all men and transfers their right of punishing
the violators of natural law to an independent and impartial
authority. For all practical purposes, after the formation of civil
society this common consent becomes the consent ofthe majority;
all parties must submit to the determination of the majority which
carries the force of the community. So all men unanimously agree
to incorporate themselves in one body and conduct their affairs by
the opinion of the majority after they have set up a political or

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civil society, the next step is to appoint a government to declare

and execute the natural law. This Locke calls the supreme
authority established by the commonwealth or civil society.
The compulsion to constitute a civil society was to protect and
preserve freedom and to enlarge it. The state of nature was one of
liberty and equality, but it was also one where peace was not
secure, being constant by upset by the “corruption and viciousness
of degenerate men”. It lacked three important wants: the want of
an established settled, known law, the want of a known and
indifferent judge; and the want of an executive power to enforce
just decisions.

J. J. ROUSSEAU (1712 – 1778)

Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the greatest political
philosopher that the French has produced. In the entire history of
political theory he was the most exciting and provocative. He was
a genius and a keen moralist who was ruthless in his criticism of
18thcentury French society. He was one of the most controversial
thinkers, as evident from the conflicting, contradictory and often
diametrically opposite interpretations that existed of the nature
and importance of his ideas. He is best remembered for his concept
of popular sovereignty, and the theory of general will which
provide a philosophical justification for democratic governance.
He was the intellectual father of the French Revolution as well as
the last and perhaps the greatest of the modern contract theorists.
Rousseau was born in Geneva to an artisan family. His mother
died of complications arising from his birth, a tragedy that filled
Rousseau with a lifelong sense ofguilt and in all probability lay
behind much of his neurotic behaviour and personalunhappiness.
As a young man he was apprenticed in several trades, and in 1728
he set out for a period of travel during which he engaged in an
extensive process of self- education. He was not like Hobbes and

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Locke, formally trained in the university, nor did he consider

himself a philosopher in any formal sense.
In 1742 Rousseau set out for Paris where he met the leading
cultural, scientific and philosophical luminaries of Enlightenment
France. Among them was Diderot, a leading philosopher and the
founder of the encyclopedia, a multi-volume work that aimedat
encompassing all knowledge. Rousseau contributed several
articles to the encyclopedia, the most important of which was the
Discourse on Political Economy. This work along with the first
and second discourses, and most importantly the social contract,
constitutes the basic source of Rousseau’s social and political
thought, although he wrote several other minor political works,
such as the Government of Poland. In addition, Rousseau wrote
several novels and numerous essays, and he produced three
autobiographical works, the most important of which is the
Confessions. In 1761 Rousseau published Emile perhaps the most
famous work on education every written.
STATE OF NATURE
Rousseau built his political theory on the conception of pre-
political state of nature. The reason is that he grew up in the
rigorously Calvinist atmosphere of the small city of Geneva.
Throughout his life, in spite of his conversion to Catholicism and
a great humiliation which he suffered in Geneva, his love for his
home strongly shaped his politicalthought. As he was restless man
by nature he was never completely at home in any profession. He
could never tolerate external restraint.
In the Discourse on Inequality published in 1754, Rousseau started
with the analysis of human nature. He considered the natural
man, living in natural surroundings or in thestate of nature as a
noble savage. Man, as a natural animal lived the happy and care
free life of the brute, without fixed abode without articulate

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speech, with no needs or desires that cannot be satisfied through

the mere instinct. According to him, men in the state of nature
were equal, self sufficient and self controlled. Their conduct was
based not on reason, but on emotions of self interest and pity.
Man’s first feeling was that of his own existence, and his first care
that of self preservation. Hunger and other appetites made him at
various times experience various modes of existence.
According to Rousseau, men in the state of nature lived in
isolation and had a few elementary, easily appeased needs. It was
neither a condition of plenty or scarcity, neitherthere was neither
conflict nor cooperative living. There was no language or
knowledge of any science or art. In such a situation man was
neither happy nor unhappy, had no conception of just and unjust
virtue or vice. The noble savage was guided by two instincts-self
love or the instinct of self preservation and sympathy or the
gregarious instinct. As these instincts are always beneficial, man
is by nature good. But self love and sympathy often come in to
clash with each other hence, according to Rousseau , man takes
the help of a sentiment to resolve the clash, which men can
conscience . But since conscience is only a blind sentiment, it will
not teach men what is in fact right. Conscience, therefore, requires
a guide and that guide is reason which develops in man as alternate
courses of action present themselves before him. Rousseau’s
taught that reason was the outgrowthof a artificial life a man in
organized society and that the results of its development were
calamities. The noble savage was Rousseau’s ideal man.
State of nature did not last forever. In course of time the noble
savage who lived in isolation discovered the utility and usefulness
of labor which gave rise to the idea of property. Property led to the
domination of one man over other.

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SOCIAL CONTRACT
Though Rousseau criticised civil society, he did not suggest man
to choose the savage existence, as some of his contemporaries
mistook him. The main concern of the social contract is the central
issue of all political speculation: Political obligation. ‘The
Problem’ Rousseau says’ “is to find a form of association which
will defend and protect with the whole common force the person
and goods of each associate, and in which each while uniting
himself with all may still obey himself along, and remain as free
as before”.
Like his predecessors, Rousseau uses the conceptions of the state
of nature and the social contract that puts to end to it. Rousseau’s
conception of man’s life in the state ofnature is not quite so
gloomy as that of Hobbes’ nor as optimistic as that of Locke. Each
man pursues his self- interest in the state of nature until he
discovers that his power to preserve himself individually against
the threats and hindrances of others is not strong enough
Rousseau’s social contract opens thus: ‘ Man is born free and he
is everywhere inchains’ His purpose is how to make the chains
legitimate in place of the illegitimate chainsof the contemporary
society.
The purpose of the social contract is thus to combine security
which comes from collective association, with liberty which the
individual had before the making of the contract. But the social
contract consists in the total alienation of each associate, together
with all his rights, to the whole community.’ Each man gives
himself to all, he gives himself to nobody in particular.
In Rousseau’s social contract man does not surrender completely
to a sovereign ruler, but each man gives himself to all, and
therefore gives himself to nobody in particular. Rousseau shows
in the social contract a much greater appreciation of civil society

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as compared with the state of nature than he showed in his earlier

writings. As a result of the contract, private person ceases to exist
for the contract produces a moral and collective Body, which
receives from the same act its unity, its common identity, its life
and its will. This public person formed from the union of all
particular individuals is the state when it is passive,; the sovereign
when it is active, a power when compared with similar institutions.
CRITIQUE OF CIVILISATION
Rousseau protested against intelligence, science and reason in so
far as they destroyed reverence faith and moral intuition, the
factors on which society was based. His protest was a “revolt
against reason, for he regarded the thinking animal as a depraved,
animal”. His conviction was reflected by his unhappiness with
Grotius, because his usual method of reasoning is constantly to
establish right by face.
Rousseau attacked civilisation and enlightenment in a prize
winning essay written in 1749 on the question : Has the progress
of science and arts contributed to corrupt or purify morality.
Rousseau argued that science was not saving but bring moral ruin
upon us. Progress was an illusion, what appeared to be
advancement was in reality [Link] arts of civilised society
served only to ‘ cast garlands of followers over the chains men
bore . The development of modern civilisation had not made men
either happier or more virtuous. In the modern sophisticated
society man was corrupted, the greater the sophistication the
greater the corruption. Rousseau wrote thus: “our minds have been
corrupted in proportion as the arts and science have improved”.
In surveying history to support of his cult of natural simplicity,
Rousseau is full of enthusiasm in for Sparta, a “republic of demi-
gods rather than of men”, famous for the happy and ignorance of
its inhabitants. By contrast, he denigrates Athens, the centre of

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vice, doomed to perish because of its elegance, luxury, wealth, art

and science. Rousseausees a direct casual relation between luxury
constantly expanding needs, and the rise of art and science after
which true courage flags and the virtues disappear.
According to Rousseau, arts , manners, and politeness not only
destroyed martial values but also denied human nature, forcing
individuals to conceal their real selves’ In modern society
happiness was built on the opinions of others rather than finding
it in one’s own hearts. Thus he dismissed modern civilised society
as false and artificial for it destroyed natural and true culture.
GENERAL WILL
The doctrine of general will occupies a prominent place in
Rousseau’s political philosophy In the Discourse on Political
Economy Rousseau had already dealt with the problem of general
will. He sees the body politic’ “possessed of a will and this
general will, which tends always to the preservation and welfare
of the whole and of every part, and is the source of the laws,
constitutes for all the members of the state in their relation to one
another and to it, the rule of what is just or unjust”. By introducing
the concept of General Will, Rousseau fundamentally alters the
mechanistic concept of the state as an instrument and revives the
organic theory of the state, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle.
In order to understand the meaning and importance of general will
it is necessary tounderstand the meanings of related terms and
concepts. According to Rousseau, the actual will of the individual
is his impulsive and irrational will. It is based on self- interest and
is not related to the well-being of the society. Such a will is narrow
an self [Link] real will of the individual is on the other
hand, rational will which aims at the general happiness of the
community. The real will promotes harmony between the
individuals in society. Rousseau believes that an average man has
both an actual and real will.

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The general will is the sum total of or rather synthesis of the real
wills of the individuals in society. It represents the common
consciousness of the common good after proper discussion and
deliberation. The chief attribute of the general will not it was
sovereign power but pursuit of common interests and its public
spiritedness. The character of the general will is determined by
two elements: first it aims at the general good, and second, it must
come from all and apply to all. The first refers to the object of the
will; the second, to its origin.
Rousseau also makes differences between will of all and general
will. There is often a great deal of differences between the will
of all and the general will. ‘the latter considers only the common
interests, while the former takes private interest into account and
is no more than a sum of particular wills. Thus the will of all is the
aggregate of all thewills of the individuals of the community about
their private interest into account and is no more than a sum of
particular wills. Thus the will of all is the aggregate of all the wills
of the individuals of the community about their private interest,
wills which partly clash and partly coincide mutually. But the
general will represents the aggregate of these wills which is
common to all the citizens. In other words, the essential
difference between the will of all and general will is one of
motivation, i.e., service to the community without anyprejudice
or discrimination.
Unlike nearly all other major political thinkers, Rousseau
considers the sovereignty of the people inalienable and indivisible.
The people cannot give away or transfer to any person or body
their ultimate right of self government of deciding their own
destiny. Whereas Hobbes identified the sovereign with the ruler
who exercises’ sovereignty, Rousseau draws a sharp distinction
between sovereignty, which always and wholly resides in the
people and government which is but a temporary agent of the
sovereign people. Rousseau believes that the general will would
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be the source of all laws. The human being would be truly free
it he followed the dictates of the law. He was categorical that the
General will could emerge only in an assembly of equal law
makers.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GENERAL WILL
The following are some of the important features of general will.
Firstly, Rousseau’s general will is permanent It is rational and not
impulsive. It is not eternal but permanent and imparts stability to
national institutions. Secondly, Rousseau locates sovereignty in
the general will. General will and sovereignty are inalienable just
as life of the individual isinalienable. Whereas in Locke the people
transfer the exercise of their sovereign authority, legislative,
executive and judicial to organs of government, Rousseau’s
concept of inalienable and indivisible sovereignty does not permit
the people to transfer their legislative function, the supreme
authority in the state As to the executive and judicial functions,
Rousseau realises that they have to be exercised by special organs
of government but they are completely subordinate to the
sovereign people.
Thirdly, Rousseau’s general will is unitary because it is not self
contradictory. It gives a touch of unity to national character.
Nextly, general will is unrepresentable because sovereignty lies in
the community which is a collective body and cannot be
represented but by itself: As soon as a nation appoints
representatives, it is no longer free, it no longer exists.
Finally, the general will is infallible. Rousseau means little more
than that the general will must always seek the general good. He
says the general will is always right and tends to the public
advantage. If the general will is always right, it is not always
known. It does not follow that the deliberations of the people are
always equally correct.

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Rousseau saw the government as an agent of the General will, the

sovereign entityin the body polity. Like Montesquieu, he believed
all forms of government were not suited to all countries. A
government had to reflect the character of a country and its people.
According to William Ebenstein, Rousseau’s concept of
sovereignty differs from both Hobbes’ and Locke’s In Hobbes the
people set up a sovereign and transfer all power to him In Locke’s
social contract, the people set up a limited government for limited
purposes, but Locke shuns the conception of sovereignty - popular
or monarchical – as a symbol of political absolutism. Rousseau’s
sovereign is the people constituted as a political community
through the social contract. Rousseau’s theory of popular
sovereignty is not only different from Locke’s , it is in fact a
through going critique of the whole traditionof Lockean liberal
democracy. For while Locke recognises the principle of popular
sovereignty in theory, he rejects it in practice, says Rousseau In
point of fact , Locke’s contract does not give the legislative power
to the people, but to a representative legislature. As such,
sovereign belongs to the elected representatives, or more
precisely to a majority of representatives rather than to the
community as a whole. Thus, Locke actually puts sovereignty in
the hands of a very small minority , thereby denying to the pole
that political liberty that a correct reading of the contract shows
they rightfully ought topossess.
ASSESSMENT
There was no denying the fact that Rousseau‘s political
philosophy was one of the most innovative striking and brilliant
argued theories. His most important achievement was that he
understood the pivotal problem that faced individuals in society -
how to reconcile individual interests with those of the larger
interests of the society. Rousseau is the first modern writer to
attempt, not always successfully to synthesise good government
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with self government in the key concept of General will.

Rousseau’s influence has changed over the last three centuries. In
the 18th century he was seen as critique of the statusquo,
challenging the concept of progress, the core of the enlightenment
belief structure. In the 19th century, he was seen as the apostle of
the French revolution and the founder of the romantic movement.
In the 20th century he has been hailed as the founder of democratic
tradition, while at the same time assailed for being the
philosophical inspiration of totalitarianism.

LIBERAL TRADITION: UTILITARIANS AND

IDEALISTS
JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832)
Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism, combined
throughout his active life the carriers of a philosopher, a jurist and
that of a social reformer and activist. Though trained to be a
lawyer, he gave up the practice of law in order to examine the basis
of law and to pursue legal reforms. His utilitarian philosophy
based on the principle of the “greatest happiness of the greatest
number” was aimed at rearing the fabric of felicity of prison,
legislation and parliament and stressed the need for a new penal
code for England. It was for these reasons that he has been
regarded by J.S. Mill as a “progressive philosopher”, the great
benefactor of mankind’ and enemy of the status quo and the
greatest questioner of things established.
From the middle of the 18th century, England experienced a
technological and industrial transformation whose impact was
revolutionary from the view point of new social ideasand a new
material environment. Socially, the industrial revolution was
responsible for three complementary developments; first the
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growth of new and the rapid expansion of oldtowns and cities;

second the increase in population made possible by higher living
standards and improved conditions of health; third the destruction
of the existing social hierarchy headed by the landed aristocracy
and its gradual replacement by the manufacturers, financiers,
merchants and professional men as the new dominant social class.
The war with France (1793-1815) provided the conservative
government in Britain with a welcome opportunity to repress
democratic and radical ideas under the pretext of fighting
Jacobinism. The defeat of Napoleon and the revival of the old
European order at the Congress of Vienna (1815) seemed to put
an end to the nightmare of revolution and democracy. As Prof.
Sabine has pointed out, the rising middle classes in Britain
inevitablydeveloped a new social and political philosophy that
was clearly distinct from Burke’s adulation of landed aristocracy,
as well as from Paine’s radicalism and Godwin’s anarchy”.What
was needed was a political faith reflecting the outlook of the
middle classes, which was essentially empirical optimistic willing
to innovate and eager to translate natural science into technology
and industry and political science into government and
administration.
The most characteristic expression of this outlook is to be found
in the work of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Philosophical
Radicalism. Bentham was born in 1748, only three years after the
Jocabite rebellion of 1745 that sought to regain the throne of the
Stuarts. Bethan’s father and grandfather were well-to-do
attorneys and Bentham was to enter upon the same carrier. At
the comparatively early age of three Bentham was found poring
over a big folio volume of Rapin’s History of England,; he read
Latin before he was four, French at six and took to Voltaire for
light reading at eight. He entered Oxford at twelve, received his
Bachelor’s degree at fifteen and then studied the law. He was
called to the bar in 1769 but he soon decided that he was more

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interested in reforming the law than in practicing it. A small

annual income of a hundred pounds enabled him to live
independently though modestly; after his father’s death in 1792
his financial situation greatly improved and he was able to live
comfortably in his house in London. There he spent his life,
unmarried completely devoted to his literary and political
activities.
Jeremy Bentham’s political philosophy was influenced by the
writings of David Hume, Priestly, Claude Adrien Helvetius,
Cesore Bonesana etc. Bentham’s first book Fragment on
Government was directed against Blackstone, the oracle of
English law. The Fragment on Government was published in
1776, the year of James Watt’s first successfulsteam engine, the
Declaration of Independence and the publication of another
milestoneof social thought, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations’. In
the Fragment, Bentham pragmatically describes the nature of
political society in terms of the habit of obedience, and not of
social contract, natural rights and other fictions. In this early work
of Bentham there is more than a touch of Burke, because of the
constant emphasis that government isnot based on metaphysical
generalities but on interest and advantage.
Bentham’s most widely known book is his Principles of Morals
and Legislation (printed in 1780 and published in 1789)
Bentham welcomed the French Revolution and set hisreform
proposals, though more were adopted. But he was made an
honorary citizen of France in 1792. In 1809, a close relationship
between Bentham and James Mill (1773— 1836) began, with Mill
being convinced of the urgency for reforms. Bentham started and
financed the West Minster Review in 1824 with the idea of
propagating his utilitarian principles. Bentham lived till the age
of 84.

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Pleasure – Pain Theory

Utilitarianism as a school of thought dominated English political
thinking form the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the
19th century. Some of the early utilitarian’s were Francis
Hutcheson, Hume, Priestly, and William Paley. But it was
Bentham who systematically laid down its theory and made it
popular on the basis of his innumerable proposals for reform.
Bentham’s merit consisted of not in the doctrine but in his
vigorous application of it to various practical problems. Through
James Mill, Bentham developed close links with Thomas Malthus
and David Ricardo getting acquainted with the ideas of the
classical economists.
The basic premise of utilitarianism was that human beings as a
rule soughthappiness that pleasure alone is good, and that the only
right action was that which produced the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. In the hands of Bentham, the pleasure pain theory
evolved into a scientific principle to be applied to the policies of
the state welfare measures and for administrative, penal and
legislative reforms. He shared Machiavelli’s concern for a science
of politics, not in the understanding the dynamics of political
power, but in the hope of promoting and securing the happiness of
individuals through legislation and policies.
Utilitarianism provided a psychological perspective on human
nature, for it perceived human beings as creatures of pleasure.
Bentham began the first chapter of An Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation thus: “Nature has placed
mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone topoint 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 fastenedto their throne. They govern us in all we do, in
all we say, in all we think: A man may pretend to abjure their
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empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The
principle of utility recognises thus subjection, and assumes it for
the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the
fabric of felicity by the hand of reason and of law”.
Bentham believes that human beings by nature were hedonists.
Each of their actions was motivated by a desire to seek pleasure
and avoid pain. Every human action has a cause and a motive.
The principles of utility recognised this basic psychological trait,
for it “approves or disapproves every action whatsoever,
according to the tendency which it appears to have to argument or
diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in
question………… not only of every action of a private individual
but of every measure of government’; Thus the principle of utility
or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is that quality in
an act or object that produces benefit, advantage pleasure, good or
happiness or prevent mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness.
For Bentham, utilitarianism was both a descriptive and normative
theory, - it not only described how human beings act so as to
maximize pleasure and minimize pain, butit also prescribed or
advocated such action. According to the principle of utility, the
cause of all human action is a desire for pleasure. But utility is
meant that property in any object,whereby it tends to produce
benefit, advantage, pleasure good or happiness
Bentham viewed hedonism not only as a principle of motivation,
but also a principleof action. He listed 14 simple pleasures and
12 simple pains, classifying these into self-regarding and other
regarding groups, a distinction that J.S. Mill borrowed in
elaboration ofthe concept of liberty. Only two benevolence and
malevolence, were put under other regarding action. Under self-
regarding motives, Bentham listed physical desire, pecuniary
interest, and love of power and self- preservation. Self-
preservation included fear of pain, love of life and love of ease.
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As Prof. C.L. Wayper has pointed out, when Bentham spoke of

the good and bad consequences of an action he simple meant the
happy or painful consequences of that action. He accepted the
association principle of Hartley that all ideas are derived from the
senses as the result of the operation of sensible objects on these,
and he conceived of life as being made upon of interesting
perceptions. All experience, he believed, was either pleasurable or
painful or both. Pleasures were simply individual sensations. But
happiness, he thought of not as simple individual sensations.
Rather it was a state of mind, a bundle of sensations.
Bentham is fully aware that personal happiness and the happiness
of the greatest number are not always identical and he sees two
means by which the gulf between individual selfishness and
communal good can be bridged. First education can elevate men’s
minds so that they will understand that rationally conceived
happiness of one’s self includes good will, sympathy, and
benevolence for others. The second means of bridging the gap
between individual selfishness and the greatest happiness of the
greatest number is the creation of an institutional environment in
which man’s selfish impulses can be channeled into socially
useful purposes, so that it will be contrary to his selfish - interest
to harm others.
Bentham claims in his principles to have developed a genuinely
scientific comprehension of the nature of pleasure. Pleasure, he
argues, may be said to be of lesser or greater value depending upon
certain measurable variables such as intensity, duration, fecundity
and so on. One pleasure, for example, may be more intense than
another but of shorter duration. Another pleasure may be of greater
duration but lack of fecundity that is the capacity to generate other
subordinate pleasures. Moreover, as Epicures had also noted,
pleasures are often accompanied by pain and some pleasures are
more apt to be accompanied by pain than others.

