List of Acronyms
Chapter 4: Hegemony in the current context
4.3 Changes in the superstructure under neoliberalism
The structural changes in the process of capital accumulation over the last 100 years have had profound impacts on the superstructure (and here I am using Gramsci’s conception of
superstructure as including both political and civil society), as has already been discussed in the case of colonialism and decolonisation/developmentalism. However, with regards to neoliberalism there has been considerable and often heated debate about the nature of the changes which have occurred, particularly at institutional level. I will consider this in some detail, because it relates directly to my later arguments about what constitutes current hegemony.
In 2001, Hardt and Negri published Empire, which quickly became highly influential. In Empire, Hardt and Negri argue that neoliberal globalization has led to a new form of sovereignty, what they call ‘Empire’. They argue that the age of imperialism is over, and
dismiss claims that the United States of America is the centre of an imperialist project, whilst arguing that the ‘Third World’ (as a construct) has been destroyed. Rather, the Empire is decentred and deterritorializing, “sovereignty of nation-states, while still effective, has progressively declined” (p.xi). Effectively, capital now rules the world, having set itself free from the nation state, and power has transferred from the nation state to the global agents of empire (i.e. TNCs/MNCs, the IMF, World Bank, GATT, the agencies of the United Nations) (Wenman, 2009)
Hardt and Negri (2001) contend that the new capitalist Empire has three distinct features:
1. A lack of boundaries;
2. A claim (by ‘Empire’) that it is not an historical regime, but rather suspends history, and “fixes the existing state of affairs for eternity” (p.xiv);
3. It operates at every level, everywhere, it “creates the very world it inhabits” (p.xv),
“The object of its rule is social life in its entirety” (p.xv).
So Empire extends well beyond the economic to every sphere of life, the economic, cultural and political exchanges increasingly overlapping and investing one another (Wenman, 2009).
Clearly, Hardt and Negri’s claims profoundly affect Marx’s and Gramsci’s claims about the importance of the nation state in consolidating ruling class power, as well as Marxist
understandings of imperialism within capitalism. There has been much positive reaction to Hardt and Negri’s work; but there has also been considerable criticism, particularly from writers from the South. Such work has tended to take a considerably more historicist and empirical approach than Hardt and Negri, and argues that the age of imperialism, and the role of nation state, are certainly not over.
Both African writer Amin (1997), and South American writer Boron (2005), argue that imperialism is most certainly not over. As discussed above, Amin (1997) argues that the post-World War II period saw the industrialisation of countries in the periphery, and the dismantling of the autocentric national production systems of the West/North nation states, particularly as globalisation deepened and these economies became integrated into the world
argues that this is because no new forms of political and social organisation going beyond the nation state have been developed, and because the new relations that need to be developed across the globe have not been developed. This is particularly the case with Africa, whose relationship remains purely exclusionary.
Thus, Amin argues, there is a centre, which retains power through five monopolies:
1. Technological monopoly
2. Financial control of world-wide financial markets 3. Access to the planet’s natural resources
4. Monopolies over media and communications (which has inter alia led to a uniformity of culture and new means of political manipulation)
5. A monopoly, by the United States of America, over weapons of mass destruction.
Boron (2005) specifically critiques Empire. He is insistent that we are not experiencing Empire. Rather, he calls this “the imperialist system in its current phase” (p.1), thus echoing Amin’s argument. Imperialism was not ended with the advent of globalization, as Hardt and Negri argue - rather, globalization consolidated the centre and deepened the submission of the periphery. So imperialism “still exists, and it still oppresses peoples and nations and creates pain, destruction and death” (p.3). Boron argues that Hardt and Negri have got it so wrong because they are looking at the world from above, rather than from the point of view of writers from Latin America, India, Africa and the rest of the Third World. They have also largely ignored literature on imperialism (including Lenin’s seminal work), and have drawn on North American social science and French philosophy.
Boron’s contention that Hardt and Negri fail to see the unevenness of the process across the globe is supported by another South writer, Abu-Manneh (2004, cited in McLaren &
Farahmandpur, 2005). Abu-Manneh uses Lenin’s theory of imperialism to argue that “there can be no permanent joint exploitation of the world”, as posited by Hardt and Negri (Abu- Manneh quoted in McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005, p.2).
