ADVANCED CAPITALIST HEGEMONY AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GRAMSCI'S INSIGHTS: A RESTATEMENT

ADVANCED CAPITALIST HEGEMONY AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GRAMSCI'S INSIGHTS: ARESTATEMENTAuthor(s): Cecilia GreenSource: Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 42, No. 2/3 (JUNE & SEPTEMBER 1993), pp. 175-207Published by: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the WestIndiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27865900 .

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Social and Economic Studies 42:2&3 (1993) ISSN: 0037-7651

ADVANCED CAPITALIST HEGEMONY AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GRAMSCPS INSIGHTS:

A RESTATEMENT

Cecilia Green

Abstract

This paper attempts to re-state, in broad theoretical terms, the

principal features of the "political topography " of advanced capital

ist society. The capitalist state is premised upon a realm of civil society which endows all citizens with equal legal subjecthood, and obscures

and mediates the reality of bourgeois political economic domination.

The processes of ide?lo gico-cultural domination involved are illumi

nated through Gramsci's theory of hegemony, as a pro-active enter

prise of the bourgeoisie, mediated by the practices of "intellectuals ".

This re-examination provides a timely reminder of Gramsci1 s idea

that emancipatory politics must involve a protracted andfundamental process of counter-hegemonic cultural contestation.

INTRODUCTION

In this paper, I am primarily interested in revisiting the main features

of the socio-political landscape, or socio-political topography, of

advanced capitalist societies, and, after doing so, considering the

contribution of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher and

revolutionary, in uncovering the elements of the "social glue" that

holds these societies together on a non-coercive level. Gramsci's

analysis, while applied to modern capitalism at its incipient stage, continues to resonate today in light of an apparent mass seduction over

to the virtues and/or inevitability of capitalism and Western-style

democracy. But more importantly, Gramsci' s strictures remind us that

cultural hegemony is built on a distinct set of practices, involving dominant and subordinate agency, and is not just a by-product of

economic hegemony, or does not just happen. It could be argued that

pp 175?207



176 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES

his identification of a relatively autonomous social group rooted in the

distinct social function of technical and ideological organization of the "subaltern" group (or their political and social "Taylorization") provides early support for the proposition that advanced capitalism is

reproduced on the basis of three, not two, fundamental classes.1 But

the full exploration of such a proposition must await another paper.

Here, my main concern is to stimulate a re-thinking of the "Gramscian"

problematic, especially in light of the contemporary shape and dynam ics of advanced capitalism at the centre, and its creeping hegemony with regard to the rest of the world.

This paper's focus on the political and ideological dimensions of society begins with a discussion of the state, the most formally organized "expression" of such dimensions. The idea is precisely to

illuminate how the formal "articulates with" the informal.

THE SPECIFICITY OF STATE-STRUCTURED SOCIETIES

A set of social relations has to be structurally understood as a double

dialectic: a combination of the dialectic between objective and subjec tive social relations and the dialectic between "real" and ideological/ institutional relations. Objective social relations refer to systemic social relations which take effect (partly) "behind the backs of individuals" or independently of people's particular perceptions of

them. Subjective social relations refer to social relations as they are

subjectively experienced on a group basis. "Real", concrete or de facto

relations have to be distinguished from their ideological/institutional representations or rationalizations.2 Societies differ in the extent of

dislocation between objective and subjective realities and "real" and

juridico-ideological relations. The extent of dislocation depends on the level of social and institutional differentiation. The dialectic interface ranges from the more "embedded" and "direct" forms of

simple egalitarian societies, where people are more fully arbiters or

authors of their social acts/relations, to the more "separated" and

"remote" forms of capitalist society, where the social identity of

subordinate groups in particular is constructed "externally" to them,



Advanced Capitalist Hegemony 177

through fragmented and objectifying or alienating processes. The double dialectic is schematically represented below:

TABLE 1: STRUCTURE OF A SOCIAL RELATION

Subjective

Objective

Representational/Form

psycho-cultural

juridico-ideological

"Rear/Content

experiential social relation

structural social relation

The dislocation that exists in capitalist society between subjec tive and objective identity is a function of class, gender and racial

hegemonies, the technical division of labour between and within social practices, and the differentiated (institutional and material) sites of social reproduction. Objective social identity is determined by structural location, i.e. the point of intersection or the relative position

occupied in the total hegemonic grid. Subjective identity is "self referencing": it is constructed within the narrower and more intimate corridors of the experiential circuit through which a social group is re/

produced3 (viz. work, community, family). It is forged through the sensuous medium of the subject's own routine practices and face-to

face relations with others. These everyday practices and relations

together account for a collective (or group) experience and conscious

ness, or, the formation of subjective identity. In egalitarian foraging society, the circuits of re/production of

social groups merge closely with the boundaries of total social

reproduction; and, to the extent that people have more authorial control over the construction of their social selves, there is a closer

merging of objective and subjective identities (of "structure" and

"experience"). The following related comparison drawn by Bourdieu (1977: 183-184) between state-dominated and stateless societies is

instructive here:

In societies which have no "self-regulating market" (in Karl Polanyi's sense), no educational system, no juridical




apparatus, and no State, relations of domination can be set

up and maintained only at the cost of strategies which must be endlessly renewed, because the conditions required for

a mediated, lasting appropriation of other agents' labour,

services, or homage have not been brought together. By contrast, domination no longer needs to be exerted in a

direct, personal way when it is entailed in possession of the means (economic or cultural capital) of appropriating the mechanisms of the field of production and the field of cultural production, which tend to assure their own repro duction by their very functioning, independently of any deliberate intervention by the agents. So, it is in the degree of objectification of the accumulated social capital that one finds the basis of all the pertinent differences between the modes of domination, that is, very schematically between,

on the one hand, social universes in which relations of

domination are made, unmade, and remade in and by the

interactions between persons, and on the other hand, social

formations in which, mediated by objective, institutional

ized mechanisms, such as those producing and guarantee

ing the distribution of "titles" (titles of nobility, deeds of

possession, academic degrees, etc.), relations of domina

tion have the opacity and permanence of things and escape

the grasp of individual consciousness and power. Objecti fication guarantees the permanence and cumulativity of

material and symbolic acquisitions which can then subsist without the agents having to recreate them continuously

and in their entirety by deliberate action; but, because the

profits of these institutions are the object of differential

appropriation, objectification also and inseparably ensures

the reproduction of the structure of the distribution of the

capital which, in its various forms, is the precondition for

such appropriation, and in so doing, reproduces the struc

ture of the relations of domination and dependence.




Bourdieu's remarks are useful in the way they dramatize the distance between the objective (or structural) and the subjective (or experiential) that obtains in societies which are highly differentiated, centralized and institutionalized.

In simple egalitarian societies, social resolutions are more

directly negotiated by subjects who are relatively socially unencum bered, in contrast to capitalist societies where social resolutions are more "externally" and "impersonally" determined, i.e. by accumulat

ed, objectified (and objectifying) forces ? centralized hegemonic

institutions and laws, discourses of abstract individualism, pervasive ideologies of racism, sexism, Eurocentrism, and so on. However, the differences ? in mode of domination or hegemonic system

?

between state-structured class societies are just as dramatic as those between the latter and stateless societies. We can more properly address the specificity of capitalist state and system of hegemony by first identifying a number of general characteristics that define the state in class societies:

(a) The state is the institutional and practical arena/expression of hegemonically mediated or defined political relations and struggles.

(b) The state is the centrally organized medium of class rule.

(c) The state is a centralized bureaucratic mechanism for

regulating, adjusting, facilitating and overseeing the pro cesses of social reproduction.

(d) The state is the supreme sanctioned authority and legiti mate instrument of force in the society.

These things are true in very different ways in different historical forms of the state. The feudal state in Western Europe and elsewhere completely excluded the labouring classes as political actors from its field of operation, constituting as it did the direct expression of political practices and relations among the ruling classes. Stuart Hall

(1984a:5) has pointed out that "[the] lord-serf relationship was the cell form of the feudal economy; the lord-vassal relationship was the cell




form of political rule." Class rule was imposed upon the feudal

peasantries as an external or extra-communal force (whether "benevo

lently" or repressively); they in turn were passively incorporated into the realm of the state as political objects or pawns. Hall cites Poggi (1978: 23), who has pointed out that the subordinate classes of feudalism were "the objects of rule... but never the subjects of a

political relationship".