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All pleasures and pains, according to Bentham are effects

produced by external causes but individuals do not experience the
same quantity of pleasure or pain from the same cause and this is
because they differ in sensitivity or sensibility. Bentham has listed
around 32 factors which influence sensibility and these should
be taken into account inany computation of the total amount of
pleasure or pain involved in any given act. These factors are
health, strength, hardness, bodily imperfections, quality and
quantity of knowledge, strength of intellectual powers, firmness of
mind, bent of inclination etc.
Bentham believes that every individual is the best of his happiness.
The state is a group of persons organised for the promotion and
maintenance of utility that is happiness or pleasure. The state
could increase pleasure and diminish pain by the application of
sanctions. These are the physical sanction which operates in the
ordinary course of nature. The moral sanction which arises from
the general feeling of society; the religious sanction, which is
applied by the immediate hand of a “superior invisible being,
either in the present life or in a future”; and the political sanction
which operates through government and the necessity for which is
the explanation of the state. The community according to Bentham
is a fictitious body and its interests are the sum total of the interests
of the several members who compose it .
Bentham distinguished pleasures quantitatively rather than
qualitatively when he wrote that ‘the pleasure of pushpin is as
good as poetry’. He did differentiate between pleasures, and in that
sense he was not an elitist. He did not assign any inherent grading
to activities and treated them at par in terms of their contribution
to individual happiness. He taught men to govern by the simple
rule of the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ which in
turn, could be measured by an apparatus known as felicific
calculus.

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But it is important to recognise that Bentham’s calculus works

only so long as twoassumptions hold. We must assume first that
the ethical is identical to the pleasurable, and second that the
pleasurable can be defined in strictly quantitative terms such that
any pleasure can be mathematically compared to any other. When
we measure pleasure, he says we must take note of their intensity
and duration. We must take note of their certainty or uncertainty
since a pleasure that is more certain is greater than one which is
less certain. Their propinquity or remoteness must also come into
our calculations a pleasure that is closer or more easily available
being greater than one which is farther away and more
inaccessible. Thus Bentham’s doctrine of utility is a doctrine
which is concerned with results not with motives.
Several criticisms have been leveled against Bentham’s doctrine
of quantitative utility. Prof. William Ebenstein in his major work
‘Great Political Thinkers’ has criticised Bentham’s theory as
“uninspiring, not imaginative enough and merely mechanical”.
His theory lacked originality and was full of prejudices and
speculation. He was very much confused and contradictory in his
own theoretical adventures. Prof. Carlyle has branded Benthanism
as the “pig philosophy” just to remind us that hedonism of the
kind is not very satisfactory, the happiness is much more than
pleasure.
Bentham’s theory has been criticised for its neglect of moral sense.
What Bentham wanted to do was to establish a standard of right
or wrong, good and evil related to calculable values. His
psychological appreciation of human nature was inadequate.
Many factors beside pleasure and pain motivate individual and
communal action.
Bentham distinguished pleasures and pains quantitatively rather
than qualitatively. But in actual practice pleasures and pain differ
qualitatively. Bentham believes that pleasures and pains could be
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arithmetically calculated with the help of an apparatus known as

felicific calculus. However, modern researches in experimental
psychology show that felicific calculus of pleasures with which
Bentham supplied as turns out to have no practical significance at
all. He provides no scale of values with which to measure the
various factors and no way of determining the relative importance
of the factors that he lists. How could we measure the fecundity or
purity of a pleasure.
ASSESSMENT
Bentham was not an outstanding philosopher though
paradoxically he occupies an important place in the history of
political philosophy. Bentham’s main contribution to political
science was not that he offered a novel principle of political
philosophy but that he ‘steadily applied an empirical and critical
method of investigation to concrete problems of law and
government.’ It was an attempt ‘to extend the experimental
method of reasoning from the physical branch to the moral’.
Whatever may be the criticisms leveled against Bentham’s theory
of utility’, it is beyond dispute that Bentham ‘changed the
character of British institutions more than any other man in the
nineteenth century’.
We cannot regard Bentham as the greatest critical thinker of his
age and country. According to C.L. Wayper, it was “Benthamism
which brought to an end the era of legislative stagnation and
ushered in that period of increasing legislative activity which has
not yet ended and under the cumulative effects of which we are
living our lives today”. He supplied a new measurement for social
reform- the maximising of individual happiness.
Bentham exercised a great influence upon theories of sovereignty
and law. Law was not a mystic mandate of reason or nature. But
simply the command of that authority to which the members of

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community render habitual obedience. He considered the power

of the sovereign as indivisible unlimited, inalienable and
permanent. As Prof. Sabine has rightly pointed out, Bentham’s
greatest contribution was in the field of jurisprudence and
government.
Bentham was a firm believer in gradual reform. He had no faith in
the violence of a revolution. He advanced numerous ideas which
have become central to the liberal creed of the 19th century. His
utilitarian principles not only dominated the liberal discourse but
also influenced the early socialist writings of William Thompson.

JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873)

John Stuart Mill was the most influential political thinker of the
19th century. In his political theory, liberalism made a transition
from laissez faire to an active role for thestate, from a negative
to a positive conception of liberty and from an atomistic to a more
social conception of individuality. While Mill was a liberal he
could also be regarded at thesame time as a reluctant democrat, a
pluralist a co-operative socialist, an elitist and a feminist.
John Stuart Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806. He had
eight younger siblings. His father James Mill came from Scotland,
with the desire to become a writer. Atthe age of 11 he began to
help his father by reading the proofs of his father’s book namely
History of British India. In 1818 his father was appointed as
Assistant examiner at the East India House. It was an important
event in his life as this solved his financial problemsenabling him
to develop his time and attention to write on areas of his prime
interest, philosophical and political problems. His father was his
teacher and constant companion. At 16 he founded the Utilitarian
Society, an association of young men who met to discuss
Bentham’s ideas. He became a member of a small group to discuss
political economy, logic and psychology. He joined the

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speculative debating society and the political economy club At

17. He obtained a post in the office of the examiner of India
correspondence in the East India company which lasted until its
abolition in 1853. He soon achieved distinction in the articles that
he contributed to the Westminster Review. Atthe age of 20 he
edited Bentham’s Rational of Evidence.
In his thinking John Stuart Mill was greatly influenced by the
dialogues and dialectics of Plato and the cross questions of
Socrates. His studies were also influenced by the writings of John
Austin, Adam Smith and Ricardo. He had inhibited Bentham’s
principles from his father and Bentham himself and found the
principles of utility the keystone of his beliefs. Among other
influences, a special mention is to be made of the impact exercised
on J. S. Mill on his own wife Mrs. Taylor whom he used to call a
perfect embodiment of reason, wisdom, intellect and character.
She touched the emotional depthsof Mill’s nature and provided the
sympathy he needed.
J. S Mill was a prolific writer and he wrote on different
branches of knowledge with equal mastery. His System of Logic
(1843) tried to elucidate a coherent philosophy of politics. The
logic combined the British empiricist tradition of Locke and
Hume of associational psychology with a conception of social
science based on the paradigm of Newtonian physics. His Essay
On Liberty (1859) and the Subjection of Women (1869) were
classic elaborations of liberal thought on important issues like
law, rights and [Link] major work, The Considerations
of Representative Government (1861) provided an outline of his
ideal government based on proportional representation,
protection of minorities and institutions of self government. His
famous work Utilitarianism(1863) endorsed the Benthamite
principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number yet
made a significant departure from the Benthamite assumptions.
It was written an exposition and defense of the pleasure pain
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philosophy applied to ethics, but he makes somany changes that

there is little left of the original creed. He seems that human
nature is not entirely moved by self- interest as Bentham and
his father had taught, but is capableof self- sacrifice.
Modification of Bentham’s theory
J.S Mill was a close follower of his teacher, Jeremy Bentham and
his services to Bentham are exactly the same as the service of
Lenin to his master, Karl Marx. He saved Benthanism from death
and decay by removing its defects and criticisms as Lenin made
Marxism up to date Mill criticized and modified Bentham’s
utilitarianism by taking into account factors like moral motives,
sociability, feeling of universal altruism, sympathy and a new
concept of justice with the key idea of impartiality. He asserted
that the chief deficiency of Benthamite ethics was the reflect of
individual character, and hence stressed on the cultivation of
feelings and imagination as part of good life- poetry, drama,
music, paintings etc. were essential ingredients both for human
happiness and formation of character. They were instruments of
human culture. He defined happiness and dignity of man and not
the principle of pleasure, the chief end of life. He defined
happiness to mean perfection of human nature, cultivation of
moral virtues and lofty aspirations, total control over one’s
appetites and desires, and recognition of individual and collective
interests.
In his desire to safeguard utilitarianism from criticisms leveled
against it, Mill goes “far towards or overthrowing the whole
utilitarian position. The strong anti hedonistmovement of his day,
personified by Carlyle, determined him to show that the utilitarian
theory, although hedonistic, is elevating and not degrading.
Therefore, he sought to establish the non-utilitarian proposition
that some pleasures are of a higher quality than other. Bentham
had denied this, maintaining quantity of pleasure being equal,
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pushpin is as good as poetry’. Mill offers a singular proof that

Bentham is wrong. Men who have experienced both higher and
lower pleasures agree, he says, in preferring the higher, and theirs
is a decisive testimony, ‘it is better to a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied,better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool
satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion it is
because they only know their side of the question. The other party
to the comparison knows both the sides.’ Mill’s assertion that
pleasures differ in quality is no doubt a truer reflection of human
experience than is Bentham’s insistence to the contrary. It is,
nevertheless, non-utilitarian. If pleasures differ qualitatively, then
the higher pleasure is the end to be sought and not the principles
of utility. A Sodgwick, who was so ruthless and logical a thinker
saw, if we are to be hedonists we must say that pleasures vary
only in quantity, never in quality. Utilitarianism, because it is
hedonist, must recognize no distinction between pleasures except
a quantitative one.
In the course of proving his thesis that the principle of utility can
admit a qualitative distinction of pleasures, Mill makes use of the
non- utilitarian argument that pleasures cannot in any case, be
objectively measured. The felicific calculus is, he says, absurd and
men have always relied upon the testimony of ‘ those most
competent to judge. ‘These are no other tribunal to be referred
to even on the question of quantity. Inthe words of C.L. Wayper,
“Mill was of course right in maintaining the absurdity of the
felicific calculus- but if it is admitted that pleasures can no longer
be measuredobjectively, a vital breach, has been made in the
strong hold of utilitarianism.”
Mill is concerned to establish the fact that pleasures differ in
quality as well as quantity, so that he can maintain the further non-
utilitarian position that not the principle of utility but the dignity
of man is the final end of life. In his Liberty he makes the non-
utilitarian complaint that “individual spontaneity is hardly
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recognized by the common modes of thinking as having any

intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard on its own account’ He
approves of Humboldt’s doctrine of self-realization. ‘It is of
importance’, he says, not only what men do but also what manner
of men they are that do it’. According to Bentham, not self-
realization but the achievement of pleasure and the avoidance of
pain was the end that they sort before men. Mill, on the contrary,
is in effect saying that one pleasure is better than another if it
promotes the sense of dignity of man. Mill is here introducing a
conception of the good life as something more than a life devoted
topleasure. Mil’s Introduction into Utilitarianism of this moral
criterion implies a revolutionary change in the Benthamite
position. Thus Mill has once again made the state a moral
institution with a moral end. Mill has defended utilitarianism
only by abandoning the whole utilitarian position.
Mill’s non-utilitarian interest in the sense of dignity in man leads
him to give a non- utilitarian emphasis to the idea of moral
obligation. For Mill the sense of moral obligation cannot be
explained in terms of the principle of utility. Thus while his ethics
are certainly more satisfying than Bentham’s Mill is responsible
for yet another important alteration in Benthamism.
Mills has pointed out that every human action had three aspects:
[Link] moral aspect of right or wrong;
[Link] aesthetic aspect (or its beauty) ; and
[Link] sympathetic aspect of loveableness.
The first principle instructed one to disapprove, the second taught
one to admire or despise, and the third enabled one to love, pity or
dislike. He regarded individual self- development and diversity as
the ultimate ends, important components of human happiness and
the principal ingredients of individual and social progress.
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Mill used the principle of utility which he regarded as the ultimate

appeal on all ethical questions to support his principle of liberty,
but then it was utilitarianism based on the permanent interests of
the individual as a progressive being. He made a distinction
between toleration and suppression of offensive practices. In case
of offences against public decency, majority sentiment would
prevail. Beyond these, the minorities must be granted the freedom
of thought and expression, and the right to live as they pleased.
In one another respect J.S Mill definitely makes an improvement
over the utilitarian theory of Bentham. Bentham had not spoken
about the social nature of morality that society itself has a moral
end- the moral good of its members. From the contention that
every individual desires’ his own happiness Mill held that the
individual should desire and promote general happiness. It is thus
obvious that Mill stood not for an individual’shappiness but for
the general happiness of the community as a whole. He regarded
utility as a noble sentiment associated with Christian religion.
In addition to the above differences, Mill also tried to reconcile the
interests of the individual and the society. He spoke of nobility
of character, a trait that was closely related to altruism, meaning
people did what was good for society, rather than for themselves.
The pleasures they derived from doing good for society might
outweigh the ones that aimed at self-indulgence, contributing to
their happiness. Mill saw social feelings and consciences as part
of the psychological attributes of a person. He characterized
society as being natural and habitual, for the individual was a
social person. As Prof. Sabine has rightly pointed out, Mill’s
ethics was important for liberalism because in effect it abandoned
egoism, assumed that social welfare is a matter of concern to all
men of good will and regarded freedom, integrity, self- respect and
personal distinction as intrinsic goods apart from their
contribution to happiness”. Under the sociological influenceof
August Comte and others, Mill introduces a historical approach to
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the study of man and human institutions and is against the

Benthamite static view of human nature and human institutions.
LIBERTY AND SUFFRAGE
Mill’s ideas on liberty had a direct relationship with his theory of
utility or [Link] regarded liberty as a necessary means for
the development of individuality which was to become the
ultimate source of happiness. There was only one road for him to
take andthat was the road of higher utility. In his well known work,
On Liberty, Mill thoroughly examines the problem of the
relationship between the individual on the one side and thesociety
and state on the other.
Mill lived at a time when the policy of laissez faire was being
abandoned in favor of greaterregulation by the state of the actions
of the individual. Besides, due to the growth of democracy, the
individual was getting lost in the society. To Mill this increasing
regulation and elimination of the individual was a wrong and
harmful development. He believed that the progress of society
depended largely on the originality and energy of the individual.
He, therefore, becomes a great advocate of individual freedom.
According to [Link], liberty means absence of restraints. He
believes that an individual has two aspects to his life: an individual
aspect and social aspects The actions of the individual may be
divided into two categories, i,e.
1. Self-Regarding activities and 2. Other regarding
activities. With regard to activities in which he alone is concerned,
his liberty of action is complete and should not be regulated by the
state. However, in action of the individual which affects the
society his action can be justifiably regulated by the state or
society. In his on Liberty, J.S. Mill wrote thus: the sole end for
which mankind is warranted individually or collectively in
interfering with the liberty of action of any of their members is
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self-preservation. That is the only purpose for which power can be

rightfully exercised over any members of a civilized community
against his will is to prevent harm to other.
Mill defended the right of the individual freedom. In its negative
sense, it meant that society had no right to coerce an unwilling
individual, except for self defense. In its positive sense it means
that grant of the largest and the greatest amount of freedom for the
pursuit of individuals creative impulses and energies and for self-
development. If there was a clash between the opinion of the
individual and that of the community, it was the individual who
was the ultimate judge, unless the community could convince him
without resorting to threat and coercion.
Mill laid down the grounds for justifiable interference. Any
activity that pertained to the individual alone represented the
space over which no coercive interference either form the
government or from other people, was permissible. The realm
which pertained to the society or the public was the space in which
coercion could be used to make the individual conform to some
standard of conduct. The distinction between the two areas was
stated by the distinction Mill made between self regarding and
other regarding actions, a distinction made originally by Bentham.
Mill in his On Liberty wrote thus: “The only part of the conduct
of any one for which is amenable to society, is that which concerns
others. In the part which merely concerns him, his independence
is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind,
the individual is sovereign”.
Mill defended the right of individuality, which meant the right of
choice. As for as self- regarding actions were concerned, he
explained why coercion would be detrimental to self
development. First, the evils of coercion far outweighed the good
achieved. Second, individuals were so diverse in their needs and
capacities for happiness that coercion would be futile. Since the
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person was the best judge of his own interests, therefore he had
the information and the incentive to achieve them. Third, since
diversity was in itself good, other things being equal it should be
encouraged. Last, freedom was the most important requirement in
the life of a rational person. Hence, he made a strong case for
negative liberty, and the liberal state and liberal society were
essential prerequisites.
Mill contended that society could limit individual liberty to
prevent harm to other people. He regarded as theory of conscience,
liberty to express and publish one’sopinions, liberty to live as one
pleased and freedom of association as essential for a meaningful
life and for the pursuit of one’s own good. His defiance of freedom
of thought and expression was one of the most powerful and
eloquent expositions in the western intellectual traditions. The
early liberals defended liberty for the sake of efficient government
whereas for Mill liberty has good in itself for it helped in the
development of humane, civilized moral person In the opinion of
Prof. Sabine, “liberty was beneficial both to society that permits
them and to the individual that enjoys them”.
According to Mill, individuality means power or capacity for
critical enquiry and responsible thought. It means self-
development and the expression of free will. He stressed
absolute liberty of conscience, belief and expression for they were
crucial to human progress. Mill offered two arguments for liberty
of expression in the service of truth; a) the dissenting opinion
could be true and its suppression would rob mankind of useful
knowledge, and b( even if the opinion was false, it would
strengthen the correct view by challenging it .
For Mill all creative faculties and the great goods of life could
develop only through freedom and experiments in living. On
Liberty constituted the most persuasive andconvincing defense of
the principle of individual liberty ever written. Happiness, for Mill
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was the ability of the individual to discover his innate powers and
develop these while exercising his human abilities of autonomous
thought and action. Liberty was regarded as a fundamental
prerequisite for leading a good, worthy and dignified life.
Mill clarified his position on liberty by defending three specific
liberties, the libertyof thought and expression including the liberty
of speaking and publishing, the liberty of action and that of
association. Mill wrote thus: ‘If all mankind minus one, were of
one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion,
mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person ,
than he if he had the power, would be justified in silencing
mankind.’ Mill provided some reasons for the freedom of
expression. For Mill since the dominant ideas of a society usually
emanate from the class interests of that society’s ascendant class,
the majority opinion may be quite far from the truth or from the
social interest. Human beings, according to Mill are fallible
creatures- and their certainty that the opinion they hold is true is
justified only when their opinion is constantly opposed to contrary
opinions.
When comes to the liberty of action Mill asserted a very simple
principle: the sole end for which mankind are warranted,
individually or collectively, interfering with the liberty of action
of any of their number is self protection………. 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 freedom of association on three grounds.
First ‘when the thing to be done is likely to be done better by
individuals than by government. Speaking generally, there is no
one fit to conduct any business or to determine how or by whom
it shall be conducted as those who are personally interested in it.
Second, allowing individuals to get together to do something,
even if they do not do it as well as the government might have
done it is better for the mental education of these individuals. The
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right of association becomes a ‘practical part of the political

education of a free people taking them out of the narrow circle of
personal and family selfishness and accustoming them to the
comprehension of joint concerns habituating them to act from
public or semi- public motives, and guide their conduct by aims
which unite instead of isolating them from one another:. Further,
government operations tend to be everywhere alike, with
individuals and voluntary associations; onthe contrary there are
varied experiments and endless diversity of experience. Thus Mill
wanted individuals to constantly better themselves morally,
mentally and materially. Individuals improving themselves would
naturally lead to a better and improved society.
Mill’s doctrine of liberty has been subjected to severe criticisms
from different corners. Sir Ernest Barker made an interesting
observation when he remarked that Mill was a prophet of an empty
liberty and an abstract individual’. Mill had no clear cut theory and
philosophy of rights through which alone the concept of liberty
attains a concrete meaning. Ernest Barkers observation followed
from the interpretation that the absolute statements on liberty like
the rights of one individual against the rest was not substantiated
when one assessed Mills writings in their totality. For instance, his
compartmentalization between self- regarding and other regarding
actions, and the tensions between his tilt towards welfarism which
conflicted with individualism were all indications of this
incompleteness. But the point Barker ignored was the fact that the
tension that emerged in Mill was an inevitable consequence of
attempting to create a realistic political theory which attempted to
extend the frontiers of liberty as much as possible. In fact, no
political thinker including the contemporary thinkers like John
Rawls, Robert Nozick etc are free from this inevitable tension.
SUBJUCATION OF WOMEN
In 1869 Mill published his famous work ‘Subjugation of women’.
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According to him 'the legal subordination of one sex to the other'

is 'wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human
improvement'.
Mill debated that if freedom is good for men, then it is for women
too, and that every argument against this view drawn from the
evidently different "nature" of men and women is based on mere
superstitious special pleading. If women do have different natures,
the only way to discover what they are is by experiment, and that
requires that women should have access to everything to which
men have access. He felt that the tyranny of women was one of
the few remaining remnants from ancient times, a set of prejudices
that severely obstructed the progress of humanity.
Mill believed that both sexes should have equal rights under the
law and that "until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly
assess the natural differences between women and men, distorted
as they have been. He is considered as the leader of liberal
feminism.