4.3.1 The role of the state
Clearly, one of the key issues raised by Hardt and Negri is that of the nation state; the extent to which it still exists, and if it does, the role it plays. To understand the current debate, and its import, it is necessary to look at (in particular, Marxist) arguments about the role of the state, and what has actually happened to the state over space and time.
The radical view of the state (including socialism, utopianism, anarchism, Marxism etc.) continues arguments that the (capitalist) state will (and should) wither away completely with the advent of a classless society. Esping-Andersen, Friedland and Wright (1976, cited in Sherman & Wood, 1989) subdivide the radical view into instrumentalist, structuralist and political class struggle. The views differ in terms of the relationship they see between the state and the ruling class.
In the instrumentalist argument, the state is the instrument of the ruling economic class, which uses the state directly for its own benefit. It is able to do this because members of this class hold key positions in government. In the structuralist view, the state’s structure is determined by the constraints and contradictions of capitalism. Although the state is a class state, it cannot operate entirely as a tool of the ruling class, but must act to try to solve the contradictions and temporary crises of capitalism. Two of the leading proponents of the structuralist view are Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzis. Althusser (1972, cited in Jarvis, 1993) argues that the state controls the ideological apparatus, which he divides into eight, viz.
religion, education, family, law, politics, trade unionism, media and culture. “Through each of these people can be socialised, albeit sometimes unknowingly, into consenting to the ways of the state’s ruling elite” (Jarvis, 1993, p.19). Poulantzis looks on the state not just as an instrument of monopoly capitalism, but at its autonomy relative to the economy. He argues that the contemporary capitalist state is a class state, functioning to maintain the capitalist class, irrespective of what positions of political power the representatives of the class hold (McLellan, 1980, p. 304). In the political class struggle view, the state structure is the object of class struggle, operating with ‘relative autonomy’ from the direct domination of the capitalist class (Offe, 1972, cited in Sherman & Wood, 1989). In all three views, the state is
is one of the goals of radical political activity.
As we have seen, Hardt and Negri argue that since neoliberal globalization, the sovereignty of the nation state all over the world has steadily declined; and this argument has been advanced by many other writers (eg. McGinn, 1996; Giroux, 2005). Clearly, this is not because of a proletarian revolution, and thus fundamentally questions any radical analysis;
however, I would argue, the suggestion that the national state is in decline is in fact false. It is certainly true that much of the discourse of neoliberalism appears to be an attack on the nation state - as Shivji (2006) notes in his analysis of neoliberalism in Tanzania, “The intellectual elite embraced liberal ideology uncritically as it joined the IFIs [International Financial Institutions] in demonising the state and debunking nationalism and socialism”
(p.9).
However, in most current Marxist analysis, the role of the state is the same as it ever was - to ensure the conditions for capitalist accumulation - and thus it remains critical:
...the state is always heavily and directly embroiled in the economic life of capitalism - appropriating and disbursing (surplus) value through taxation and expenditure, regulating accumulation, restructuring capital as it goes through its cyclical patterns, manipulating exchange rates through monetary and other macroeconomic policies, and influencing distributional relations through taxation and incomes policy. (Fine &
Saad-Filho, 2004, pp.172-173)
It is not surprising that neoliberal ideology suggests that the state is in decline, or unnecessary, whereas in fact it remains critically involved; in fact, this is exactly what Gramsci (1971) predicted:
The ideas of the Free Trade movement are based on a theoretical error whose practical origin is not hard to identify; they are based on a distinction between
political society and civil society, which is made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are one and the same, it must be made clear that laissez-faire too is a form of State “regulation”, introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. It is a deliberate policy, conscious of its own ends, and not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts. Consequently, laissez-faire liberalism is a political programme, designed to change - in so far as it is victorious - a State’s leading personnel, and to change the economic programme of the State itself - in other words the distribution of the national income” (Gramsci, 1971, pp.159-160).