The real political struggles between the feudal landed classes and the peasantry took place outside the arena of the official state. The

political relation between the seigneurial class and the tiller-producers revolved around the counterclaim that the former had on the patrimo

ny, labour and persons of the latter, and the tension between the lord's

dominium eminens or paramount rights of ownership and the peasant's

patrimonial rights of "possession".

In this system, the social identity of the peasant is fundamentally bound up with family/community membership and subjective rights and obligations. There is no separation, as there is in capitalism, between the subject as a private individual, the subject as an economic

agent and the subject as a legal personality (with equivalent, abstract

rights and freedoms). The subordination of the peasantry takes place on the basis of their as-yet-unruptured relationship to land and

patrimony and a still-intact community, complete with communal

rights and privileges. The original authority for such a relationship derives not from the state but from local manorial custom (Bloch,

1961; 1967; 1975; Tigar and Levy, 1977). The re/production of the

labouring classes is carried out within quasi-independent family estates and village communities; subjective identity is forged within the tissue of a relatively closed and independent "folk" culture. In this

situation, hegemonic domination takes the form of an external impo

sition, placing external constraints on the development and survival of

the village communities. In contrast to capitalist hegemony, it does not

extend to ideological penetration, permeation, subversion and incor

poration of popular culture. In medieval society, there is neither

representation nor reality of a "universal" civil society that is shared




by various classes. Thus, the feudal peasant, as political object and

dependant, is nonetheless embedded in a semi-independent mode of

(economic and cultural) self-reproduction.

In Gramsci's writings, for example, the distinction between the

"ancient and mediaeval state" and the "modern" (capitalist) State is

sharply drawn in his special concept of hegemony as a characteristic

of modern capitalist society. "Hegemony", as a mode of domination

peculiar to the "modern State" and ruling classes, embraces political, economic and cultural dimensions in an interpenetrative and active

way. In Gramsci's words (1971: 54),

In the ancient and mediaeval State alike, centralization, whether political-territorial or social... was minimal. The

State was, in a certain sense, a mechanical bloc of social

groups... The modern State substitutes for the mechanical

bloc of social groups their subordination to the active hegemony of the directive and dominant group.

In capitalist societies, therefore, where classes have been histor

ically reconstituted around a severing of the "organic" link, the relative

autonomy of subordinate class communities is continuously mitigated

by their active incorporation into the temporal, spatial and institutional

orbits of capital and state (and, in the case of doubly subordinated racial-ethnic segments, is negatively shaped by their active

peripheralization or marginalization, and the ambiguous and partial nature of their incorporation

? what I would call their incorporation/

exclusion). The peculiarity of advanced capitalism in this regard lies in its aggressive and incessant rearrangement of the social landscape "in its own image", and the penetration of its hegemonic reach into

areas of social life previously considered to fall within the ambit of informal family and community sovereignty. What is being stressed here is not the "unfortunate" destruction of some romantic and

idealized past, but the historical construction of a different present, of a different kind of material world and structure of domination.

This is evident, for example, in the separation and isolation of

atrophied family units into nucleated worlds of reproductive privacy,




dependent on capitalist-controlled labour and consumer markets and

communications systems, and cut off, in many instances, from inte

grated, heterogeneous community networks and spatial configura tions, as well as from traditional sources of "folk" wisdom and

knowledge. Working class families and communities are irrevocably drawn into the vortex of commodity relations, increasingly on an

individualized and atomized basis. The circuits of reproduction of subordinated social subjects come to be mediated, in increasingly critical ways, through state and marketplace. In more concrete terms, the "real" and representational construction of the (subordinate) social

self is mediated through the homogenizing, standardizing, massif y ing and (unevenly) alienating referents of public, hegemonic sites or texts,

including those which have penetrated into and structured the domes

tic domain ? from television, pop psychology and the personal income tax or welfare system to spatial arrangements and architectural

design.