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
Mill began his views on Representative government by stating that
we can only decide which the best form of government is by
examining which form of government fulfils most adequately the
purposes of government. For Mill, a good government performs
two functions: it must use the existing qualities and skills of the
citizens to best serve their interests and it must improve the moral,
intellectual and active qualities of these citizens. A despotic
government may be able to fulfill the first purpose, but will fail in
the second. Onlya representative government is able to fulfill these
two functions. It is a representative government that combines
judiciously the two principles of participation and competence
which is able to fulfill the two functions of protecting and
educating the citizens.

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Mill regarded Representative democracy as necessary for progress

as it permitted citizens to use and develop their faculties fully. It
promoted virtual intelligence and excellence. It also allowed the
education of the citizens providing an efficient forum for
conducting the collective affairs of the community. Interaction
between individuals in a democracy ensured the possibility of the
emergence of the wisest and recognition of the best leaders. It
encouraged free discussion which was necessary for the
emergence of the truth. He judged representative democracy on
the basis of how for it promotes the good management of the
affairs of the society by means of the existing faculties, moral,
intellectual and active, of its various members and by improving
those faculties.
Mill tried to reconcile the principle of political equality with
individual freedom. He acceptedthat all citizens regardless of their
status were equal and that only popular sovereignty could give
legitimacy to the government.
J.S. Mill hopes that democracy was good because it made people
happier and better. Mill laid down several conditions for
representative government. First such a government could only
function with citizens who were of an active self helping character.
Backward civilizations, according to Mill, would hardly be able to
run a representative democracy. Second, citizens had to show their
ability and willingness to preserve institutions ofrepresentative
democracy. Influenced by De Tocqueville’s thesis on majority
tyranny, Mill advocated a liberal democracy which specified and
limited the powers of legally elected majorities by cataloguing and
protecting individual rights against the majority. He pleaded for
balancing the numerical majority in a democracy by adjusting
franchise.
Mill recommended open rather than secret ballot, for voting was a
public trust which should be performed under the eye and
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criticism of the public. Open voting would be less dangerous for

the individual voter would be less influenced by the sinister
interests and discreditable feelings which belong to him either
individually or as a member of a class. Mill emphasised that
representative democracy was only possible in a state that was
smalland homogeneous.
Although a great champion of equal voting rights, universal
suffrage are guaranteed in democracy, Mill was fully aware of the
weaknesses and danger of democracy. His mind was particularly
upset by the inadequate representation of minorities in parliament
and thetyranny of the majority over the minority. In order to ensure
adequate representation of minorities, Mill supported the system
of proportional representative first proposed for parliamentary
elections by Sir Thomas Hare in England and propounded its
theory in his work: “Machinery of Representation” In addition to
proportional representation he has advocated plurality of votes to
the higher educated citizens.

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MODULE III
LIBERAL TRADITION, IDEALISTS

GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831)

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and all the other important
German thinkers, Kant, Fichte etc were the children of the French
Revolution. Compared to both England and France, Germany was
much more backward and feudal, consisting of more than 300
states linked to the Holly Roman Empire, with leadership provided
by Francis I of Austria. It came to anend when Napoleon defeated
this 1000 years old empire and subsequently in 1806 defeated
another powerful German state, Prussia. Hegel was a resident of
Prussia at the time of the defeat.
Hegel is the most methodologically self conscious of all
philosophers in the western tradition His system encompasses
philosophy, metaphysics, religion art, ethics, history and politics-
In its range alone his work is impressive and of a truly
encyclopediccharacter. His position in Germany was so powerful
that even the most ferocious attack against orthodox German
philosophy that of Karl Marx, sprang largely form Hegelian
assumptions.
Hegel was born in Stuttagar on 27 August 1770, the eldest son of
a middle class family. His father was a civil servant, and most of
his relatives were either teachers or Lutheran ministers. As a
student, Hegel’s major interest was theology but he soon
gravitated towards philosophy. After completing his studies he
accepted the position of a family tutor with a wealthy family in
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Switzerland from 1793-1796. This was followed by a similar

position at Bern and Frankfurt from 1797 to 1800. In 1806 the
French armies defeated Prussia at the decisive battle of Jena and
Hegel saw Napoleon ride through Jena. During the French
revolution he was an ardent sympathiser of Jacobin radicalism. As
Napoleon’sstar rose, Hegel profoundly admired him for his genius
and power. IN 1818, three years after the defeat of Napoleon,
Hegel was invited to come to the University of Berlin, and he
stayed there until his death in 1831. He became the dominant
figure at the university, and his influence extended over all
Germany. In the last phase of his life, Hegel was a follower and
admirer of the Prussian police state, just as he had previously
admired Jacobinism and Napoleon.
Hegel was the founder of modern idealism and the greatest
influence in the first half of the18th century, when the entire
academic community in Germany was divided between the
Hegelians the left Hegelians and the right Hegelians. He innovated
the dialectic and the theory of self- realisation. Hegel wrote
extensively on various aspects of political philosophy. The major
works of Hegel include the Phenomenology of Spirit. (1807)
Science of Logic (1812-1816) Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences (1817) Philosophy of Right (1812), Philosophy of
History (1837), Philosophy of Law (1821).
The best statement of Hegel’s political ideas is to be found in his
Philosophy of Law. It expresses his conception of freedom, natural
and social, which provides the key to an understanding of his
political thought. In his writings, Hegel combined the historical
senseof Vico and Montesquieu with the philosophical eminence
of Kant and Fichte. He was also influenced by the writing of Plato
and Aristotle. The Keynote of the Hegelian system is evolution,
the evolution of Idea by a dialectical process.

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IDEALISM
In the history of political ideas there are two major schools of
thought about at the natureof reality - idealism and naturally,
rationalism and empiricism. According to the idealist school, of
which Hegel is a major exponent, true knowledge of everything in
the world - material and non material is deduced from the idea of
the thing. In other world, according to idealist thinkers the idea of
the thing is more important than the thing itself. Therefore, what
is real and permanent is the idea of the thing not the thing as such.
This is because that physical world is constantly in a state of flux
and change but the idea is permanent. The knowledge of actually
existing thing is relative and hence imperfect.
Hegel starts with the assumption that the universe is a coherent
whole. In this organic unity what he variously calls the Idea or
Spirit or Reason or the Divine Mind, is the only reality.
Everything, including matter and the external world, is the
creations of theIdea or Spirit or Reason. Hence it is true to say
that reason is the sovereign of the world’It is the nature of this
Spirit or Reason, Hegel tells us to know all things. At the
beginning of the world - process the spirit or reason does not, in
fact, know anything; its nature is as little achieved as is the nature
of Aristotle’s man before he enters the polis. As Hegel puts it: The
truth is the whole The whole, however, is merely essential nature
reaching its completeness through the process of its own
development’.
According to Hegel, history is the process by which the spirit
passes from knowing nothing to full knowledge of itself, is the
increasing revelation of the purposes of the Rational Mind. “The
history of the world therefore, says Hegel, presents us with a
rational process”. The spirit on the way to its goal makes many
experiments. According to Hegel, the rational is real and the real
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is rational. It is to be noted that he is using real here in the sense

of the important or the fundamental. In his theory of state he
rejects Fichte’s teaching that only the ideal state is rational
whereas existing states are irrational, and he maintains on the
contrary that actual existing states are rational and are accordingly
to be treated with all reverence.
Hegelian idealism is often referred to as absolute idealism because
it provided 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. This may be called
idealist interpretation of History. Hegel believes that all changes
in society, economy, polity and culture take place because of
development of ideas. Thus Hegelian idealism sees a close
relationship between subject and the object.
DIALECTICS
The distinctive feature of Hegel’s philosophical system is his
dialectical method which he described as the logic of passion.
Hegel borrowed this method from Socrates who is the first
exponent of this method The word ‘ dialectic’ is derived from the
Greek word dialego which means to discuss or debate. Dialectic
simply means to discuss or conversation. Socrates believed that
one can arrive at the truth only by constant questioning. So
dialectics was the process of exposing contradictions by
discussion so as ultimately to arrive at truth.
Hegel’s dialectic method played major role in this political
philosophy. By applying the principles of a thesis, anti-thesis and
a synthesis, Hegel’s major thrust was to solve the problem of
contradiction. It attempted to reconcile the many apparent
contradictory positions and theorems developed by earlier
thinkers, As a method of interpretation, it attempted to reconcile
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the various different traits developed in the past.

Having taken a clue from Socrates, Hegel argued that absolute
idea or the spirit, in search of self- realisation moves from being
to non being to becoming. In other words, an idea move from a
thesis to anti thesis until a synthesis of the two is found As Prof.
C.l. Wayper has rightly pointed out “in the Hegelian dialectics
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 an anti thesis until such time as a synthesis is found
which will preservewhat is true in both thesis an antithesis, the
synthesis in this turn, becoming a new thesis and so on until the
Idea is at last enthroned in perfection”. ‘The thesis’ ‘Despotism’
for instance, will call into being ‘ democracy’, the antithesis and
from the clash between them the synthesis’ Constitutional
Monarchy’ which contains the best of both results. Or the thesis
family produces its antithesis, bourgeois society, and from the
resultant clash the synthesis, the state emerges in which thesis and
antithesis are raised to a higher power and reconciled.
The synthesis will not, Hegel insists, be in any sense a compromise
between thesisand anti thesis. Both thesis and anti thesis are fully
present in the synthesis, but in a moreperfect form in which their
temporary opposition has been perfectly reconciled. Thus the
dialectic can never admit that anything that is true can never be
lost. It goes on being expressed, but in ever new and more perfect
ways. Contradiction or the dialectic is therefore a self generating
process - it is very moving principle of the world’.
According to Hegel, dialectics is the only true method’ for
comprehending pure thought. He described dialectics as the
indwelling tendency towards by which the one sidedness and
limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light
--- the dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific
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progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connect and

necessity to the body of sciences.
In the Phenomenology, Hegel gave an example of its use 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 Greek world to
Hegel’s time. For Hegel, there was a dialectical pattern in history,
with the state representing the ultimate body, highly complex
formed as a result of synthesis of contradictory elements at
different levels of social life.. However, the relationship between
contradiction and synthesis was within concepts shaped by human
practices. Marx too discerned a dialectical pattern in history but
then understood contradictions between the means and relations
of production at different stages of history.
STATE
The most important contribution of Hegel to political philosophy
is his theory of state. Hegel regarded the state as the embodiment
of the Giest or the Universal Mind. The state was the
representative of the Divine Idea. His theory of state is rooted in
the axiom: what is rational is real and what is real is rational. For
Hegel, all states are rationalin so far as they represent the various
states of unfolding of Reason. He considered the state as march
of God on earth or the ultimate embodiment of reason.
State, for Hegel, is the highest manifestation of reason because it
emerges as a synthesis of family (thesis) and civil society or
bourgeois society (antithesis). The family is too small for the
adequate satisfaction of man’s wants, and as children grow up
they leave it for a wider world. That world is what Hegel calls the
world of bourgeois society and it is the antithesis which is called
into being by the original thesis, the family. Unlike the family,
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which is a unity regarded by its very members as being more real

than themselves, bourgeois society is a host of independent men
and women held together only by ties of contract and self-
interest. Whereas the characteristic of the family is mutual love,
the characteristic of bourgeois society is universal competition.
The thesis, the family, a unity held together by love, knowing
no differences, is thus confronted by the antithesis, bourgeois
society, an aggregate of individuals held apart by competition
knowing no vanity, even though it is manifestly struggling
towards a greater unity which it has nevertheless not yet attained.
The synthesis, which preserves what, is best in thesis and
antithesis, which swallows up neither family nor bourgeois
society, but which gives unity and harmony to them is the state.
The essence of modern state, according to Hegel, “is that
universal is bound up with the full freedom of particularity and
the welfare of individuals, that to interest of the family and of
bourgeois society must connect itself with the state, but also
universality of the state’s purpose cannot advance without the
specific knowledge and will of the particular, which must
maintain its rights.
FEATURES OF HEGELIAN STATE
There are several characteristics of Hegelian state. To begin with
it is no exaggeration to say that it is divine. It is the highest
embodiment that the spirit has reached in its progress through the
ages. It is the ‘divide Idea as it exists on earth’ It can be called
the march of God on earth’ It follows that Hegel makes no
attempt, as does Rousseau, to square the circle and admit the
possibility of a social contract.
The state also is an end in itself It is not only the highest
expression to which the spirit has yet attained, it is the final
embodiment of spirit on earth’ There can thus be no spiritual
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evolution beyond the state, any more than there can be any
physical evolution beyond.
The state, too, is a whole which is far greater than the parts which
compose it and which have significance only in it. “All the worth
which the human being possess”, Hegel writes in the Philosophy
of History, “all spiritual reality, he possess” only through the
state”. Individuals, therefore, must obviously be completely
subordinated to the state. It has the highest right over the
individual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the state in
the words of Prof. Sabine, if the individual in Hegel’s world is
nothing the state is all. In his Philosophy of History (published
posthumously in 1837) Hegel defines the state as the ‘realisation
of freedom’.
The state is the actually existing, realised moral life and all the
worth which the human being possesses- all spiritual reality he
possesses only through the state. The individual has moral value
only because he is part of the state, which is the complete
actualisation or reason because the state is actualised reason and
spirit, Hegel says, the law of the state is a manifestation of
objective spirit, and only that which obeys law is free’, for it
obeys itself.
The state, moreover, is unchecked by any moral law, for it itself
is the creator of morality. This can be seen clearly in its internal
affairs and in its external relations. Firstlyit lays down what shall
be the standard of morality for its individual citizens. Secondly,
the state can recognise no obligation other than its own safety in
its relations with other [Link] the Ethics he writes categorically:
The state is the self- certain, absolute mind which acknowledges
no abstract rules of good and bad, shameful and mean, craft and
deception’. The state, according to Hegel, is the truest interpreter
of the tradition of the community.
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The state, Hegel insists, is a means of enlarging not restricting

freedom; Freedom, he adds is the outstanding characteristics of
modern state. He criticises the Greeks because they did not
recognise that the state must rest on respect for personality. He
believes that the state will help men to fulfill themselves’.
According to Hegel, rights are derived from the state and
therefore no man canhave any right against the state. The state
has an absolute end itself. Prof. L.T. Hobhouse has beautifully
summed up the Hegelian concept of state when he wrote that the
state “as a greater being, a spirit, a supper personality entity, in
which the individuals with their private conscience or claims of
right, their happiness or misery are merely subordinate elements’.
As Prof. C.E.M. Joad has rightly pointed out, just as the personal
abilities of all its individuals in the state are transcended by and
merged in the personality of the state. So the moral relations
which each citizen has to each other citizen are merged in or
transcended by the social morality which is vested in the state.
Hegel regarded the state as a mystic transcendental unity the
mysterious union of all with the greater whole which embraces
all other institutions of social life.
The fundamental law of the state is the constitution. He opposes
the democratic idea of the constitution as an instrument of
government a charter and compact consciously framed for
desired ends. The constitution should not be regarded as
something made, even though it has come into being in time.
Because the state is “the march of God through the world”, the
constitution of the state is not something to be tampered with by
ordinary mortals. Going back to the history of the state, Hegel
finds that its origin “involves imperious lordship on the one
hand, instinctive submission on theother”. This leadership
principle, so characteristic of fascism, is also stressed by Hegel in

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his discussion on the merits of the different types of constitution-

democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Because of his preference
for monarchy, Hegel rejects the sovereignty of the people,
especially if the term implies opposition to the sovereignty of the
monarchy. In the words of Prof. William Ebenstein, Hegel
anticipates the corporate organisation of the modern fascist state
by his emphasis that the individuals should be politically
articulate only as a member of a social group or class, and not just
a citizen as in the liberal democracies’.
FREEDOM
The concept of freedom occupies a prominent place in the
political philosophy of Hegel. According to Hegel, ‘the history of
the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of
freedom’. The spirit, he says, is free, for it has its centre in itself
and self- contentedness is the very essence of freedom. Matter, on
the other hand, is not free,for it is subject to the law of gravity and
always tends to a point outside itself. Therefore the development
of history is thus the history of freedom. Human history
culminates in the state in which the spirit finds its final
embodiment. Therefore, the perfect state is the truly free state and
the citizen who gives perfect willing obedience to the perfect laws
of the perfect state has perfect freedom. The individual is also an
embodiment of the spirit, though not of course as perfect an
embodiment as the state.
Hegel’s doctrine of freedom was based on the old Greek notion
of an individual finding his true personality and his freedom in
the state. This represents a reaction against the notion of freedom
born of natural rights which characterized the revolutionary era.
Man had no inalienable rights and his freedom was a gift of the
state. The state not only secures the freedom of the individual but
enlarges it. For Hegel, freedom of the individual is a social
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phenomenon and there can be no freedom in the pre- social state

of nature. Freedom is self realisation which is possible only in the
state through the media and institutions maintained by the state
True freedom is determined by reason, not the reason of the
individual as with Kant but the reason of the community as
embodied in the laws of the state.
Because the state is actualised reason and spirit, Hegel says, the
law of the state ismanifestation of objective spirit, and “only that
which obeys law is free”, for it obeys itself. Hegel rejects the
liberal concept of freedom as absence of restraints and call such
freedom formal, subjective, abstracted from its essential objects
and constraints or restrictions put on the impulses, desires and
passions of the individual are not, Hegel maintains, a limitation of
freedom but its indispensable conditions because such compulsion
forces man to adjust his behaviour to the higher reason of the
state. According to Hegel, man’s real, substantive freedom (as
distinct from mere formal freedom) thus consists in his submitting
to and identifying himself with the higher rationality of state and
law.
Whether man submits voluntarily to the state or has to be
constrained, makes little difference, as the Hegelian concept of
freedom refers, not to the mode of action - free personal choice
between existing alternatives, or forcible adaptation of conduct to
prescribed rules- but to the object of action. As Prof. William
Ebenstein has rightly pointedout’ “if man acts in harmony with the
goals of the state regardless how the harmony is attained, he is
free, because his action partakes of the highest form of actualised
freedom- the state”. ‘On the basis of this assumption when the
subjective will of man submits to laws, the contradiction between
liberty and necessity vanishes.’