In advanced capitalism, the state is not only required, but strengthened (Fine & Saad-Filho, 2004). Thus, the state continues to be the main agent of globalization, not its victim, despite neoliberal discourse (Boron, 2005), advancing capitalist imperialism through the interlocking processes of neoliberalism and globalization (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005; Harvey, 2003). Capital has need of the state more now than ever before, and the state fulfills a long list of tasks for companies (Boron, 2005). Since the economic crisis of 1980, we have seen the apparently ‘eroded’ nation state revealed for what it is, in the massive bail-outs of capitalist organisations, giving lie to the myth of leaving it to the free market to sort things out.
However, as in the past, although the state has the same basic function, states themselves are not the same everywhere. Boron (2005) agrees that the current nation state is a crucial player in the world economy, and national economies still exist. What has happened to the state, however, is different across space. He shows how, despite claims to the contrary, there has in fact been a noticeable increase in the size of the Western state, measured as a proportion of public expenditure to GDP (although the rate of growth of public expenditure has decreased).
Even as they champion the anti-state rhetoric launched in the early 1980s, all of the states of
however, the state has been dramatically weakened, largely as a result of the deliberate intervention of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, G7 [now G8], and the United States, through the imposition of the (neoliberal) “Washington Consensus” (p.79). In these states, there has been a cut in spending, a dismantling of the public sector, privatisation, and, of course, the opening up of the economy (p.80), in line with neoliberal ‘rules’. Clearly, this belies Hardt and
Negri’s claims of the end of imperialism.
Therborn (2008) agrees that there are different kinds of states in different parts of the world.
He argues that the last 40 years saw the development of strongly differentiated state forms - the welfare state of Western Europe; the ‘outward development’ model, typified in East Asia;
and the inward-looking, low-trade [post-colonial] states of Africa, Latin America and India.
Therborn agrees that the European state has in fact grown (spending a greater percentage of GDP on public expenditure than its export income contribution to GDP), and so has the outward development state of East Asia. The outward development model is a neoliberal model, emphasising exports, based on heavy manufacturing, and is characterised by state planning and the control of banks and credit (and also some protection from incoming foreign investment). The inward-looking (post-colonial) low trade states, however, have faced a ‘lethal crisis’, coming to a dead end by the 1970s and 1980s. Foley (1994) suggests that neoliberal globalisation has led to transformation of (Western) welfare state into a
‘competitive state’: “Internally, the function of the state changes from the delivery of public services, perceived as the universal rights of citizens, to fostering of private sector production and the management of a continually contracting public sector” (Foley, 1994, p.130).
Boron (2005) suggests that although there are now different states in different parts of the world, in both the North and South governments have become steadily less accountable as the power of the parliament has progressively decreased. Instead, power has accumulated in the hands of executives. His analysis suggests a shift in the relationship between political and civil society - he argues that there is now a proliferation of secret areas of decision-making; a decline in government response to the claims and demands of civil society; growing
similarities between the main political parties, and a drastic reduction of competition between them; growing oligopolies of the mass media/cultural industry; and, logically, an increasing political apathy among the general populace. McGinn (1996) shows that in the USA and
other industrialised countries political society (i.e. government) is in crisis, with plummeting levels of participation in the electoral process and a marked decline in trust in democratic institutions.
Thus there has been a growing crisis of legitimacy of the state globally. How has the state dealt with this? As Gramsci argued, through a combination of force and hegemony.
4.3.1.1 Force
Amin (1997) has argued that hegemony should not form the centre of debate, because it is in fact the exception to the rule; the rule is force/conflict. Giroux (2005) argues that
neoliberalism is complicit in transforming the democratic state into a national security state, which is “largely used to regulate, control, contain, and punish those who are not privileged by the benefits of class, color, and gender” (p.8). In this kind of state, social services (as indeed all problems) are privatised into personal responsibility, while “human misery is largely defined as a function of personal choices” (Giroux, 2005, p.8), so the poor are ipso facto degenerate. Thus neoliberalism constructs a particular vision of a just society, which includes the need for the state to monitor us constantly to ensure that we do not become slothful and indolent (Apple, 2001). The political system is used to legitimise the process of control (Jarvis, 1993).