THE ADVANCED CAPITALIST STATE

Advanced capitalist society therefore presents a very different con

figuration of state, hegemony and culture. In this type of society, the

state ideally takes the form of the liberal-democratic-collectivist state

(see Hall, 1984a: 11). The sovereign state juridically incorporates the entire society within its ambit of authority and posits a contractual

relationship with individuals as the (equal) subjects of rights and freedoms which are guaranteed and protected by the constitution. This "liberal" state is the supreme power which ensures both the reproduc tion of the hegemonic order (wielding the threat of force as a weapon of last resort) and the inalienability of individual rights.

In the governance of most ? perhaps all ? states, "[coercion] and consent are not mutually exclusive but complementary" (Hall, 1984a: 15). In the "mature" democratic form of the liberal capitalist state, this consent is actively rather than passively solicited, through

formally universal representative and participatory institutions. These

institutions affirm among other things, the universal rights and




freedom to elect political representatives, to run for public office, and to lobby or otherwise peacefully struggle for the representation of particular interests and concerns in public policy formulations.

The character of the "collectivist" state derives from the capital ist state's assumption of authority over and responsibility for all parts and aspects of society, in increasingly explicit and material terms. This "expansion of the state into the whole fabric of civil society and private life" (Hall, 1984a: 13) is two-pronged. On the one hand, it is intended to bring civil society into full conformity with the hegemonic order and to subordinate any independent modes of cultural and economic

reproduction to the logic of the capitalist system. On the other hand, it is motivated by the pressure (from "below") to reform and to make compensatory social provisions for the socially disadvantaged and other human casualties of capitalism. Both roles ultimately become

subsumed under the rubric of regulation and management, law and

order.

The collectivist or interventionist role of the state co-exists

uneasily with and to some extent contradicts the liberal agenda (a contradiction which is superficially reflected in politico-ideological divisions in the ruling class). One of the roles of the state is supposedly to protect the integrity and autonomy of civil society or the realm of

voluntary and private associations; however, it is in fact impelled to

constantly redefine the boundaries of the latter in the interests of

system maintenance and containment. Hall (1984a: 21-22) points out:

The boundaries between 'state' and 'civil society' are never

fixed, but constantly changing. Public and private are not natural divisions, but socially and historically constructed

ones. One of the ways in which the state expands its reach is to re-draw the public/private boundaries, and reconsti

tute the definition of the private, so as to make it legitimate for the state to intervene in areas which had hitherto been considered inviolable.

As the state penetrates into all civil affairs, it leaves the vague

"right to privacy" and other related "civil liberties" as a last refuge and




weapon of defence, increasingly exposing them as abstract and

manipulable rights. "Freedom" comes more and more to be defined

and delimited by the state and (for the subordinate classes, "racial"

groups and gender) to be the grounds for defensive or reactive, rather

than proactive, contestation.

It is necessary to go back to our definition of the state, lest our vision of it appear too anthropomorphic or leave an impression of an

authorless structural monolith. There are at least four distinct features

of the advanced-capitalist state which make up its historical specific

ity: (a) the state as including (as a major order of business) socially necessary governmental and bureaucratic functions which are not

purely class determined; (b) the state as a representative institution of a limited nature; (c) the state as a mediated expression of class rule;

(d) the state as an ideological unifier. The first two features are not the major concern here, but I will

address them briefly. First, I have already talked about the need to have a non-reductionist understanding of the capitalist state as including functions which are not necessarily economic or hegemonic or class

functions. This addresses to some extent the more limited concept of

"government"?as social administrator and provider?in distinction

from the more inclusive "state". Second, the specifically limited

nature of the channels of representation leads me to reject a pluralist

theory of the state and also to see the concrete pluralist discourse

surrounding the execution of state business or political practice as

obfuscating and ultimately "false".