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Hegel believes that freedom for the individual can never be the
abstract anduneducated power of choice, but only the willing of
what is rational, of what the spirit would desire and the power to
perform it. His real will impels him to identify himself with the
spirit. The spirit is embodied in the state. Therefore it is his real
will to obey the commands and dictates of the state. Indeed the
dictates of the state are his real [Link] the commands of the
state give man his only opportunity to find freedom. He may obey
the state because he is afraid of the consequences of disobedience.
If he obeys because of fear he is not free he is still subject to alien
force. But if he obeys because he wishes to, because he has
consciously identified himself with the will of the state, because
he has convinced himself that what the state demands he would
also desire if he knew all the facts, then he is subject only to his
own will and he is truly free. The state, Hegel says, is that form of
reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom
provided he recognises, believes in and wills what is common to
the whole..”,
In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel formulates positive freedom in
terms of self- determination. Self- determination essentially
means two things;
.1. That the self and not force outside itself determines its actions
and
2. In determining itself it makes itself determinate,
turning what is merely potential intended into something actual
realised and organised. Self - determination is closely connected
with autonomy. Hegel thinks that the very essence of the self
consists in freedom. Like Rousseau and Kant, he maintains that
the distinctive feature of a rationalbeing is its freedom, more
specifically, its autonomy; its power to act on universal principles.

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ASSESSMENT
Karl Popper, in his major work “Open Society and its Enemies”
has launched a frontal attack on Hegel as a major enemy of open
society along with Plato and Karl Marx. He stressed the origins
of Hegel’s historicism to three ideas developed by Aristotle:
a. Linking individual or state development to a historical
evolution;
b. A theory of change that accepted concepts like an
undeveloped essence or potentiality; and
c. The reality or actuality of any object was reflected by
change. The first one led to the historicist method, which in
Hegel assumed a form of ‘ Worship of history”; the second are
linked the underdeveloped essence of destiny, and the third
helped to formulate his theory of domination and submission,
justifying the master slave relationship . As Popper has rightly
pointed out, Hegel’s principle aim was “ tofight against the open
society, and thus to serve his employer, Frederick William of
Prussia. Popper also argued that Hegel’s identification of the
rational with the actual inevitably led to a philosophy of the pure
politics of power, where might was right. The irrational forms of
“State worship” led to the renaissance of tribalism. In the entire
tradition of western political theory of over 2000 years, no other
thinker aroused as much controversy about the meaning of his
discourse as Hegel didMarx realized the formidable dominance
of Hegelian philosophy, and compared it with the philosophies of
Plato and Aristotle. He stressed that Hegel’s philosophy could be
attacked only from within and not from outside. Because of this
reason Marxian materialism was dialectically linked to Hegelian
idealism.

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Hegel’s teaching is valuable because it insists on man’s

dependence on society. He is right in showing how much man is
influenced by society. He made the idea of liberty richer by
showing that man’s conception of it largely depends upon the
institutions which have trained him and given him his education.
In this his idealism is thoroughly realistic, and has been
confirmed by recent psychology, which has proved how the early
impressions made on our minds always remain. As C.L. Wayper
has pointed out, Hegel “made politics something more than a
mere compromise of interests, and that he madelaw something
more than mere command.” His whole work is valuable reminder
that we would do well not to minimize the importance of natural
growth of a community.
It is beyond dispute that Hegel is one of the greatest political
thinkers of modern [Link] exerted considerable influence on
subsequent political theory, particularly Marxism and
Existentialism. He has been claimed as the philosophical
inspiration by both Communists and Fascists. The British idealist
T. H. Green adapted Hegelianism to reviseliberalism in the late
19th century.
THOMAS HILL GREEN (1836-1882)
T.H. Green was born in Yorkshire in 1836. He was the son of a
clergyman in the Church ofEngland. For a period of fourteen
years he was educated at home. Green entered Oxford in 1855
and was intimately associated with it until the last day of his life.
The regular studies did not appeal to him and more than to Hegel,
but he read widely and profitably in many fields. In 1860 he was
elected a fellow of Balliol and continued in this capacity right up
to 1878. In 1879 he was chosen a Whyte professor of Moral
philosophy. Green’s teaching at the University of Oxford covered
a wide range of subjects including history, ethics, logic,
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metaphysics, education and history of philosophy. He was a

frequent campaign speaker for the liberal party, served as
member in several committees and commissions. He was stricken
with blood poisoning in 1882 and died comparatively at an early
age of 46.
Green was most influential during his lifetime as a teacher and it
was not until his death his most important works were published.
His most important work ‘Lectures on the Principles of Political
Obligation’ was first delivered during his tenure of the chair of
Moral Philosophy at Oxford which was published in 1882.
Likewise his Prolegomena to Ethics’ was published after his
death. Other books written by Green were Lectures on Liberal
Legislation and Freedom of Contract’ and Lectures on the
English Revolution.
His Principles of Political Obligation was an attempt to restate
political theory in all its branches in the light of the concept of
general will working towards rational and moral ideals. His
prolegomena to ethics is fully occupied with an attack on the
earlier utilitarian doctrine of pleasure as expounded by Jeremy
Bentham. In his Lectures of the English Revolution, Green sees
typically in the civil war, something of which the justifying fruit
wasthat England was saved from catholic reaction.
Green was profoundly influenced by classical Greek thought,
German Idealism and English liberalism. The ultimate basis of
his philosophy is to be found in the writings of Plato and
Aristotle. He learnt from Plato and Aristotle that man is by nature
a social and political animal and the state was a partnership in
virtue and civic duties. That law is the expression of pure and
poison less reason; that righteousness consists for each man with
fulfillment of his appointed function in the life and section of the
community. All these high ideals of the Greeks played a
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considerable part in shaping the political reasoning of T.H.

Green.
Another and more important influence of the political ideas of
T.H. Green was that of German Philosophy. Green drew his
inspiration from the writings of Kant and Hegel . In developing
their theories both Kant and Hegel had started from Rousseau’s
doctrine of moral freedom as the distinctive quality of man and
both consider the state entirely in relation to this freedom.
Rousseau’s doctrine of general will also influenced the writings
of Green. He discusses the conception of the general will in
connection with an effective criticism of the Austinian definition
of sovereignty. Green’s philosophy was not only a reaction
against individualism, Hegelianism and Bentham’s but it was
also against certain interpretations of 19th century science.
GREEN’S VIEWS ON STATE
T.H. Green was the first man in the nineteenth century to
construct a comprehensive philosophy of state. Green does not
believe in the social contract theory of the origin of thestate. The
social contract theory has been rejected on the ground that it
makes the state voluntary association. He also rejected the force
theory of the origin of the state because itmakes the force as the
very basis of the state. According to Green, the basis of state is
neither consent or contract or force but it is will of the people who
compose it.
There is a direct relationship between his metaphysics and
politics between which his ethics serves as a necessary interlude.
It is this perfect harmony between a speculative thought and the
practical problems that has conferred on Green a unique position
in the history of English political thought. According to Green,
state is a means to an end andthat end was the full moral
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development of the individuals who compose it. His ethics

made him to believe that every man has a worth and dignity
which forbids his exploitation for any purpose whatever. The life
of the state, he insisted, has no real existence exceptas the life
of the individual composing it. Green wrote in his well known
work Principle of Political Obligation thus: To speak of any
progress or improvement or development of a nation or society
or mankind except as relative to some greater worth of persons is
to use words without meanings’ it is in this context he regarded
the function of state as being negative. According to Green, the
state cannot teach morality to man or can it make man moral since
morality consists in the disinterested performance of self imposed
duties. It is to remove obstacles which prevent men from
becoming moral.
Green regards state as natural and necessary institution. He
regards it as an ethical institution essential to the moral
development of man. Its primary purpose was to enforce rights.
The authority of the state is either absolute or 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 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 this circumstance is not merely a right but it
becomes a duty. He further recognises 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. As Prof.
Ernest Barkerhas observed, the state adjusts for each group its
system of rights internally and it adjusts each system of rights to
the state externally.

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The authority of the state is limited from without in the sense that
it has to show its respectto the existence of international law. Like
Kant, Green is a believer in international law andinternational
organizations.
WILL NOT FORCE IS THE BASIS OF THE STATE.
Green agrees that the existence of a supreme coercive power is
necessary for society andthis power is state. According to Green,
the essence of sate is not the supreme coercive power but the
exercise of such coercive power in accordance with law and for
maintenance of rights. The sovereign may be a creator of laws
but he is also bound by them. The real sustaining power behind
the state is general will. The essence of sovereignty and state is
not force but that they represent the general will of the
community. The true basis of the state, therefore, is the will of
the community. Men habitually obey only those institutions
which they feel represent general will.
NEGATIVE ROLE OF THE STATE
Green was in favor of granting only negative function to the state.
The negative role which Green assigns to the state as the remover
of obstacles is nevertheless significant. The state can do
everything which will help but it must do nothing which will
hinder the free development of moral personality. The basic
function of the state, according to Green, isto remove obstacles
to freedom. The three greatest obstacles to freedom were
ignorance, drunkenness and poverty. Classical liberalism, he
thinks, went wrong in regarding freedom simply in negative
terms. Thus Green laid the foundations for the modern social
welfare state which guarantees old age pension, unemployment
insurance, health insurance and all the other legislative schemes
designed to promote self- security.
Although Green held that will, not force, was the true basis of the
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state, he was fully conscious that there were states in which force
was predominate. For such status he had no liking as they could
not fulfill their ideal function. While Green reflected
Rousseau’sview that the general will was entirely in abeyance in
all existing states, he also rejected Hegel’s view that the laws in
all existing state were synonymous with the General [Link]
Green, unlike Hegel, tried to safeguard the individual against the
absolute power of the state.
FREEDOM
TH Green is indebted to Immanuel Kant for his Theory of
Freedom. According to Kant, a ‘person who is really free is one
who is morally free’. Kant was a believer in moral freedomand
freedom, according to him, consist in the realisation of the free
moral will. It is fromthis moral will TH Green has taken his start.
According to Prof. Ernest Barker, Green begins from, always
clings to and finally ends in the Kantinian doctrine of the free
moralwill in virtue of which man always wills him as an end. The
most valuable thing, therefore, this moral will the realisation of
which should be considered as the supreme object of a man’s
endeavor. When this moral will is realised individual which
ceases to be selfish and starts doing those things which aims at
promoting the common good. In this connection there is one thing
which the state should not do and there is another which it should
do. Firstly, it should not check its self determination. It means
that morality is something which is self imposed and it is not
something which can be imposed from outside. Secondly, it is the
duty of the state to remove all hindrances that prove to be
destructive in the realizationof moral will. Since the aim of the
state is to establish ideal conditions for the performance of moral
acts, such functions may be rightly termed as moral negative
functions. In this connection Green has rightly observed. The
state has no business of making its members better but it has those
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moral negative functions. In this connection Green has rightly

observed,’ the state has no business of making its members better,
but it has those [Link] functions which present them
from making themselves better. ‘Freedom is, therefore, ‘no
absence of restraint any more than beauty is the absence of
ugliness”.
According to Green, freedom does not mean mere absence of
restraints, but the “positive power of doing and enjoying
something worth doing and worth enjoying” . The true
personality of the individual is his will. The will is not only good
and moral; it is also free because the moral restraints on it are
self imposed. Such a free moral will seeks its goodin the context
of social good and enjoys freedom to do the right thing which
Green calls ‘positive freedom’. Positive freedom represents an
approximation between will and reason and morality and law.
T.H. Green in his major work wrote the meaning of freedom thus:
‘We do not merely mean freedom from restraint or compulsion.
We do not mean merely freedom to do as we like irrespective of
what it is that we like. We do not mean a freedom that can be
enjoyed by one man or one set of men at the cost of the loss of
freedom to others. When we speak of freedom as something to be
so highly prized, we mean a positive power or capacity of doing
or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying and that too
something that we do or enjoy in common with other.”
According to Prof. G.H. Sabine, Green’s contrast between
positive and negative freedom reproduced a line of thought which
came to him both from Rousseau and Hegel. In his concept of
freedom, Green was influenced by Aristotle’s idea of common
life. In fact he owed more to Aristotle than he did to Hegel. The
Self realization whose conditions a community ought to secure
for its members was in the main Aristotle’s realization of Greek
citizenship but with its aristocratic implications omitted.
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Green believes that freedom was possible only in the state. His
doctrine of freedom is based on some important aspects. It is a
positive freedom to do something worth doing and worth
enjoying. Further, his concept of freedom is determinate. In has
an individual and social aspect. He tries to reconcile the claims
of the individuals with the authoring of the state.
HIS THEORY OF RIGHTS
According to Green, human consciousness postulates liberty;
liberty involves rights and rights demand the state. Rights are the
outer conditions necessary for a man’s inner development of
personality. Rights are inherent in individuals, but they can be
internet in individuals only as members of a society which gives
its recognition, and in virtue of the community of ideal objects
which causes that recognition. The rights with which
heconcerned are not legal rights but ideal rights: they are the
rights which society properly organized on the basis of the good
will should ideally recognize, if it is true to its basic principles.
Such rights are termed as natural rights. They are natural rights
not in thesense that they are pre social but they are natural in the
sense that they are pre-social but they are natural in the sense that
they are pre-social but they are natural in the sense that they are
inherent and innate in the moral nature of associated mean who
are living in some form of society.
The rights of which Green speaks are relative to morality rather
than law; and recognition of which he speaks is recognition by a
common moral consciousness rather than by a legislature. The
rights are relative to morality in the sense that they are the
conditions of the attainment of the moral end. And the
recognition is given by the moral consciousness, because it
knows that they are the necessary conditions of its own
satisfaction.

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Green’s concept of rights is quite different from that of John

Locke in the sense that rightsare concessions granted by the
society or state rather than as rights belonging to individuals by
virtue of their humanity. The state does not create rights but rights
are derived from the state. People have no right to resist the state
except in the interest of the state, ie, to compel the state to make
its laws conform to the general will and general welfare. Green is
against the utilitarian view of rights as the gift of the state. Green
wrote that ‘Natural rights are rights which should be enjoyed by
a normally rational and moral being in a rationally constituted
society”.
AN ASSESSMENT
T.H. Green gave to idealism a new lease of life. He rejected the
mechanistic theory of the state on the ground that it had made the
state as an artificial institution and ignored the various factors
which had contributed to sate building. He rejected the force
theory of the origin of the state and was convinced that will not
force was the basis of state. Green is anidealist but he can also be
hailed as an individualist. He gave the individual a far more
effective protection against the undue exercise of the state’s
power than anything with which utilitarianism could provide
him. Green revitalized the principle of liberty and instead of
giving it a negative gave it a positive social meaning. To
conclude, Green, with his practical knowledge of the problems of
the state and his faith in political liberalism, tried to make
individualism moral and social and idealism civilized and safe. If
he paved the way for speculative thinking in the field of
metaphysics, he attempted to liberalize the politics and safeguard
the dignity of the self-conscious individual against the restraining
character of the state.

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MODULE IV
MARXIAN TRADITION
KARL MARX (1818-1883)

In the entire history of political thought, both on influence and in

criticism, few political thinkers can match Karl Marx. He was
truly the last of the great critics in the Western intellectual
tradition. His ideas exerted a decisive influence on all aspects of
human endeavor, and transformed the study of history and
society. He was the first thinker to bring together the various
strands of socialist thought into both a coherent world view and
an impassioned doctrine of struggle. Along with Friedrich Engels
(1820-1895) with whom he shared an unparalleled partnership,
Marx dissected 19th century capitalism as scientific socialism or
Marxism. Marxism is not only a critical appraisal of capitalism,
but also a viable or credible alternative to it. Marx brought about
a sea change in the entire methodology of the social sciences. He
was “a brilliant agitator and polemicist, a profound economist, a
great sociologist, and incomparable historian”.
Karl Marx was born in March 5, 1818 win a predominantly
Catholic city of Trier in the Rhineland in a Jewish family. Marx
attended the University of Berlin for several years where he
studied jurisprudence, philosophy, and history. Young Marx was
a brilliant student who read law and eventually took doctorate in
philosophy with dissertation on ancient atomism. . He quickly
became engaged in political activities and in 1842 joined the staff
of a democratic news paper in Cologne. In the following year the
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paper was suppressed by the Prussian Government and Marx

went to Paris, then the European headquarters of radical
movements. In Paris he met Proudhon, the leading French
Socialist thinker, Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, and Friedrich
Engels, a Rhinelander like Marx, and soon to become his lifelong
companion and close collaborator. Engels was the son of a
German textile manufacture with business interests, in Germany
and England, and he was sent by his father to Manchester in 1842.
His conditions of the Working Class in English (1844) was a
remarkably penetrating study drabness and poverty in the midst
of luxurious wealth, and Engels was the first to draw Marx’s
attention to England as a laboratory in which industrial capitalism
could be most accurately observed. In 1845 Marx was expelled
from France through the intervention of the Prussian Government
and he went to Brussels, another center of political refugees from
all over Europe. There Marx composed with the aid of Engels,
the Communist Manifesto (1848), the most influential of all his
writings, a pamphlet that has made history, inspired devotion and
hatred, and divided mankind more profoundly than any other
political document. Marx participated in the revolutions of 1848
in France and Germany, and early in 1849 he was expelled again
by the Prussian government, and forbidden to return to his native
land.
He went to London in the late summer of 1849, soon followed by
Engels, Marx had planned to stay in England for only a few
weeks, but he stayed there until his death in 1883. Marx’s
writings show little penetration of English political ideas and
ways of thought , and his lack of insight into the forces and
innovations of English politics would have been little better or
worse had he stayed in Germany all his life. By contrast, his
writings demonstrate a profound knowledge of the English
economic system based on detailed and painstaking research.

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Marx’s principal doctrines were not new; but he greatly amplified

systematised olderideas, putting them into new and effective
communications. He attempted to show that a socialist
programme must be based upon a systematic interpretation of
social evaluations and a critical analysis of the existing system of
production and exchange. His design was to show how a socialist
community is to be built upon capitalist foundations. Marx
described his socialism as scientific.
Marx inherited and integrated three legacies, German philosophy,
French political thought and English economics in his theoretical
foundation. From the German intellectual traditions, he borrowed
the Hegelian method of dialectics and applied it to the material
world. From the French revolutionary tradition he accepted the
idea that change motivatedby a messianic idea was not only
desirable, but also feasible. He applied his method with a view
to bringing about large scale change within the industrialized
capitalist economy of which England was the classical model in
the 19th century. Marx interpreted liberalism and classical
economics as articulating and defending the interests of the
middle class. He proposed to create a social philosophy that was
in tune with the aspirations of the rising proletariat. Like Hegel,
he looked upon the French Revolution as an indication of the
demise of feudalism, but while Hegel contended that the
revolution would culminate in the emergence of nation states,
Marx looked upon it as a prelude to a more fundamental and
completes revolution beyond the nation state. The French
Revolution, which brought the middle class to the forefront with
the destruction of the nobility, was essentially a political
revolution.
Marx has written so extremely on various issues of history,
economics, philosophy, society and politics. As Prof. William
Ebenstein has rightly pointed out; Marx’s analysis of the
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capitalist system has influenced the making of history even more

than the writing of history. During his student days, Marx was
attracted to Hegelian Idealism but he soon shifted his interest to
humanism and ultimately to scientific socialism. The books,
articles, pamphlets of Marx were written during three decades
from the early forties to the early seventies. Major works of
Marx included Critique of Political Economy, The Communist
Manifesto, and Das Capital. Although the first volume of his
great work Das Capital was published in 1867, the second and
third volumes were edited after his death by Engels from the vast
amount of manuscript material that he left. Marx’s political
philosophy has to be gathered from many incidental remarks and
comments in his writing and letters, as he never wrote a
systematic statement on the basic assumptions of his thought. In
the preface to his Critique of Political Economy (1859) , Marx
briefly states his general philosophy of history, based on the
thesis that “the anatomy of civil society is to be foundin political
economy”.
Marx, before the Paris commune, never described himself as a
socialist, let alone a scientific socialist. He always identified
himself as a communist. There are good reasons for this.
Socialism pre-dated Marx; it was already flourishing on French
soil when Marx arrived in Paris in 1843, as a movement which
advocated economic well being and legislative protection for the
workers, universal suffrage, civil rights of association and
freedom of opinion and cultural opportunities for the poor. Marx
believed that socialism, like Proudhonism, was by definition
utopian and doctrinaire, and that it was by the same token a false
brother to communism; he thought that for this reason its very
name should be avoided. Marxism made its bid after the socialist
movement had already become organised, conscious, active,
doctrinaire and French, which does much to explain the relative

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a slowness of the penetration of Marxism into the French radical

tradition.
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
The doctrine of dialectical materialism is one of the most
important contributions of Karl Marx to the world. Karl Marx is
indebted to both Hegel and Hobbes for his theory of dialectical
materialism. Dialectical materialism holds that the world is by its
very nature material and it develops in accordance with the laws
of movement of matter. Theevolution of the world is not one of
Idea or Universal Spirit as held by Hegelian idealists, but the
evolution of matter or material forces. Matter generates
sensations, perceptions and consciousness.
Marx borrowed is dialectic method from Hegel but modified it in
a fundamental way. WhileHegel had applied the dialectics to
explain the domain of ideas, Marx applied the dialectics to
explain the material conditions of life. In the process of doing so
he denounced the Hegelian philosophy of dialectical idealism, on
the one hand and the theory of Hobbesian scientific materialism
on the other. ‘My dialectic method, wrote Marx, is not only
different from the Hegelian but is its direct opposite. To Hegel,
the life process of human brain, i.e., process of thinking which
under the name of the idea even transformsinto an independent
subject is the demiurgos of the real world and the real world is
only the external phenomenal form of the idea. With me, on the
contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected
by the human mind and translated into forms of thought. Thus
Marx contrasted his materialistic to Hegel’s idealistic
interpretation of history. One of Marx most famous sayings is that
men’s “social existence determines their consciousness and not as
had been generally accepted before Marx that the consciousness
of men determines their existence”.