As the state is increasingly stripped of its public functions, it is defined less through its efforts to invest in the public good than through the exercise of its police and surveillance functions in order to contain those groups deemed a threat to the social order. (Giroux, 2001, p.2)
Along with this disciplinary function comes, inevitably, increased militarisation:
By militarization, I mean...an intensification of the labor and resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals. Militarization is simultaneously a discursive process, involving a shift
the organization of large standing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them. Militarization is intimately connected not only to the obvious increase in the size of armies and resurgence of militant nationalisms and militant fundamentalisms but also to the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping of national histories in ways that glorify and legitimate military action (Lutz, 2002, p.723 quoted in Giroux, 2005, p.5).
This has happened in the West, as well as in other parts of the world. Neocosmos (2006) looks specifically at the authoritarian bureaucratic character of the post-colonial state in Africa, arguing that “the African state is at the core of the crisis which the continent’s people have had to endure” (p.58). The modern African state acts primarily to control, laying down the limits for public debate, excluding or deligitimizing discourses or practices it sees as threatening. Boron (2005) suggests that the issue of force is not so about different states in different parts of the world, but about states acting differently towards different groups of people - “for the poor and the excluded, a fascist state; for the rich, a democratic state”
(p.83). Arguably, given the point of the state, this is the same as it ever was.
4.3.1.2 Hegemony
However, as Gramsci argued, the state prefers not to use force if it can use hegemony instead.
Thus, despite the increasingly disciplinary role of the state discussed above, many writers have emphasised the importance of hegemony in the continuing domination of the capitalist class under neoliberal capital. As we have seen, Gramsci argued that it is civil society, rather than political society, which plays the crucial role of creating and maintaining hegemony.
Thus, we need to consider how civil society (in Gramsci’s understanding, a part of the superstructure) has been affected by the shift to neoliberalism.
4.3.2. The role of civil society
We have seen how Gramsci believed ‘civil society’ to be the particular site within which hegemony is created and sustained, in order to bolster political society/the state (and thus the
8 “The organized expression of various interests and values operating in the triangular ruling class). If we remember, Gramsci said that “the historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the State....But it would be wrong to think that this unity is simply juridical and political....; the fundamental historical unity, concretely, results from the organic relations between State or political society and “civil society”’ (Gramsci, 1971, p.52). Habermas, following Gramsci, agrees that civil society is shaped by the bourgeois class; but argues that it has a democratic significance if it is politicised, as occurred in the French Revolution (Mamdani, 1996). Geoff Ely has critiqued this understanding, showing how civil society inevitably involves the exclusion of certain ‘publics’ (such as women, the peasantry, the urban poor, subordinate nationalities), and is thus harnessed to the interests of one group (Ibid.). However, as we have seen, civil society is also the site of struggle for counter- hegemony.
Thus civil society is clearly a critical arena for social change; and hence it has remained an area of importance in social theory: “...the concept civil society is now the focal point of the theory and practice of a large and growing sector of the left worldwide” (Holst, 2002, p.57).
Under capitalist reorganisation to its current form, neoliberalism, the role of civil society’s hegemonic function is as important as ever. Indeed, civil society today is deeply complicit in supporting capitalist neoliberalism. Neocosmos (2006, 2009a) constructs a careful argument showing how current dominant conceptions of civil society are fundamentally neoliberal, with a ‘vibrant civil society’ being one of the calls of neoliberal democracy. Buttigeig (2002) describes this as “the current fashion of exalting civil society” (p.131). Neocosmos gives as an example the definition of civil society suggested by Adam Habib8, which Neocosmos claims is “fully in tune with current neo-liberal thinking” (2009a, p.268), because it does not allow anything that does not use the state as its reference point.
Under neoliberalism, Neocosmos contends, civil society is defined purely in relation to the state: “for neo-liberal theory there can be no civil society outside liberal democracy”
(Neocosmos, 2009a, p.269), ‘civil society’ is in fact the state ‘in’ society: “Civil society