The limited nature of representative institutions has been attrib uted to two major factors. One is the limitation of access to these institutions by subordinate groups because of the powerful grip

maintained over them by a cohesive ruling class network of interper

sonal/personnel linkages and the concomitant lack of access of

subordinate groups to the economic and cultural capital required to

compete in the (heavily stacked) political arena. The second factor is the limitation of an agenda and terms of reference that have been

permised on the moral and structural imperative to uphold and protect




private property as the organizing principle of the socio-economic order. Whatever the class affiliation of elected representatives, there

fore, political democracy is fundamentally constrained and compro mised by the highly skewed economic system of ownership and control upon which it is erected, and whose legitimacy and interests it is ultimately compelled to defend. In any event, the sheer institutional and financial concentration of corporate capital makes nonsense of the notion that it is one among a plurality of interest groups with equal access to the centres of political decision-making. Indeed, the concen

trated power of capital must be further measured against the fact that

"[democratic] concessions fragment the working class into individual

voters, weakening its collective power vis-a-vis capital, but construct

ing the misleading idea that the vote means real power" (Hall, 1984b: 10).

The "subjectivist" or "instrumentalist" and "structuralist" ex

planations of (real) political domination by the capitalist class under the guise of pluralist democracy have been put forward as competing perspectives,3 but they are more properly viewed as complementary.

An integral part of our understanding of the advanced-capitalist state as limited representative democracy, however, must be a recog nition of its inclusive as well as its exclusive limits. Such recognition reveals the state as a site of limited class struggle mediated through

(unevenly distributed) elected representatives of opposing viewpoints and class, racial or gender standpoints. Representation of non-ruling or "socially conscious" viewpoints, however limited, may seek and

gain reforms which curb the arbitrary power of corporate capital,

require greater social accountability from ruling groups, expand the

sphere of socialized means of re/production, increase the economic,

political and social rights of women, non-whites, working people, and

so on. Such reforms are real and concrete; they are not illusory, even

if they may be the target of counteractive measures (in and out of state) by ruling groups and, as such, are constantly threatened with erosion or subversion.

The question to which all this leads is the more important one ?

as far as this study is concerned ? of mediation, which is critically




linked to the problem of social reproduction. A discussion of how class

rule is mediated through the state should tie together the question of the displacement of the state from narrow ruling class interests and the

question of how the state facilitates the incorporation of subordinate

groups into an inter-class "hegemonic consensus" around bourgeois rule.

These questions are often subsumed under a preoccupation with

the "relative autonomy of the state" which is presented as an explana tion for rather than a general description of a particular relationship between state and society. The relative autonomy of the advanced

capitalist state should be understood first and foremost as a concrete

historical feature rather than as a self-sustaining theoretical device for

explaining everything about the state's relation to society.

There are a number of historical factors involved. One is the

historical process of the differentiation and specialization of social practices and institutional sites. This process attained a uniquely advanced form in the emergence of an independent economic ruling class outside of inherited status domains or fixed and continuously ranked hierarchies of birth. The emergent bourgeoisie was the initiator of a new and separate economic practice and "sovereign" institutional site (the capitalist market economy). The bourgeoisie, by its very existence, recognized and posited differentiated "sovereign" prac tices.

The relationship between the bourgeoisie and the state has never

been an automatic one. The state was, after all, a pre-existing object of

bourgeois class conquest. Moreover, the bourgeoisie consolidated its

power within a political struggle and discourse whose subjects or

protagonists always included, potentially and actually, theoretically and concretely, other classes (the peasantry, the artisanal working class and the newly emerging industrial proletariat). The struggle was as anti-feudal and anti-monarchical as it was ? in effect if not

uniformly in intent ? pro-bourgeois. It has already been pointed out

that a key objective of this struggle was the consolidation and institutionalization of a sphere of civil society independent of the state




but premised by it. This was part and parcel of the struggle for a secular, national state that would guarantee individual rights and

freedoms, the separation of powers, and some form of the franchise.

Such a state internalized the potential, indeed the necessity, to operate

beyond the narrow confines of class service. It embodied a practice, discourse and institutions that were critically concerned with the

development and periodic renewal of a national and social consensus

or "contract". Whatever the fractional interests and conflicts of the

bourgeoisie, its class-affiliated political practitioners and visionaries

have self-consciously sought to reconcile the interests of the class with

those of the nation and to establish overall bourgeois hegemony in

preference to naked and factional (and therefore precarious) class rule.