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In the dialectical materialism of Marx evolution is the

development of matter from within environment helping or
hindering but neither originating the evolutionary neither process
nor capable of preventing it from reaching its inevitable goal.
Matter is active and not passive and moves by and inner necessity
of nature. In other words, Dialectical materialism of Marx is more
interested in motion than matter, in the vital energy within matter
inevitably driving it towards, perfect human society. As Engels
has rightly pointed out, the dialectical method grasps things and
their images, ideas essentially in their sequence, their movement,
their birth and death’. This motion that dialectical materialism
entails in possible by the conflict of the opposites. According to
Marx, every state of history which falls short of perfection carries
within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Each stage reached
in the march to the classless society, the thesis calls into being its
opposite or anti-thesis and from the clash between the two, a new
synthesis and from the clash between the two, a new synthesis
emerges in which what was true in both thesis and anti- thesis and
from the clash between the two. A new synthesis emerges in which
what was true in both thesis and anti- thesis is preserved which
serves as a starting point for the whole process again until the
classless society has been achieved.
Nowhere unfortunately Marx tells us what he means by
materialism, But at least he makesit clear that his materialism is
dialectical not mechanical. In mechanical materialism evolution is
the path taken by material. 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 within, environment helping or hindering
but neither originating the evolutionary neither process nor
capable of preventing it from reaching its inevitable goal. Matter
to the dialectical materialist is not passive, and moves by an inner

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necessity of its nature. Therefore, dialectical materialism is more

interested in motion than in matter, in a vital energy within matter
inevitably drivingit towards perfect human society just as Hegel’s
demiurge drove forward to the perfect realization of spirit. As
Engels said: ‘the dialectical method grasps things and their
images, ideas, essentially in their sequence, their movement, their
birth and death”.
“Contradiction” then, as Hegel says,” is the very moving principle
of the world. But for the Marxist as for the Hegelian, it works in a
peculiar way. The change it produces takes place gradually until
a certain point is reached beyond which it becomes sudden so that
each synthesis is brought about very abruptly. As C.L. Wayper
in his Political Thought has rightly pointed out, this change as: “
Water becomes ice, Feudalism capitalism, capitalism socialism,
as a result of a sudden qualitative change’.
How closely Marx follows Hegel here is obvious. For Hegel the
universal substance is Spirit; for Marx it is Matter. Both Spirit and
Matter used to develop themselves and both do so the idea fully
conscious of itself; for Marx the inevitable goal is the classless
society, perfectly organized for production, sufficient for itself.
Neither Hegel nor Marx proves that the goal which they state to
be inevitable is indeed so. Both begin with the assumption that it
is and in both historical analysis serves to illustrate but not to prove
the initial act of faith. The only important differences between
them are that Marx applied the dialectic to the future and indulged
in much pseudo- scientific which Hegel would have been the first
to condemn, and that of course, he completely rejected Hegel’s
philosophic idealism. As Marx wrote in the Preface to the second
edition of Das Capital:

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In Hegel’s writings, dialectic stands on its head. You must turn it

right away up again if you want to discover the rational kernel that
is hidden away with in the wrappings of mystification”.
It is beyond dispute that dialectic materialism is the corner- stone
of Marxist philosophy. The materialistic interpretation of history
and the theory of class struggle based on the theory of surplus
value are its applications. Dialectic materialism helps us to
distinguish the contradictions of reality, to understand their
significance and follow their development.
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
Historical materialism is the application of the principles of
dialectical materialism tothe development of society. It is, in fact,
an economic interpretation of history, according to which all the
mass phenomena of history are determined by economic
conditions. 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.
In his ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ Engels defined
historical materialism as atheory which holds that the ultimate
cause which determines the whole course of human history is the
economic development of society. The whole course of human
history is explained in terms of changes occurring in the modes of
production and [Link] with primitive communism, the
mode of production has passed through three stages: slavery,
feudalism and capitalism and the consequent division of society
into three distinct classes (Slave- master, serf - baron and
proletariat- capitalist) and the struggle of these classes against one
another. The most profound statement of Marx which explains his
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theory of historical materialism is contained in his ‘Preface to a

contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”. In this work
Marx wrote thus.
“The economic structure of society, constituted by its relations of
production is the real foundations of society. It is the basis on
which raises a legal and political super- structure and to which
correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Along with
it the society’s relations of production themselves correspond to
a definite stage of development of its material productive forces.
Thus the mode of production of material life determines the
social, political and intellectual life process in general. ‘
The forms of production which under the society change
according to necessities inherent in them so as to produce their
successors merely by their own working, the system, for instance,
characterized by the “hand mill” crates an economic and social
situation in which the adoption of the mechanical method of
milling becomes a practical necessity. The “steam mill” in turn
creates new social functions, new groups, new out looks, which
in turn outgrow their own frame. The factories which are
necessary to solve the economic problems of the 18th century
create the conditions of 19th century problems. These self-
developing forms of production are the propeller which accounts
first for economic and then for social change, a propeller which
requires no external impetus.
Every society, Marx says, is confronted with problems which it
must face and solve- or collapse. But the possibility of collapse
is never considered, though no great knowledgeof history is
needed to convince one that civilizations can and do collapse.
Indeed in his Critique of Political Economy Marx even says:
‘Mankind always takes up only suchproblems as it can solve”.
Finally, the productive forces inherent in any society develop
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completely before a change takes place, and the change itself will
be sudden as when water turns into steam. In such sudden
revolutionary change, the entire structure of society will be
evolutionally transformed, until the new society in its turn is
overthrown and remolded.
Marx developed his own materialist theory of history by way of
a critique of idealismand the idealist interpretation of history.
This critique and the basic outline of his own materialist
conception were published in 1846 as the German Ideology, with
Engels as co-author. The basic materialist proposition of this
work is that “the first premise of all human existence, and
therefore all of history…………is that men must be in a option
to live in order to be able to make history”.? Before people can
make history they must first exist, not abstractly as philosophical
categories, but concretely as actual existing material entities. It
thus follows for Marx that any valid historical analysis must
begin with the ways in which human beings materially produce
themselves, both as individuals and as [Link] involves they
study of those productive or “ historical facts” as Marx calls them,
by which people provide for the necessities of survival: and the
social forms of reproductionby which the species as a whole is
perpetuated; it is an obvious and undisputable fact that these
historical acts of production have “ existed simultaneously since
the dawn of history and the first men, and still assert themselves
in history today.”
The Marxian philosophy of historical materialism is different not
only from Hegelian philosophy; it is also different from that of
Feuerbach. While Feuerbach saw the unity of man and nature
expressed by man’s being a part of nature, Marx sees man as
shaping nature and his being, in turn, shaped by it. In other words,
whereas Feuerbach materializes man, Marx humanizes nature.

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Marx argued that man not only satisfies his needs through his
contact with nature but also creates new needs as well as
possibilitiesof their satisfaction. Thus, according to Marx, man’s
needs are historical, not naturalistic.
Historical materialism is a variety of determinism which as
understood by Marx implies thatsocial or political change is not
really brought about by “ideas”, that is by various schemes for
social or political reform. It is the modes of production and
distribution that determine social and political forms of
organization, not vice versa. Marx maintains that the prevailing
ideology of a society reflects the class interest of those who
control the means of production and distribution within the
society, As Marx has rightly pointed out, “The mode of
production of the material means of existence conditions the
whole process of social, political and intellectual life.”
Theory of Surplus Value
The doctrine of surplus value is one of the important theoretical
contributions of Karl [Link]’s theory of surplus value is an
extension of Ricardo’s theory according to which the value of
every commodity is proportional to the quantity of labor
contained in it, provided this labor is in accordance with the
existing standard of efficiency of production. Labor power equals
the brain, muscle and nerve of the laborer. Being itself a
commodity, it must command a price proportional to the member
of labor hours that entered into its production. This will be the
number of labour hours required to house and feed the laborer
and to bring up his family. This is the value of his services, for
which he receives corresponding wages. But labor is unique
among commodities because in being used up to create more
value. The employer, therefore, can make his work more hours
than would be required to produce that stock. The value thus
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created over and above what thelabouner is paid for, Marx calls
surplus value, and he regards it as the source of all profit.
Marx explains the whole process of exploitation with the help of
his theory of surplus value. It is a distinctive feature of capitalist
means of production. Surplus value accrues because the
commodity produced by the worker is sold by the capitalist
for more thanwhat the worker receives as wages. In his Das
capital, Marx elaborated in it in a simple technical manner. He
argued that the worker produces a commodity which belongs
tothe capitalist and whose value is realized by the capitalist in the
form of price. This capital has two parts- constant capital and
variable capital. Constant capital relates to means of production
like raw material, machinery tools set used for commodity
production.
THEORY OF CLASSES: CLASS STRUGGLE
The understanding of the concept of “class” is central to the
understanding of Marxian philosophy. The sole criterion on the
basis of which the class of a person is determined is his ownership
(or control) of means of production (land, capital, technology
etc,) those who own or control the means of production constitute
the bourgeoisie (exploiters), and those who own only lookout
power constitute the proletariat (exploited.) Thus classes are
defined by Marx on the basis of twin criteria of a person’s place
in the mode of production and his consequent position in terms
of relations of production. Since class is based on ownership of
means of production and ownership of property, the
disappearance of property as the determining factor of station.
During different historical phases, these two classes were known
by different names and enjoyed different legal status and
privileges; but one thing was common that one of exploitation
and [Link] is determined by the extent to which people
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own most, same or little of the means ofproduction or by their

relationship to the means of production. Marx wrote thus:
“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-
master and Rneyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood
in constant opposition to one another.”
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels said, “The history
of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”.
They argue that class conflict is the real driving force of human
history. In the capitalist societies call differentiation is most clear,
class consciousness in more developed and class conflict is most
acute. Thus capitalism is the culminating point in the historical
evolution of classes and class conflict. The distinctive feature of
bourgeois epoch is that society as a whole is more and more
splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes
directly facing each other-bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Marx made a distinction between the objective facts of existence
of a class and its subjective awareness about its being a class-
consciousness. Division of labor is the mainsource of historical
emergence of classes and class antagonisms. Through a detailed
historical analysis Marx showed that no major antagonism
disappears unless there emerges a new antagonism.
According to Marx, there has been class struggle since the
breakup of the tribal community organization. In fact, humanity
has evolved to higher stages of development through class
conflicts. Marx believes that class – struggle in the modern
period is simpler than earlier class struggle. This is because of
greater polarization today compared with earlier times. Inspired
by Hegel’s distinctive theory of history and idealistphilosophy,
Marx postulated that human social and political development are
advanced through conflict between antithetical class forces. Marx
made a major departure from Hegel, on the nature of this conflict.
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Marx is said to have “stood Hegel on his head” by claiming that

it was conflict rooted in the material conditions of existence that
drove history and not conflict over antithetical ideas, which
Hegel asserted was the principal mover of human history.
Marx examined the dominant material conditions at various
moments of human history and stated that each set of dominant
conditions breed conflictive conditions. In thehands of human
beings, these contradictory conditions contributed to conflict; at
times, this conflict became so deep and irresolvable that it
transformed human development in profound ways. Marx
asserted that human beings drove this process by acting
collectively and particularly as members of an economic class.
As a result for Marx and Engels, history moved in distinct stages
or epochs, and within each epoch, one could find the
contradictions (or class conflicts) that would pavethe way to the
next stage. Marx identified the following stage:
1. Primitive communism
2. Slave society
3. Feudalism
4. Capitalism
5. Socialism and communism
Unlike earlier liberal democratic theory, which held that there had
been a time in human history when humans did not live in a
society, Marx argued that humans had always lived in some kind
of society. The first of these societies he called primitive
communism. This stage was characterized by a society much like
the tribal communities of the NorthAmerican plains. Since this
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was a class less society, it was communist. What made it

primitive were the very low standard of living and the great
dangers facing tribal members.
Eventually, primitive communism gave way to the next stage of
history, slave society. Although Marx and Engels are not clear
as to how primitive communism collapsed, thereis a suggestion
by Engels that it was a “natural” development; slave society was
in many ways the first epoch with class contradictions. In slave
societies was defined in terms of land ownership and slave
ownership. In such societies, there were classes: those who
owned some of the means of production; and those who owned
nothing, not even themselves (slaves). Societies such as Rome
were rocked by internal conflicts among these conflicts for
control over the means of production. Eventually these conflicts
led to the demise of slave society and the emergence of feudalism.
Feudalism, like slave society, is characterized primarily by
agricultural production controlled by large estates of land holding
nobles. In feudalism. There were also other classes, particularly
the merchants, or the early bourgeoisie. The early bourgeoisie,
unlike the land holding nobility, directed their livelihood form
the control of trade and [Link] the expansion of trade
routes east and west the European bourgeois i.e. grew in
economic status and emended political power as a results’

Base – Super Structure Relations

In order to understand the Marxist position on the origin and
nature of the state, it is essential to distinguish between the
foundation or base of society and the structure above its
foundation or the super structure. In this building- like metaphor
it is assumed that the character of the superstructure will depend
on the character of the base. The forces of production constitute
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the basis of all social relationship; they belong to the base or sub
structure. Legal and political structure, religion, morals and social
customs belong to the superstructure of society, rests upon the
prevailing economic conditions. In the preface to his Critique of
Political Economy, Karl Marx observed that “Legal relations as
well as form of state….. are rooted in the material conditions of
life”. Elaborating the relation between the real foundation and the
super- structure, Marx further observed:” In the social production
which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will, these relations of
production correspond to a definite state of development of their
material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of
production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real
foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and
to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.
The mode of production in material life determines the general
character of the social, political and spiritual process of life.”
This distinction between the economic structure or substructure
of a society and itscorresponding superstructure constitutes an
important element of Marxian social analysis. The economic
structure of society determines the superstructure of
consciousness. This is simply another way of saying that life
determines consciousness. This superstructure ofconsciousness
corresponds to legal and political institutions that are also super
structural, that is, determined by the economic base of society.
Thus the economic structure (class) of society determines its
political structure and determines as well corresponding social
and political beliefs and values.
According to Marx, this superstructure of political consciousness,
and indeed the whole cultural apparatus of ideas, beliefs and
values, constitutes misperceptions of social [Link], while it
is true that life determines consciousness, it does not determine it
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in ways that necessarily illustrate the true character of social life.

Indeed consciousness not only mistakes the nature of social
reality but also plays the role of justifying the very reality that
gives rise to these misperceptions. Marx calls these forms of
social misperception as “false consciousness” There are a variety
of ways in which consciousness may be characterized as
ideological.
Critique of capitalism
In the Das Capital, Marx pointed out that “capitalism arises only
when the owners of the means of production and subsistence meet
in the market with the free labourer selling his labour power”.
The basis of capitalism was wage labour. In the Critique of the
Gotha Programme, Marx implied that even if the state owned the
means of production, wage labour still continue. This was not
real socialism, but a new variation of capitalism, namely state
capitalism.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx paid handsome tributes to the
bourgeoisie, while highlighting its negative side. There were
three reasons that make capitalism attractive. First, it brought
remarkable economic progress by revolutionizing the means of
production and developing technology as never before. It built
and encouraged the growth ofcommerce and factories on a scale
unknown before. Secondly, capitalism undermined thenational
barriers, In its search for market and raw materials, capitalism
and the bourgeoisie crossed national boundaries and penetrated
every corner of the world drawing the most backward nations
into their fold. Thirdly, capitalism eliminated the distinctions
between town and the country and enabled the peasants to come
out of what Marx called, “the idiocy of rural life. “ In spite of the
achievements, Marx believed that capitalism had out lived its use
because of the sufferings and hardships it caused.

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Marx examined the sufferings within capitalism, which were

rooted in its origin: the evictionof peasants from their land, the
loss of their sources of income and most significantly, the
creation of the proletariat. According to Marx, capitalism
facilitates an exploitative relationship between the two major
social classes, the owners of capital (the bourgeoisie) and the
working class (the proletariat). Marx claimed that the profit
derived from the capitalist production process was merely the
difference between the value generated by the proletariat and the
wage that they earned from the bourgeoisie. Therefore,
according to Marxian conception, the proletariat generated all
value as a result of its labour but had only a portion of that value
returned it by the bourgeousing in the form of wages. Since the
proletariat created surplus value, but the bourgeoisie enjoyed the
fruits of the value, the bourgeoisie was effectively exploiting
the proletariat on a consistent and ongoingbasis.
Marx asserted that this exploitative relationship was an essential
part of the capitalist production process. Among other things,
surplus value was used by the bourgeoisie to reinvest, modernize,
and expand its productive capacity. Therefore, for Marx,
capitalism could not continue as a mode of production without
the unceasingexploitation of the proletariat, which comprises the
majority of human beings in advanced industrial societies.
Not only Marx claimed that the capital wage labour relationship
was exploitative, but he also claimed that this economic
relationship left the majority of human beings feeling estranged
from their own humanity. Because Marx believed productivity
was a naturally human act, he concluded that the capital wage
labour relationship degraded something that was a fulfilling,
meaningful, and free act into drudgery that was performed solely
for the purpose of basic survival.

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Marx predicted that capitalism, like every dominant economic

mode of production before it, possessed internal contradictions
that would eventually destroy the system. These contradictions or
recessions were moments of crisis, Marx thought, and not
necessarily temporary in nature. Furthermore Marx predicted
that, over time crisis periods would get progressively longer,
recessions would get deeper, recoveries would be shallower, and
times in between moments of crisis would get shorter.
In the meantime, Marx paints a picture of capitalism driven to
ever more desperate, and ultimately irrational and futile
attempts the stave off the inevitable. The intensity of capitalist
competition increases in precise proportion to the decline of the
system as a whole. Technologies are introduced at a perish pace
with resulting over production on commodities on the one hand
and increasing unemployment on the other. The consequences of
this” anarching of production” as Marx terms it, are periodic
depressions in which all of the productive forces that had evolved
up to that point are destroyed.
According to Marx, capitalism contains its own seeds of
destruction. He rallied the working class under the call “workers
of all countries unite”. Within the capitalism, increase in
monopolies led to growing exploitation, misery and pauperization
of the working class. Simultaneously, as the working class
increased in number, it became better organized and acquired
greater bargaining skills’. This initiated a revolutionary process,
leading to a new socialist arrangement in which common
possession replaced private ownership in themeans of production.
The calrion call given to the workers was to unite, shed their
chains and conquer the world. Ultimately, like all modes of
production before it, Marx claimed, capitalism would come to an
end and be replaced by an economic system that had fewer internal
contradictions.
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Following the collapse of capitalism and the seizure of power by

the proletariat, a transitional period would follow, Socialism.
Marx spent very little space discussing his vision for socialism and
communism, but he and Engels discussed it briefly in the
Communist Manifesto. During the transitional period, the
proletariat uses the coercive power of the state to defend the
revolution from the remnants of the bourgeoisie. In the Critique of
the Gotha Programme, Marx states that in a socialist society, the
labourer will receive, in return for a given quantity of work, the
equivalent in means of consumption, from each according to his
ability, to each according to his labour. Full communism would
have some key characteristics. It would be a classless society,
because class differences would disappear. Again communism
would ultimately be a stateless society as well, “ because the state
would ultimately “ wither away” Furthermore, communism
would be a nation less society because, Marx and Engels believed,
national identities were a product of capitalism, and such identities
would disappear, to be replaced by a universal proletarian
identity.
THEORY OF ALIENATION
Marx employed the term alienation to describe dehumanization
and he devoted much theoretical effort in these younger years to
analyze the nature of alienation in a capitalist system. His chief
work on this subject is found in Marx’s Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts (also known as the Paris Manuscripts)
which were written in 1844 but only posthumously published
much later, in 1932. In the Manuscripts Marx discusses a cluster
of forms of alienation that centre on a central sense of ‘alienation’
which is virtually definitely of the capitalist economy. By
alienation Marx means the separation of our specific human
qualities, our “species being”, as he termed it, into structures of

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domination. In a capitalist society or economy, work or labor itself

becomes a commodity, something that is bought and sold on the
open market. One result is the creation of the two principal classes
of bourgeoisie- liberal, capitalist society: there is the bourgeoisie,
which control the means of production and distribution in the
society and in particular,have the power to buy labor. And there
is the proletariat, composed of persons who have no share in the
control of the means of production and distribution in the society
and who are forced to sell their labour on the open market in
order to sustain themselves and their families.
The class divisions generated by the existence of capitalist private
property constitute the chief example and indeed the basic source
of alienation. Given this class division, workers are separated
from the capitalists and once separated, dominated. Indeed, it is
precisely in their separation that is in the alienation of their innate
human capacity for community with their fellow creatures, that
the domination of the worker becomes possible. Given this basic
form of separation – domination, the entire world of workers
becomes and alienated reality, Marx argues. They are alienated
from the fruit of their labour, which is expropriated by the
capitalist as profit. What rightfully belongs to workers as a direct
human expression of their productive life is separated from them
and then, in the form of surplus value or capital, becomes the
source of their domination and exploitation. More than this, the
whole technological infrastructure of industry takes on an
alienated character.
All of these various forms of alienation achieve their highest and
most tragic character itself- alienation, according to Marx. Having
alienated the power to act upon the world in a directly human way,
the workers finally alienated the power even to comprehend that
world. Given Marx’s proposition that life determines

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consciousness, it must follow that where life has become

alienated, so must consciousness. It is clear from this analysis
that alienated consciousness is nothing other than false
consciousness, or ideology. The natural human ability to
comprehend reality is quite literally separated from the workers by
the conditions of their lives and replaced by false perception of
reality. These perception, by blinding the workers to their real
conditions and therefore preventing them from changing those
conditioned, constitute structures of mental domination.
Given such extreme misery and alienation, particularly the
alienation of consciousness itself, one may well wonder how
Marx could assert the inevitable demise of capitalism.
Marx proceeds to claim that a consequence of the alienation of the
activity of the labour is that the worker looks elsewhere to find a
true expression of him or herself: “man (the worker) only feels
himself freely active in his animal functions of eating, drinking,
and procreating at most also in his dwelling and dress”. This
displacement of one’s true human self into one’s “animal “
(biological) functions and into artificial and fairly trivial concerns
interlocks with the sort of consumerism characteristic of capitalist
economies.
Finally, there results from the objectification of laobur the
alienation of man from man:each man measures his relationship
to other men by the relationship in which he finds himself placed
as a worker. The main feature of this relationship is competition.
Worker must compete with one another in the sale of their labour.
One might conclude that the forms of alienation described by
Marx only effect members of proletariat in a situation of
unregulated competition.

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CRITICAL APPRISAL OF MARXISM

Marxism is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophies
of modern times. Marx’s ideas not only inspired a variety of
schools of thought, but his ideas have inspired a vigorous debate
over a whole range of issues- such as the balance of the state and
the market in production and the proper role of government in
society. His ideas of Base- super structure relations alienation,
Dialectical Materialism, Class struggle, surplus value, Proletarian
Revolution, vision of communism etc have been extensively
discussed, debated, modified and sometimes even rejected by his
followers and adversaries. His writings are so voluminous and his
theories are so wide –ranging that Marx has come to mean
different things to different people.
Marxism has been subjected to severe criticisms from different
corners. Marx’s vision ofa new social order in which there will
be neither alienation nor exploitation, no classes, no class
antagonism, no authority, no sate is highly imaginative and
fascinating and becauseof this attraction, Prof. Sabine called “
Marxism a utopia but a generous and humane one”Marx did not
foresee the rise of fascism, totalitarianism and the welfare state.
His analysis of capitalism was at best, applicable to early 19th
century capitalism, though his criticism of capitalism as being
wasteful, unequal and exploitative was true. However, his
alternative of genuine democracy and full communism seemed
more difficult to realize in practice, for they did not accommodate
a world which was becoming increasingly differentiated, stratified
and functionally specialized.
Karl Popper in his “Open Society and its Enemies have criticized
Marxism along with Platoand Hegel. Popper was suspicious of
Marx’s scientific predictions, for scientific theory was one that
would not try to explain everything. Along with Plato and Hegel,
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Marx was seen as an enemy of the open society; Marx was seen
as an enemy of the open society. Marxism claimed to have studied
the laws of history, on the basis of which it advocated total,
sweeping and radical changes. Not only was it impossible to have
first- hand knowledge based on some set of laws that governed
society and human individuals but Popper also rejected Marx’s
social engineering as dangerous , for it treated individuals as
subservient to the interests of the whole. Popper rejected the
historicism, holism and utopian social engineering of Marxism. In
contrast, he advocated piecemeal social engineering, where
change would be gradual and modest, allowing rectification of
lapses and errors, for it was not possible to conceive of everything.
Popper claimed that Marx’s scientific socialism was wrong not
only about society, but also about science. Popper wrote thus:
“Marx misled cores of intelligent people by saying that historic
method is the scientific way of approaching social problems. “
Further, Marx made the economy or economic factors all
important, ignoring factors like nationality, religion, friendship
etc.” As Karl Popper has rightly mentioned, Marx brought into the
social science and historical science the very important idea that
economic conditions are of great importance in the life of
society…… There was nothing like serious economic history
before Marx”. Like Popper, Berlin attacked the historicism of
Marx which he developed in his essay” HistoricalInevitability”.
Marx is wrong in his static conception of the classes. As Prof. C.L.
Wayper has observed, classes are not fixed and rigidly maintained
blocks. There is constant movement from class to class; so much
so that perhaps the most salient features of social classes is the
incessant rise and fall of individual families from one to another.
Marx believed that he had “scientifically proved” that the
development of capitalism would leave facing each other in
irreconcilable opposition two and only two classes. He did not
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allow for the emergence of a new class of managers and skilled

technical advisers. The forecast basedon his economic analysis of
surplus value have similarly proved wide of the mark. He declared
that working men must become ever poorer until the day of final
reckoning. But real wages today are higher than they were a
century ago, not lower as they should now be according to Marx.
Further, Marx did not foresee the possibilities of the Trade union
movement and of the social service state.
Marx was wrong in ignoring the psychological aspects of politics.
Though his is an explanation of the state in terms of force,
nowhere he gives us any adequate treatment of the problem of
power. Nowhere in his work is there the realisation of that men
desire power for the satisfaction of their pride and self respect and
that for some men power must be regarded as an end in itself. One
must go further and say that nowhere he shows any real
appreciation of the defects in human nature.
The collapse of communism proved the serious shortcomings of
Marxism, both in theory and practice. It at best remained a critique
rather than providing a serious alternative to liberal democracy.
However its critique of exploitation and alienation, and the hope
of creating a truly emancipated society that would allow the full
flowering of human creativity,would be a starting point of any
utopian project. In spite of Marx’s utopia being truly generous, it
displayed a potential for being tyrannical, despotic and arbitrary.
Concentration of political and economic power and absence of
checks on absolute power were themselves inimical to true human
liberation and freedom.. As Prof. Sabine has observed, Marx
“offered no good reason to believe that the power politics of
radicalism would prove to be less authoritarian in practice than the
power politics of conservative nationalism”.

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Whatever may be the limitations and shortcomings of Marxian

principles, it is beyond dispute that Marx would be remembered
as a critic of early 19th century capitalism and politics. The “true
and false together in him constitute one of the most tremendously
compelling forces that modern history has seen”. Although the
study of Marxism after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
has gone out of vogue in many intellectual circles, its relevance
now has become increasingly apparent. The concentration of
wealth in fewer and fewer hands via corporate mergers and
hostile take over’s, the disappearance ofpetite bourgeorisie, and
the apparent collusion between big capital and the state - all were
suggested by Marx. Perhaps a rediscovery of Marxism among
students of social science would help them better understand the
direction of the world in the 21st century.
[Link] (1870-1924)
The founder of the modern communist party was the Russian
Marxist V. I Lenin, and not Karl Marx. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was
not only a revolutionary leader of great sagacity and practical
ability, but was also a writer and thinker of exceptional
penetration and [Link] made Marxism a practical creed in
Russia. He was a rare combination of the theorist and a man of
action. He had keen intellect and displayed considerable interest
in the theoretical aspects of Marxian socialism, but his theoretical
interests were directed the endgoal of bringing about a successful
socialist revolution in Russia. He was especially concerned with
the period of transition from capitalism to socialism and
contributed much in the theory on this subject Marx and Engels
had neglected, or discussed ambiguously. Lenin’s life – long
passion was to serve the people. He showed an unceasing care for
the people’s welfare, a passionate devotion to the cause of the
party and working class and a supreme conviction of the justice

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of this cause. Besides being one of the dogmatic disciples of Marx,

Lenin is also regarded as one of the greatest political geniuses of
modern history.
Lenin was born on April 10, 1870 in the town of Simbrisk. He
came from a middle- class family; both his father and mother have
been teachers with progressive ideas. Their five surviving children
became revolutionaries, and Lenin’s eldest brother, Alexander
was hanged at the early age of 19 for complicity in an abortive plot
against Czar Alexander III. Lenin had a typical middle- class
education, first attending the secondary school atSimbirsk and
then the law school of the University of Kazan. Because of his
early political activities and the circumstances of his brother’s
execution, Lenin found himself under constant police supervision.
However, the Czarist police was not nearly so efficient as thelater
police systems of either of Lenin or Stalin, and Lenin managed to
maintain political contacts and join illegal groups.
In December, 1895, Lenin was arrested in Petersburg and spent
14 months in prison. From his prison cell he guided a
revolutionary organization he had formed, and he also found the
time and means to write letter and pamphlets. He was able to
obtain the books and magazines he needed, and he began in prison
to work on the Development of Capitalism in Russia. Although in
January, 1897, he was sentenced to three years exile in Siberia, he
continued his political and philosophical studies there and
maintained contacts with illegal revolutionary groups. In 1898
Lenin married a fellow revolutionary and their home became the
head quarters for the political exiles.
After his release from Siberia in 1900, Lenin went aboard; he spent
the next seventeen years with but few interruptions in various
European countries, organizing from abroad the illegal
revolutionary movement in Russia that was to culminate in the
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seizure of power in 1917, and it was liberal government that

permitted him to return. In seven months he managed to overthrow
the Kerensky government, only free government Russia has
knownin her entire history. Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik
party (the forerunner of what became the Communist Party of the
former Soviet Union), which came to power in October 1917 at
the culmination of the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks were
initially only one faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party.
Over time, they split entirely form the parent body. The split was
based upon a dispute over how a Marxist revolutionary party
ought to be structured.
The important works of Lenin include What Is to Be Done (1902),
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), State and
Revolution ( 1917). According to Joseph Stalin, Leninism is
Marxism of the era of imperialism and of the proletarian
revolution. He brought Marxism up to date in the latest stage of
capitalism and by making use of his theory of imperialism.
THEORY OF IMPERIALISM
Lenin’s views on imperialism are contained in his well known
work. Imperialism: the highest stage of Capitalism. He completed
this work in the summer of 1916 which is regarded by the Marxists
as an outstanding contribution to the treasure store of creative
Marxism, in this book Lenin made a comprehensive and detailed
investigation of imperialism. He traces the development of world
capitalism over the course of half a century after the publication
of Marx’s Das Capital. The outbreak of the first world turned
Lenin’s attention more definitely towards international affairs and
led to the formulation of his theory of imperialist war and of
communism in the imperialist state of capitalism. Basing
himself of the laws of the emergence, development and decline of
capitalism, Lenin was the first to give a profound and scientific
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analysis of the economic and political substance of imperialism.

Lenin maintained that the lower middle classes and the skilled
workmen of advanced industrial countries were saved from the
increasing misery which Marx had foretold for them only because
of the colonial territories which their countries dominated.
Their relationship to colonial peoples was the relationship
between capitalists and proletariat. This stage of imperialism,
Lenin asserted, was in no sense a contradiction of Marx’s
teaching but a fulfillment of it, even though Marx himself had not
sufficiently foreseen it. As capitalism develops, Lenin says, unit
of industrial production grow bigger and combine in trusts and
cartals to produce monopoly –finance capitalism is aggressively
expansionist. Its characteristic expert is, capital, and its
consequences are threefold: it results in the exploitation of
colonial peoples, whom it subjects to the capitalist law of
increasing misery and whose liberty it destroys. It produces war
between the nations, since it substitutes international competition
for competitions inside the nation,and in the clash of combines
and powers seeking markets and territory war becomes inevitable.
And ultimately it brings about the end of capitalism and the
emergence of the new order, since with the arming and military
training of the worker’s war which begin as national wars will end
as class wars.
According to Lenin, imperialism is moribund capitalism,
containing a number of contradictions which ultimately destroys
capitalism itself .There is firstly the contradiction or antagonism
between capital and labor. Capital exploits labour and brings the
exploited workers to revolution. Secondly, there is contradiction
between capital and labour. Capital exploits labour and brings the
exploited workers to revolution. Secondly, there is contradiction
between various imperialist powers and industrial combines for

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new territories, new markets and sources of raw materials. Finally,

there is also the contradiction between the colonial powers and the
dependent colonial people which arouse revolutionary outlook
and spirit among the latter as happened in India and other
countries. Imperialism, thus, creates conditions favorable to the
destruction of capitalism by promoting class and international
conflicts and revolutionary outlook among the proletariat. Lenin’s
scientific analysis of the contradictions of capitalism as its last
stage brought him round to the conclusion that imperialism is the
eve of the socialist revolution. The revolution of transition to
socialism has now become a vital necessity.
On the basis of his own study of imperialism, Lenin further
developed the Marxist theory of socialist revolution, its contents,
its motive forces and conditions and forms of development. He
proved that the war had accelerated the growth of the requisites
for revolution and that as a whole world capitalist system had
matured for the transition to socialism. Lenin’s capitalist socialism
thus supplied him an additional justification for the revolutionary
tactics which he had always advocated.
DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM
Lenin’s Views on the role of the communist party, its organization
based on the principle ofdemocratic centralism etc are contained
in his major book entitled” What is To Be Done? Published in
1902. Lenin described the communist party as the revolutionary
vanguard of the proletariat, an organization consisting chiefly of
persons engaged in revolutionary activities as a profession”.
According to him, a political party that intends to carry out a
revolution successfully must be thoroughly disciplined; alert and
ably led like an army. It was an elite organization, consisting of
outstanding individuals who combined the thorough
understanding of the critical issues and the general aspects of the
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situation confronting with them, with a relentless will and capacity

for deceive action. These individuals formed “the core of
revolutionary party, combining theory and practice, independence
of mind with the strict discipline, freedom of discussion with a
firm adherence to party line.”
Lenin’s most important theoretical contribution to the theory of
Marxism is the doctrine of professional revolutionary. Lenin drew
a distinction between and organization of workers and
organization of revolutionaries. The former must be essentially
trade union in character, as wide as possible, and as public as
political condition will allow. By contrast, the organization of
revolutionaries must consist exclusively of professional
revolutionaries, must be small, and “as secret as possible.”
Whereas Marx assumed that the working classwould inevitably
develop its class consciousness in the daily struggle for its
economic existence, Lenin had much less confidence in the ability
of the workers to develop politically by their own effort and
experience:” “Class political consciousness can bebrought to the
workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic
struggle, outside of the spheres of relations between workers and
employers”. Lenin did not care whether the professional
revolutionaries destined to lead the proletariat were of working-
class origin or not, as long as the professional revolutionary did
his job well. But because of the difficulties of the work to be done,
Lenin insisted that the professional revolutionary must be “no less
professionally trained than the police”, and, like the police, the
organization of professional revolutionaries must be highly
centralized and able to supervise and control the open
organizations of workers that are legally permitted.
Lenin’s views of the extreme concentration of power in the
hands of a few leaders of professional revolutionaries led Trotsky

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in 1904 to assert that Lenin’s doctrine of the dictatorship of the

proletariat really meant the dictatorship over the proletariat, and
the struggle of centralism versus democracy became one of major
issues of communist party organisation before and after 1917.
Trotsky also predicted in 1904 that if Lenin evertook power, ‘the
leonine head of Marx would be that first to fall under the
guillotine’
Communist party is organised on the principle of democratic
centralism. Democratic centralism means on the one hand, that the
party is democratically organised from bottom to top. Every office
bearer is elected democratically. Each organ of the party, whether
the lowest cell or the highest central executive conducts its
deliberations and arrives at its decision, on a democratic basis.
Each party member is given freedom of speech and expression in
party forums. Normally decisions are taken on the basis of
majority. So the communist party is democratically organised.
However, the party is centralized and in the normal course of
functioning the decisions of the higher organs are binding on the
lower bodies. There were a number of reasons behind Lenin’s
advocacy of this kind of party structure, but they can all be reduced
to the fact that he believed a social democratic structure to be
incompatible with the social and political conditions of
prerevolutionary Russia. To begin with the Tsarist autocracy
prevented the existence of any kind of open ant regime activity.
But the deeper problem was the fact that Russia wasessentially an
agrarian, peasant- based economy Modern industrial capitalism
had yet to emerge in anything but outline form, and the Russian
working class was, as a consequence, extremely small. Under
these under developed conditions, Lenin believed that only a
small and tightly organised group of professional revolutionaries
possessing a genuine socialist consciousness would be capable
of leading the workers.
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In turn, Lenin argued, the workers would have to pull along large
elements of thepeasantry in any revolutionary transformation of
Russian society.
In Lenin’s political philosophy, communist party becomes a staff
organization in thestruggle for the proletarian class of power.
He has recommended two types of unions:
1. Ideal union through the principles of Marxism and
2. Material union which was to be achieved through rigid
organisation and discipline. According to him, the communist
party is a part of the organisation and discipline. According to him
the communist party is a part of the working class: its most
progressive, most class conscious and therefore most
revolutionary part. The communist party is created by means of
selection of the best, most class conscious, most self- sacrificing
andforesighted worker.
Theory of State and Revolution
Lenin’s most influential political work is state and Revolution
(1918), written in the late summer of 1917. In the literature of
Marxism and communism, State and Revolution isof immense
importance. According to Lenin, the state is the product and the
manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.
Though these antagonisms are irreconcilable, the state, being a
capitalist organization, tries, by persuasion or compulsion to
reconcile the workers to it, thereby perpetuating their oppression
andexploitation. In his State and Revolution, Lenin wrote thus:
History shows that the state asa special apparatus for coercing
people arose only wherever and whenever there appeared a
division of society into classes that is a division into groups of
people some of whom are permanently in a position to

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appropriate the labour of others, where some people exploit

others”.
The domination of the majority by the minority leaves little scope
for justice or equality in capitalist state. All bourgeoisie
democracies were, to him, dictatorships of the capitalists over the
exploited workers. The state represents force and this force must
be opposedby force and overpowered by the workers. Where
Marx and Engels neglected the factors of political power, Lenin
was keenly interested in the autonomy of the state. Lenin fully
accepts the Marxian thesis that the transitional state between
capitalism and communism.” Can be only the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat”. He denies that capitalism and
democracy always remains ”a democracy for the minority, only
for the possessing classes, only for the rich” In the words of the
Communist Manifesto, the executive of the modern State is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie”.
Behind the formalities of capitalist democracy, Lenin sees, in
effect, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. He also denies that the
transition from capitalism to communism can be accomplished
simply, smoothly, and directly, “as the liberal professors and
petty- bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No,
development- toward communism- proceeds through the
dictatorship of the proletariat; it cannot be otherwise, for the
resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by
anyone else or in any otherway. As Prof. William Ebenstein has
remarked, whereas Marx had left open the possibility for
peaceful social change form capitalism to socialism in politically
advanced countries like England, the United State, and the
Netherlands, Lenin claims that, by 1917, “this exception made
by Marx is no longer valid”, because England and United States

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had developed bureaucratic institutions to which every thing is

subordinated and which trample everything under foot. Far from
admitting that both England and the united states had moved
steadily in the direction of social reform since Marx, Lenin
maintains that both countries had become more repressive,
authoritarian, and plutocratic in the mean time.
In the transitional stage between capitalism and communism the
state will continue to exist, Lenin holds, because machinery for the
suppression of the capitalist exploiters will still be required in the
dictatorship of the proletariat. But Lenin points out that the state
is already beginning to “ wither away” because the task of the
majority (the defeated capitalist ) is different, in quantitative and
qualitative terms, from the previous capitalist state, in which a
minority( of capitalists) suppressed the majority( of the
exploited). Finally, once communism is fully established, the state
becomes “absolutely unnecessary, for there is no one to be
suppressed- “no one” in the sense of a class, in the sense of a
systematic struggle against a definite section of the population.
As soon as communism is established, the state becomes
unnecessary, holds Lenin. There will be true freedom for all, and
“when freedom exists, there will be no state.”Lenin cautiously
adds that he leaves the question of length of time, or “the withering
away quite open”. Without indicating the time it will take to
transform the lower phase of communist society ( the dictatorship
of the proletariat) into the higher phase ( thewithering away of
the state), Lenin describes the conditions of such transformation:
“ the state will be able to wither away completely when society
can apply the rule: from each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs; that is when people have become so
accustomed to observing the fundamental rule of social life and
when their labour is soproductive that they will voluntarily work

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according to their ability”. Lenin, like Marx, denies that the vision
of a society without a machinery of force and power (the State) is
utopian.
In his Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, submitted to the first Congress of
the Communist International (March 4, 1919)Lenin reiterates his
belief that there is no democracy in general or dictatorship in
general and that all bourgeois democracies are, in fact,
dictatorships of the capitalists over the exploited masses of the
people. He vehemently attacks democratic socialists who believe
that there is a middle course between capitalist dictatorship and
proletarian [Link] his Theses on the Fundamental Tasks
of the Second Congress of the Communist International (July 4,
1920), Lenin elaborates his belief in the right of the minority to
lead, and rule , the majority, even after the dictatorship of the
proletariat is established.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat
According to Marx and Engels, the dictatorship of the proletariat
meant the establishment of a truly democratic state with the
worker’s majority ruling over the bourgeois minority. To Lenin,
the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the dictatorship over the
proletariat of the communist party which was the only
revolutionary party capable of crushing capitalism, establishing
socialism and maintaining it. Lenin believed that the dictatorship
of the communist party over the proletariat was true democracy
because it was a dictatorship in the interest of the workers. Lenin
believes that dictatorship of the proletariat was the instrument of
the proletarian revolution, its organ and its mainstay. The object
of this dictatorship is to overthrow capitalism, crush the
resistance of the overthrown capitalists, consolidate the
proletarian revolution and complete it to the goal of socialism.
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Revolution can overthrow the capitalists but cannot consolidate

its gains and achieve socialism without the dictatorship of the
proletariat. As Lenin has rightly pointed out, dictatorship of the
proletariat is a persistent struggle- bloody and bloodless, violent
and peaceful, military and economic, educational and
administrative - against the forces and traditions of the old
society i.e., the capitalist society’.
The dictatorship of the proletariat of Lenin’s conception
presents certain [Link] is a rule of unrestrained law and based
on the superior force of the proletariat. It is not complete
democracy of all. It is a democracy for the proletariat and a
dictatorship against the capitalist elements. It is a special form of
class alliance between the proletarian and the non- proletarian but
anti- capitalist elements.
Assessment
Lenin was a follower of Marx and was highly critical of
revisionism of his day. He was, however, compelled by the
circumstances to interpret Marxism in such a way as to merit the
characterisation of his own breed of Marxism as “inverted
Marxism” . Lenin’s assertion that revolution could be and should
be precipitated by professional revolutionaries was against the
Marxian dialectic process. His emphasis on the potency of
revolutionary ideas and ideology went counter to Marx with
whom ideas merely reflected but did not create material
conditions. Lenin differed from Marx in his conception of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. To Lenin, this meant the
dictatorship of the communist party over the proletariat; to Marx
it had meant role by a proletarian majority and not by a
communist party minority.

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Lenin was a great leader of practical wisdom. As a great

organiser, agitator and revolutionary, Lenin occupies a
prominent place in the theory and practice of [Link]
made Marxism up to date in the light of certain needs and
developments which Marx had not anticipated Lenin was the
leader of the Bolshevik party( The forerunner of what became the
communist party of the former Soviet Union), which came to
power in October 1917 at the culmination of the Russian
Revolution. He saw the communist party as the main source of
revolutionary consciousness destined to save the proletariat
fromthe trade union mindset. It is beyond dispute that Lenin’s
formulas remained the formulas of Marx; the meaning of
Leninism departed widely from the meaning of Marxism.
Leninismis the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution and
dictatorship of the proletariat.
MAO ZE DONG (1893-1976)
Maoism like Marxism and Leninism was one of the most debated
subjects of the 20th century and is most likely to remain so in the
21st century in the face of the expanding process of capitalist
globalization. This is because the formulations advanced by Mao
and the later Maoists, challenge some of the dominant
assumptions relating to the basic issues of struggle for liberation
, equality, justice and self- development in course of social
transformation in all societies. Born at Shaoshan in Hunan
province of China in 1893 Mao is the second Marxist
revolutionary (Lenin being the first) who brought about a
successful revolution in a backward country like China. Mao,
like Lenin, was both a theoretician and a practitioner. Mao
Zedong thought initiated several innovative formulations on
revolution and social transformation which continue to
reverberate leading to intense political debates on the nature of
democracy, socialism and human future in the 21st century
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throughout the world.

Mao was the son of a rich peasant who was intellectually restless
by nature and was the profoundly dissatisfied with Chinese
society. After graduating from college in 1918 in Chiangsha, he
became a librarian at Peking university where he founded a
Marxiststudent circle. However, he left the job and returned to
Changsha and became active in the communist party of China.
He travelled to various parts of China which gave him a
firsthand impression about the exploitative conditions under
which the Chinese peasantry was reeling at that time. By 1927
the relations between Kuo mintang (KMT) and the Communist
Party of China (CPC) became so bitter that the KMT and the
CPC, Mao was asked to organize a rebellion of Hunan peasants.
During the course of this rebellion, Mao wrote his first major
work - Analysis of Chinese Society. Here, he identified the
various strata of Chinese peasantry - small marginal middle and
the big peasant and the revolutionary potential of each of them.
He highlighted the contradiction between the peasantry and
feudal lords. He attempted the Harvest Uprising of peasants in
1928, but the uprising was crushed and Mao had fled along with
his supporters to nearby mountains. From these mountains, Mao
started guerrilla warfare tactics. By these tactics,CPC was able to
capture various parts of South East China. Mao set up a number
of peasant soviets in the captured areas. However, the KMT tried
to crush these guerrilla attacks and encircled the areas where
peasant soviets had been set up. Finally, the KMT armies drove
out of the revolutionaries who took shelter in the north- west hills
of China. This escape became famous as Mao’s stay in the north-
west was the most fruitful period for the CPC. It was here that
Mao began an extensive study of Marxist philosophy. His well
known pieces of work namely “on Practice” and ‘On
contradiction” were written during this period.

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In the 1940’s, he gave a blue- print of the future Chinese’s

government titled NewDemocracy.” He also advocated a strategy
of mass mobilization of peasants which is known as Mao’s Mass
– Line Populism. Basis of Mao’s power was the success of party
strategies and policies after the onset of the Sino- Japanese war
in 1937 the conclusive success of these strategies and policies
from 1945 to 1949 further bolstered his ultimate authority. Mao’s
authority was further enhanced by his major initiatives in the
1949-57 periods. In the 1950s, Mao gave his famous call of “Let
Hundred Flowers Bloom” which allowed different viewpoints in
the CPC to be expressed freely and openly.
ON CONTRADICTION
Maoism does not figure prominently either in the Western
discourses on Marxism or the discourses on development and
transformation in the west. Paradoxically, communist
movements and discourses on social transformation in the Asian,
African and Latin American countries derive a lot of insights and
inspirations from the Maoist tradition. This is because they find
the ideological creativity in Mao Zedong’s theory and political
practiceas attractive. In the two philosophical essays of Mao, On
practice and On contradiction, both written in 1937, the essential
point made by Mao is that theory has to be derived frompractice.
The doctrine “Contradiction” occupies an important aspect in the
political philosophy of Mao. In an essay entitled “On
contradiction” Mao wrote thus: the law of contradiction in things,
that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of
materialist dialectics. This chooses the traditional Marxist notion
of dialectics. In several places Mao stressed that the unity of
opposites is the essence of dialectics. According to Mao, changes
in nature as well as society take place primarily as a result of the
development of internal contradictions. As Mao said: External
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causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the
basis of change.’ According to this law, contradictions in the
society can beresolved mainly within the society. A revolutionary
movement in a country can succeed only if it is backed by the
masses of that country and if it is self- reliant. The principle of
self- reliance in China’s revolutionary people’s war was
manifestation of this law. In recent decades China’s essentially
self reliant strategy of economic development and particularly
policies related to the Great Leap Forward which seek to
generate resources within each sector, reflect the some approach.
Mao’s discussion on contradiction is profusely loaded quotations
from Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Mao accepts Engel’s assertion
that” motion itself is a contradiction.” Engels said that it was
even truerof the highest forms of motion of matter Mao repeats
Lenin’s examples of unity of opposites given in Lenin’s
philosophical Note Books.
PRINCIPAL CONTRADICTION.
In the long process of development of things there are specific
stages and in each stage some contradictions are more powerful
than the others. According to Mao, “one of them isnecessarily the
principal contradiction whose existence and development
determines or influences the existence and development
determines or influences the existence and development of other
contradictions. “ Mao also insists that there is only one principal
contradiction at every stage of the development of the process
and when another stage emerges a new principal contradiction
also emerges. He gives three major instances to explain this. In a
capitalist society, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie form the
principal contradiction society, the proletariat and bourgeoisie
form the principal contradiction andthe other contradictions like
the one between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie are

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non- principal . During a war of imperialist aggression the

principal contradiction is between imperialism and the country
which is attacked. In this situation all the classes except the
traitors temporarily unite against the national enemy for the
contradictions among them are non- principal. But there are
instances where imperialism operates through the ruling classes
of a country and the principal contradiction comes to be the one
between the masses on the one hand and the alliance of
imperialists and the domestic ruling class on the other.
ANTAGONISTIC AND NON ANTAGONISTIC
CONTRADICTIONS.
At different stages of development of a thing, its contending
forces have different degrees of intensity in their confrontation.
In the 1937 essay “On contradiction” Mao Zedong discussed this
question and pointed out that antagonism was a particular
manifestation of the struggle of opposites” It is true that
contradictions between the oppressor and the oppressed classes
are bound to contain an element of antagonism. But some of these
contradictions remain latent and only at definite stages do they
manifest antagonism. As Mao put it, “some contradictions which
were originally non antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones,
while others which were originally antagonistic develop into non-
antagonistic ones”.
On the basis of this perspective, Mao formulated his theory of
new democracy and under itthe strategy of a four- class united
front with the national bourgeoisie, in it. The contradiction
between the proletarian and the national bourgeoisie which had
an element of antagonism in it was basically understood as non
– antagonistic at that time so that there could be a united front on
the other were antagonistic. This approach was further clarified
in Mao’s essay “On the people’s Democratic Dictatorship”
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published in June 1949. Methods of dictatorship were to be

applied to the handling of antagonistic contradictions where as
democratic methods of persuasion and education were to beused
in case of non- antagonistic contradictions.
In his 1957 speech, ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
among the People Mao analyzed deeper into these concepts and
explained their application to the contemporary problems facing
China. He remarked that to deny the existence of contradictions
is to deny dialectics. Society at all times develops through
contradictions. Party leaders should recognize contradictions
which exist between government and society, between the
leaders and the led. These contradictions should be correctly
handled. “ By antagonistic contradictions he meant the
contradictions between ourselves and the enemy while the
contradictions among the people varies in content in different
countries and in different periods of history. Mao said that those
who supported the building of socialism in China at that point
were among the ‘people’ and those who opposed it were ‘the
enemies of the people.’
Mao’s 1957 speech criticized two erroneous lines of thinking.
First was the rightist view point within and outside the
Communist Party of China (CPC) which thought that class
contradictions had disappeared with the socialist transformation
which had taken place in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
As against this, Mao emphasized the existence of numerous non
antagonistic contradictions and also some continuing basis of
antagonistic contradictions in the socialist society. The second
view point which Mao criticized exaggerated the threat of counter
revolution in China and showed excessive alarm at the Hungarian
uprising in 1956. He pointed out that they underrated the
achievements of long years of popular revolutionary struggle and

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the success in the suppression of counterrevolutionaries in China.

Between these two extremes Mao asked for clearly
distinguishing between the antagonistic and non antagonistic
contradictions and correctlyhandling them.
Among the examples of non- antagonistic contradictions that
Mao gives are: The contradictions between the working class and
the peasantry, between the workers and peasants on the one hand
and the intellectuals on the other, and so on. Correct handling of
contradictions among the people’s demands the practice of
democracy under centralized guidance and not dictatorship. The
1942 formula of ‘unity, criticism, unity’ was applicable in
resolving these contradictions.
An important aspect of this notion is the transformation of a non
– antagonistic contradiction into an antagonist one and vice versa.
The Chinese national bourgeoisie moved from its original
antagonistic position vis-à-vis China’s working classes and
came to be included in the united front: it was generally co-
operative with the ‘ people’s democratic and then the socialist
transformation of China’s economy. It continued to have a dual
character, containing both antagonism and non- antagonism. The
role of the party policy is extremely significant in guiding the
development of contradictions form one stage to another. If
contradictions among the people are not handled properly,
antagonism may arise. This many appear in the form of sharp
difference between workers and peasants in terms of wages,
living standards and cultural level, between the government
and the people in the forms of bureaucratic and elitism, and
between the party and the masses also in the same form.

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Role of Peasantry in Revolution

Mao tried to apply Marxism- Leninism in China with reasonable
modifications and changes to keep pace with changes in the
Chinese society and polity. Thus he modified Marxism Leninism
by relying heavily on the peasantry’s revolutionary potential. It
should be noted that Marx has treated the peasantry with some
degree of contempt. For the most part, peasantry for him was
conservative and reactionary; it was no more than a bag of
potatoes unable to make a revolution. Even Lenin had relied
mainly on the proletariat in the urban centers of Russia for mass
insurrections and had not placed much faith in the peasantry’s
revolutionary potential. Mao’s fundamental contribution,
therefore, was to bring about a successful revolution in China
mainly with the help of the peasantry’s revolutionary potential.
Mao’s fundamental contribution therefore was to bring about a
successful revolution in China mainly with the help of the
peasantry. More than anything else, his revolutionary model
became inspiration for several Afro-Asian peasant societies.
Further, Mao in his Cultural Revolution phase drew some lessons
from the course of post revolutionary reconstruction in the Soviet
Union and warned against the emergence of new bourgeoisie
class who were beneficiaries of the transitional period.
New Democracy
Mao raised that the peasantry in China was not strong enough to
win the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and
feudalism. Therefore, it was necessary to seek the help of the
other classes of Chinese society. It was in this context that Mao
emphasized the concept of a united front It was seen as an alliance
between different partners who had some common interest like
opposition to imperialism. Its object would be to pursue the
resolution of the principal contradiction. Such a united front
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strategy was employed by Mao by establishing the alliance of

Chinese peasantry with the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and
even the national bourgeoisie. It also intended the non- party
elements among the Chinese intellectuals. The united front is a
broad alliance of the Chinese people against Japanese
imperialism and western powers.
Mao published On New Democracy in January 1940 in the midst
of Sino- Japanese [Link] this essay he defined the nature of the
current stage of the Chinese revolution most explicitly and
discussed the crucial questions arising out of it. It is this essay and
the writings on strategy and philosophy by Mao during the three
preceding years which acquired a distinct character for the CPC’s
revolutionary outlook. In 1945 the CPC constitution
acknowledged Marxism- Leninism and the “combined principles
derived from the practical experience of the Chinese revolution-
the ideas of Mao Ze dong- as the guiding principles of all its work”
This revolutionary outlook assumed legitimating in the
international communist movement.
In Pursuance of his united front strategy, Mao gave a call for a
new democratic Republicof China. It was to be a state under the
joint dictatorship of several classes. He proposeda state system
which is called New Democracy. Mao wrote thus: Our present task
is to strengthen the people’s apparatus- meaning principally the
people’s army, the people’s police and the people courts
safeguarding national defense and protecting the people interests.
Given these conditions, China under the leadership of the working
class and the communist party, can develop steadily from an
agricultural into a socialist and eventually, communist society,
eliminating classes and realizing universal harmony”.
New Democracy, according to Mao, meant two things. Firstly,
democracy for the people and secondly, dictatorship for the
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reactionaries. These two things combined together constitute the

people’s democratic dictatorship. In New Democracy the
henchmen of imperialism- the landlord class and bureaucratic
capitalist class as well as the reactionary clique of the
Kuomintang, will be completely suppressed under the leadership
of working class. It will allow them to behave properly and
prevent them from acting irresponsibly. Democracy shall be
practiced by the ranks of the people and will be allowed freedom
of speech, assembly and association. According to Mao, “the
people’s state is for the protection of the people once they have a
people’s state, the people then have the possibility of applying
democratic methods on a nationwide and comprehensive scale to
educate and reform themselves, so that they may get rid of the
influences of domestic and foreign reactionaries. Thus the people
can reform their bad habits and thoughts derived from the old
society, so that they will not take the wrong road pointed out to
them by the reactionaries, but will continue to advance and
develop towarda socialist and then communist society”.
In New Democracy, the supremacy of the communist party will
remain fundamental. In its revolutionary struggle towards
dictatorship, the party will act as a vanguard of the working class.
The communist party is an organization of the working class
which is filled with revolutionary fervor and zeal. The history of
revolution everywhere proves that without theleadership of the
working class, a revolution will fail, but with the leadership of the
working class a revolution will be victorious. According to Mao,
in an era of imperialism no other class in any country can lead any
genuine revolution to victory.
The society of New Democracy will be classless without which
democracy and socialism cannot be established. A democratic and
scientific culture shall be evolved in a new democracy. Mao is

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convinced that without this new culture, new democracy cannot

be maintained. The new culture is of and for the Chinese people
which, although possessing characteristics and peculiarities of its
own, yet seeks to interlink and fuse itself with the national-
socialist culture and the new democratic culture of other lands, so
that they mutually become the component parts of the new world
culture.
Cultural Revolution
The period of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) from mid- 1958 till
the end of 1960 saw both successes and setbacks for the Maoist
line. The enthusiastic mass upsurge of 1958 confirmed the
popularity of the new line. But severe economic difficulties had
begin to appear by the end of 1958. The great leaf strategy entailed
significant changes in the political situation. It stripped
considerable power from the central governmentbureaucracy and
transferred it in many cases to local party cadres. And it introduced
important new strains into Sino- Soviet relations. The 1959 -60
periods saw great economic difficulties causing more
modernization of the 1958 strategy. In 1959 the CPC experienced
an intense inner party struggle with Defense Minister Pong Dehuai
attacking the 1958 line and policies frontally.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which started in 1966
was “one of the most extraordinary events of this century”. From
a purely narrative perspective, the Cultural Revolution can best be
understood as a tragedy, both for the individual who launched it
and from the society that endured it. The movement was largely
the result of the decisions of Mao. Mao’s restless quest for
revolutionary purity in a post revolutionary age provided the
motivation for the Cultural Revolution, his unique charismatic
standing in the Chinese communist movement gave him the
resources to get it under way, and his populist faith in the value of
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mass mobilization lent the movement its form. Mao’s quest for
revolutionary purity “led him to exaggerate and misappraise the
political and social problem confronting China in the mid- 1960s.
His personal authority gave him enough power to unleash potent
social forces but not enough power to control them.
As Roderick Macfarquhar has rightly remarked in the Politics of
China, the “ Cultural Revolution, which Mao hoped would be his
most significant and most enduring contribution to China and to
Marxism- Leninism instead became the monumental error of his
later years”, China’s present leadership now describe the “
Cultural Revolution as nothing less than a calamity for their
country”. Although the economic damage done by the cultural
Revolution was not as severe as that produced by the Great Leap
Forward the effects of the cultural revolution in terms of careers
disrupted, spirits broken, and lives lost were ruinous indeed. The
impact of the movement on Chinese politics and society may take
decades finally to erase.
The Cultural Revolution provided the form and the focus to the
idea of continuing revolution. It established the need for
revolutionary class struggle involving the masses to uphold
proletarian line. The central committee circular of 16 May 1966
which launched anattack on the outline Report on the current
Academic Discussion of the Group of five in charge of the
Cultural Revolution, initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution (GPCR). The Eleventh Plenum of the Central
Committee passed the 16-point decision concerning the GOCR on
8 August 1966 which laid down the theory, strategy, and policies
of the GPCR. It explicitly links the new campaign to the Basic
Line. This document declares that a new stage has been reached in
socialist revolution. This stage can be described as the stage of
‘consolidation of the socialist system’. The document clearly

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identifies the focus of the new movement as the” work in the

ideological sphere”. It quotes form Mao’s speech at the Tenth
Plenum that “to over throw a political power, it is always
necessary, first of all to create public opinion, to do work in the
ideological sphere’. This is true for the revolutionary class as
well as for the counter – revolutionary class. The Maoists
believed that revisionists like Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen had used
their high offices to support anti- proletarian ideas. Therefore, it
was necessary to createa revolutionary public opinion to counter
that. That is why the political report at the Ninth Congress
described the GPCR as “ great political revolution personally
initiated and led by great leader chairman Mao under the
conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a great revolution
on the realm of superstructure”.
Form mid- January 1967, the cultural revolution became a nation
– wide political movement aimed at drastic changes in the
educational, social, cultural and administrative system of Chinese
society and polity. The role of the Army escalated steadily
throughout 1966 and 1967. Now, once the Cultural Revolution
entered the stage of the seizure of power, the military played an
even greater part in the Chinese politics. Its job was not only to
help seize power from the party establishment, but also to ensure
thereafter that order was maintained. It was estimated that
altogether 2 million officers and troops of the Peoples Liberation
Army (PLA) participated in civilian affairs during the Cultural
Revolution.
Mao’s ideas on building socialism which led him to launch the
Great Leap Forward in 1958and the Cultural Revolution in 1966
have been subjected to much criticism in China duringthe reform
period and also by development analysts in the liberal and neo-
liberal mould all over the world. These mass campaigns caused

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enormous hardships to millions of people. Yet it is important to

understand the Maoist perspective which guided those initiatives.
Essentially these campaigns, especially the Cultural Revolution
raised qualitative questions about achieving high growth of
production as in case of capitalist systems, but it was to be based
on the socialist vision of creating an egalitarian society with
socialist values and moving towards a classless society.
The Deng leadership (after the death of Mao) had four major
criticisms against Mao’s theory of Cultural Revolution. Firstly,
socialism was not about poverty, but improving material
conditions of people to achieve an egalitarian society. Second,
mass campaigns in the name of fighting class enemies suspended
all institutions, led to arbitrary use of power and harassed and
killed many innocent people. Third, the theoretical premise that
treats culture or ideology as autonomous is an idealist deviation
of Mao which put superstructure independent of the economic
base, thus violating the tenets of dialectical and historical
materialism. Fourthly, the egalitarianism promoted during of
equality irrespective of the contribution made by a worker. It is
beyond dispute that Mao Zedong thought initiated several
innovative formulations on revolution and social reformation
which continue to reverberate leading to intense political debates
on the nature of democracy, socialism and human future in the
21stcentry throughout the world.
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Antonio Gramsci, born in Italy on 22nd January 1891. He was an
Italian Marxist philosopher, sociologist, journalist, linguist,
writer and politician. He was a founding member and one-time
leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by
Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. He wrote more than 30
notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his
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imprisonment. His ‘Prison Notebooks’ are considered as the main

contribution to 20th-century political theory. He passed away in
27 April 1937. He is considered as the father of ‘neo-Marxism’.
Re-evaluation of Marxism
Gramsci has given great contributions in academics. His thoughts
led to the emergence of critical school of Marxism, Structural
school of Marxism and so on. He was working to bring the
communist revolution since Marxist prediction that capitalism
will die its own death was not coming true, he wanted to re-
evaluate it. Especially Marx’s understanding of history and
strategy of revolution.
Gramsci has given his own understanding of reality, his
understanding of history and the strategy of revolution,
Gramscian revolution the communist revolution. According to
Bipin Chandra India’s freedom movement can be traced as the
first example of Gramscian revolution. Gramsci was also taken
into consideration the perspective on history proposed by Italian
Scholar Benedetto Croce. He has emphasized on the role of
ideological cultural factors in shaping history. Gramsci
concluded that undoubtedly economic structure is a basic
structure, the most important factor but ideological/cultural
factors also have their significant role in shaping history. Marx
has neglected the role of ideology and culture as formation forces
of history.
Modification of Karl Marx’s Base Superstructure theory
According to Karl Marx, superstructure is merely the reflection
of base. No independent significance of its own. His revolution
took it for granted that revolution in the economic structure is
sufficient and superstructures will change their own. Thus in

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Marxist revolution there is no program of action directed against

superstructure.
Gramsci’s Model of Political Structure
Gramsci admitted economic structure is the basis structure, but
elements of superstructure are not simply the reflection base.
They have their own significance. He suggests that they are also
structures, significant and real which can’t be neglected. He gives
a two layered conception of super structure.
It is nearer to base. He calls it as civil society. Church, schools,
media or any other associations located in Civil Society. The
institutions of civil society generate ‘INTANGIBLE CONSENT’
for capitalism. In other words, capitalism will continue by
consent and not by force. Institutions of civil society manufacture
consent/legitimacy for capitalism in subtle or invisible manner.
Civil society is intermediate between state and economic
structure. Civil society is a bigger enemy than state. Civil society
maintains the ideological domination of capitalism invisible
manner. It is a site of generation of consent. It is not possible to
brig revolution against a state so long civil society is left
untouched. According to Gramsci it is difficult to bring a
revolution in those country where a strong civil society exist,
where a state have given lot of powers to civil society. It is easier
to make revolution in those countries where civil society does not
exist/where civil society does not have power. The character of
state becomes clear in the absence of civil society.
State appears to be relatively autonomous or neutral. State is also
the product of civil society. Gramsci has shown the importance
of superstructure. He helped one to develop a critical insight of
anything that we accept or any theory which we consider as truth.

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HEGEMONY
Hegemony means ideological domination and imparting our
consciousness. It generates legitimacy. Hegemony is a dominant
idea which people consider as common sense or truth. For
example, Capitalism is a hegemonic idea. It has influence. We
accept capitalism and it unconsciously imparting our mind. We
are manipulated in our foundation by capitalist ideologies.
Capitalists formed a coalition of classes which have benefit in the
continuation of the system. They create research organisation,
forcing research, generate theories for intellectual class. Hence
one particular idea become universally accepts all ,working class
must understand the strategies of capitalism.
Hegemony of Globalisation
Hegemony is mere a permanent basis of domination. In the
globalised world, in many ways we are committed to capitalism.
We accept capitalism from media or by any type of propaganda.
Soft power also is a tool for hegemonic influence. An artificial
life is created by capital ideologies. The values and institutions of
Western ways of life are being distributed across the world via a
score of powerful globalization venues (e.g., trade, investment,
tourism, alliances) that are often insidious in nature. Hence
Gramsci believed that communism cannot come till the time it
become a hegemonic idea and people don’t consider it as
common sense. He advised to create counter hegemony to
remove the dominance of capitalism.
Cultural Hegemony
Gramsci is popular for developing theoretical framework of
cultural hegemony, which defines how states use cultural
institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. Gramsci

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argued that consent to the rule of the dominant group is achieved

by the spread of ideologies, beliefs, assumptions, and values
through social institutions such as schools, churches, courts, and
the media, among others. These institutions do the work of
socializing people into the norms, values, and beliefs of the
dominant social group. As such, the group that controls these
institutions controls the rest of society.
Cultural hegemony is most strongly manifested when those ruled
by the dominant group come to believe that the economic and
social conditions of their society are natural and inevitable, rather
than created by people with a vested interest in particular social,
economic, and political orders.
Counter Hegemony and Revolution
Gramsci given some ideas which will be useful to counter
hegemony against capitalist states. That are:-

 Every state starts to counter hegemony.

Capitalist don’t rule by coercion but by generating hegemony
they intervene everywhere. To counter this, workers also need to
start their strategies. There are large numbers of people
unconcern about this. According to Gramsci, the working classes
should learn from the capitalist class, how they maintain their
domination, utilize their techniques of Bourgeoisie class in their
revolution.

 Bourgeoisie class rule by forming coalition of classes.

All those who are interested in the status quo are brought
together by the capitalists. They develop the nexus of classes ,
capitalist class work with intellectual classes, religious leaders,
cultural heads, persons involved in media.
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What working class do? What should be the strategy of working

class? They have to develop coalition of all depressed
classes/Subaltern classes. Workers should also form coalition
with intellectual class.
Gramsci uses the term ‘organic class’(people who belong to your
own class) and advised for their unified acting. There is not only
a particular class, but large number of classes like tribes,
minorities, unemployed groups, marginalised sections etc. In
every session they have their own class. For example Ambedkar
is an organic leader/leader of depressed class (dalits) . Organic
classes have to generate their own literature and counter
hegemony of upper classes. Neo-Gramscian theorist Nicola Pratt
said “counter-hegemony is a creation of an alternative hegemony
on the terrain of civil society in preparation for political change".

For a success revolution, Gramsci suggests two stages of

revolution. One is ‘war of position’, and other is ‘war of
movement’ which means first to capture the civil society and to
establish counter hegemony. After establishing the counter
hegemony of communism one should go for the direct attack
against capitalist state.

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MODULE V
20TH CENTURY POLITICAL THOUGHT
The twentieth century political theory encompasses in itself a host
of diverse trends such as the institutional structural, scientific,
positivistic, empirical, behavioral, post-behavioral and the
Marxist. These trends dominated the greater part of the twentieth
century. Classical political theory was, by and large,
philosophical, normative, idealistic, and to an extent, historical;
modern political theory, on the other hand, can be classified into
two opposing divisions: the liberal including the individualistic,
the elitist and the pluralist on one hand, and the Marxist, including
the dialectical-materialist on the other. Modern political theory,
beginning with the liberal stance from the 15th-16th centuries and
later expressing itself in the institutional-positivist, empirical-
behavioral and post-behavioral trends, dubbed the whole classical
tradition as dull. Their advocates, from Merriam and Key to Dahl,
Casswell and Easton, sought to lay stress on the ‘present’ rather
than on the ‘past’; the ‘living’ rather than the ‘dull’; the
‘immediate’ rather than the ‘remote’; the ‘objective’ rather than
the ‘subjective’; the ‘analytic’ rather than the ‘philosophic’; the
‘explanatory’ rather than the ‘descriptive’; the ‘process-oriented’
rather than the ‘purpose-oriented’; the ‘scientific’ rather than the
‘theoretical’.

Modern 20th century political theory with its western liberal-

democratic shade attempted to build a science of politics;
objective, empirical, observational, measurable, operational and
value-free. Its features can be summed up as under:

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(i) Facts and data constitute the bases of study. These are
accumulated, explained and then used for testing
hypothesis.
(ii) Human behaviour can be studied, and regularities of
human behaviour can be expressed in generalisations.
(iii) Subjectivity gives way to objectivity; philosophical
interpretation to analytical explanation; purpose to
procedure; descriptive to observational; normative to
scientific.
(iv) Facts and values are separated; values are so arranged
that the facts become relevant.
(v) Methodology has to be self-conscious, explicit and
quantitative.
(vi) Inter-disciplinary synthesis is to be achieved.
(vii) “What it is” is regarded as more important than either
“what it was” or “what it ought to be or could be”.
(viii) Values are to support facts, substance to form, and
theory to research, and status quo to social change. At
the other end of modern political theory stands the
Marxist political theory, also called the ‘dialectical-
materialist’ or the ‘scientific-socialist’ theory. It
describes the general laws of motion in the
development of all phenomena. Its importance lies in
change through the struggle between opposites;
between relations of production and productive forces
with a view to have a better mode of production;
development from the lower stage to the higher one;
from, say, capitalistic to socialistic and from
socialistic to communistic. It is a theory which
provides a systematic and scientific framework of
analysing and explaining social and political change.
It is a method of interpreting the past, understanding
the present, and projecting the future.
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Highlighting the characteristic features of contemporary political

theory, David Held refers to the following:
(i) Contemporary political theory has been viewed as the
history of political thought, involving an attempt to
examine the significance of text in their historical context.
(ii) It has sought to revitalise the discipline as a form of
conceptual analysis, and in the process, finding political
theory as a systematic reflection upon, and classification
of, the meanings of the key forms and concepts such as
sovereignty, democracy, justice and the like.
(iii)It has been developed as the systematic elaboration of the
underlying structure of our moral and political activities;
the disclosure, examination and reconstruction of the
foundations of political value.
(iv)It has been revitalised as a form of argument concerned
with abstract theoretical questions and particular political
issues.
(v) It has been championed as a critique of all forms of
foundationalism, either the post-modernists or the liberal
defenders. It, accordingly, presents itself as a stimulant to
dialogue and to conversation among human beings.
(vi)It has been elaborated as a form of systematic model
building influenced by theoretical economics, rational
choice theory and game theory; it aims to construct formal
models of political processes.
It has developed as the theoretical enterprise of the discipline of
Political Science. As such it attempts to construct theory on the
basis of observation and modest empirical generalisations.
Contemporary political theory is mainly concerned with the
explanation, investigation and ultimately, with the
comprehension of what relates to politics: concepts, principles
and institutions. Brian Barry says that political theory attempts to

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“study the relation between principles and institutions”. John

Rawls thinks that political theory can seek truth alongside the
scientific-empirical methods. Robert Nozick believes that
contemporary political theory can solve many political problems
by combining the classical ends with empirical means. The
consensus, for example, is that empirical analysis and reflections
of a logical and moral character can co-exist in political theory.

David Held sums up by saying that contemporary political theory

is: first, the philosophical concerned, above all, with the
conceptual and normative; second, the empirical-analytic
concerned, above all, with the problems of understanding and
explanation; third, the strategic concerned, above all with an
assessment of the feasibility of moving from where we are to
where we might like to be. To these, one must add, the historical,
the examination of the changing meaning of political discourse –
its key concepts, theories, and concerns – over time.
JOHN RAWLS
John Rawls is a great political scientist and academician of
United States. He was born in 1921 and died in 2002. His most
famous work is ‘A Theory of Justice’ first published in 1970 and
its revised edition was published in 1990. In the revised edition,
some changes have been made. Some political scientists opined
that his theory of justice is the most important work in the English
speaking world in post-World War period. Rawls championed the
cause of liberalism and challenged the traditional model of
equality and attainment of justice.
His another book ‘Political Liberalism’ was published in 1993.
During the highest time of Soviet communism and Cold War,
Rawls provided an alternative idea of political liberalism which
was based on minimal state concept. He did not regard inequality

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as basis of society and enemy of social progress. Equality cannot

be accepted as an important highway leading to the big capital of
justice. Equality, inequality and other related ideas are to be
judged in the background of social justice and social progress.
Definition of Justice
Every Political system has to be based on some or the other idea
of justice. Many political thinkers have given their contributions
to the idea of justice before John Rawls. The issue of justice has
been a matter of debate. This debate was re-started in
contemporary times with the publication of John Rawls A theory
of Justice (1971).
Rawls says that the conception of justice is an inherent nature of
our social as well as practical life. In his words “Justice in the
first virtue of social intuitions as truth is of system of thought”.
Justice is related to the social institutions which guide and mould
the actions and ideas of social beings.
John Rawls has viewed justice in the background of society and
for this reason he says that the main concern of the subject matter
of justice is social structure which is the core of the society. That
is justice deals with the basic social structure. The social
institutions are very important in the sense that they take the
responsibility of distributing the fundamental rights and duties
efficiently. Constitution, social, political and economic
arrangements are included into these social institutions. Thus
justice may conveniently be regarded as a social principle which
determines the ways and procedure of distributing the rights and
duties for the members of society. He further calls justice a social
scheme on the basis of which rights, duties, opportunities and
condition are allotted. Thus justice is both a principle and a
scheme.
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Rawls’ theory of justice consists of “certain distributive

principles for the basic structure of society”. In the light of this
analysis John Rawls defines justice in the following words. “The
concept of justice I take to be defined by the role of its principles
in assuming rights and duties in defining the appropriate division
of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation
of this role”. Justice is, thus, an interpretation of principles that
are suggested for the distribution of rights and duties and at the
same time division of social advantages among all the members
of body politic.
Justice as Fairness
Justice as fairness aims to describe a just arrangement of the
major political and social institutions of a liberal society: the
political constitution, the legal system, the economy, the family,
and so on. Rawls calls the arrangement of these institutions a
society's basic structure. Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness"
recommends equal basic rights, equality of opportunity and
promoting the interests of the least advantaged members of
society.
Further he says justice should be regarded as a virtue of
institutions, or ‘practices’, rather than of particular actions or
persons. Thus justice has been considered ultimate good. To him
it was one among many virtues and not an all-inclusive vision of
a good society. To him, “The question of fairness arises when free
persons, who have no authority over one another, are enjoying in
a joint activity and amongst themselves settling or acknowledging
the rules which define it and determine the respective shares in its
benefits and burdens.”
He explains the importance of principles of justice for two key
purposes: first, to “provide a way of assigning rights and duties in
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the basic institutions of society”; and secondly, to “define the

appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens” of society.
He observes that, by his definition, well-ordered societies are rare
due to the fact that “what is just and unjust is usually in dispute.”
He further notes that a well-ordered and perfectly just society
must be formulated in a way that addresses the problems of
“efficiency, coordination, and stability.”
THEORY OF JUSTICE
‘A Theory of Justice’ was published in 1971 by American moral
and political philosopher John Rawls. In this book, he tried to
resolve the problem of distributive justice in society. Rawls
principles are to be basis of distribution of primary social goods.
He was opposed to the traditional philosophical arguments on
what constitutes a just institution, and the justification for social
actions and policies. The utilitarian argument holds that society
should pursue the greatest good for the greatest number, an
argument that is consistent with the idea of the tyranny of
majorities over minorities. In opposing the utilitarian arguments,
Rawls attempted to establish an unbiased version of social justice
based on the social contract approach. The social contract
approach holds that society is in a form of agreement with all
those within the society. The approach originated from an 18th-
century philosophical and intellectual movement called the Age
of Enlightenment. The movement assumes that members of a
society have consented to surrender some of their freedoms and
submit to the authority of the ruler in exchange for the
maintenance of social rights and the protection of their remaining
rights. Rawls opines the idea of justice as fairness, and he
identifies social justice as the first characteristic of social
institutions.

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The Original Position

Rawls introduced the “Original Position” as an artificial device
when he developed the Principles of Justice theory. The device
created a hypothetical situation where members of the population
can come to a contractual agreement on the distribution of
resources without one party being seen to be more advantaged
than the other.
The thought experiment would produce the desired state of affairs
among members of the population behind a veil of ignorance. The
veil was a condition that blinded people to all their personal
characteristics such as age, ethnicity, sex, and income level,
which would otherwise cause bias. In the absence of the veil,
individuals could align the principles to their advantage.
Rawls developed the original position to create a reflection of the
principles of justice that would exist in the society, based on the
free and fair interactions between the populations. In the state of
nature and in the absence of a veil of ignorance, certain
individuals such as the privileged and talented would put pressure
on the vulnerable, weak, and disabled due to the fact that the
former are in a better position in the state of nature. The act of
coercing the vulnerable members of the population invalidates
any contractual arrangements that may exist in the state of nature.
The Two Principles of Justice
John Rawls presented two principles of justice that self-interested
and rational individuals would choose when separated by the veil
of ignorance. The principles include:
1. Principle of Equal Liberty
The principle of equal liberty is the first principle of justice to be
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derived from the original position. It states that all citizens have
an equal right to basic liberties, which, according to Rawls, entails
freedom of conscience, expression, association, and democratic
rights.
Rawls added the right of personal property as one of the basic
liberties that individuals should have, and that cannot be infringed
or amended by the government. He, however, excluded an
absolute right to unlimited personal properties as part of the basic
liberties that people should have.
2. Principle of Equality
The principle of equality holds that economic principles should
be arranged in a way that they meet two requirements. First, the
least advantaged in society should receive a greater number of
benefits.
Second, the economic inequalities should be arranged in a way
that no individual is blocked from occupying any position or
office, regardless of their ethnicity, sex, or social background.
Rawls argued that all individuals in the society should have fair
equality of opportunities and an equal chance as everybody else
of similar natural ability.

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