The other side of this is the relationship between other classes and the state. The advanced-capitalist state is, among other things, the

concretization of formal, universal political rights and freedoms,

notably those of expression, association and representation. It is the

realization of bourgeois democracy, which precludes an open or

legitimate struggle over the "fundamental" rights to and of private property, but allows and upholds a certain freedom of dissent and

formal political contestation. As such, it embodies both the formal

displacement and a displaced form of the class struggle, for which it

provides a hegemonically mediated arena. "Bourgeois democracy"

represents not just the consolidation of the narrowly defined rights fought for by the early bourgeoisie, but also the displacement and containment of rights fought for and won by the popular classes

through mass struggles and confrontations that more often than not

involved (their) bloodshed and death.

Another characteristic making up the capitalist state's relative

autonomy has been mentioned earlier. I refer here to the role of the state

as administrator and provider of a broad range of social services. This

role is by no means class-neutral, but it is more "class-structured" than

"class-instrumental". The capitalist class is often hostile to this role of

the state (because of its incursions into the economic sphere and

interference with so-called free market mechanisms) and is generally




predisposed towards restricting it as much as possible. It is a role that grew out of class struggle and continues to be the object of class contestation. In addition, the social services and related bureaucracy, programmes and personnel together have a techno-social dynamic of

their own ? they cannot be reduced to (dominant) class instruments.

On the other hand, their peculiarly "inter-class" structural and ideo

logical location tends to translate into a vital, strategic support for

bourgeois hegemony as a whole (as we shall see below).

Something more needs to be added about the role of the interven

tionist state. Although the state always claims to be intervening "in the

public interest", this role cannot be simply identified with a "collec

tivist" one. In fact, the state intervenes in ways which directly contradict one another. Under its collectivist mandate the state steps in to regulate the capitalist class and protect capitalism from the potentially destabilizing excesses of individual capitalists and corpo

rations, as well as to make "adequate" social provisions for the

subordinate classes, thus ensuring social stability. The capitalist class

is somewhat divided (between its more conservative and more liberal

wings) over how much social provision or welfare is adequate to

maintain social stability (and also how much constitutes a "humane"

quotient). But the state also constantly intervenes directly and indi

rectly on behalf of the capitalist class itself, and in this role can hardly be characterized as either collectivist or relatively autonomous. Here

too the capitalist class (or its representatives) is somewhat divided, but

this division is expressed through discourses which completely ob

scure the real issues. This is well illustrated in the United States, where

the Reagan administration, representing the "conservatives", effec

tively strengthened the hand of monopoly capital at the expense of medium and small capital (as well as labour, minorities and women of

course). Not only was this done in the name of "free trade", free

competition and free market principles ("deregulation"), but also the

state was used to directly subsidize Big Business. The "liberals", on

the other hand ? represented by the "left wing" of the Democratic

Party ?

allegedly the purveyors of Big Government, put a price, at

least rhetorically, on their support for monopoly capital (greater job




security, affirmative action, environmental protection, etc.). They are

marginally more likely to enforce and extend antitrust laws and provide infrastructural support for small, medium-sized and "minor

ity" business. The issue, therefore, is not regulation vs. deregulation, but ? regulation of whom on whose behalf? There are long-term and

short-term dimensions to this question.

THE STRUCTURAL DISLOCATIONS OF CAPITALIST SOCIETY

Having looked at one side of the equation, i.e., the relative autonomy of the bourgeois-democratic state vis-a-vis the bourgeoisie, we now

need to shift our attention to the integrative mechanisms of capitalist domination. What are the structural conditions of the development of

bourgeois hegemony and the formation of subordinate social subjects? Ironically, the integrative mechanisms at the political and ideological levels are fundamentally facilitated (for the dominant class) by the structural dislocations or fragmentation of the capitalist economic

order.

In keeping with the framework established here it should be

pointed out that it is the capitalist mode of production which first and foremost defines the possibilities of the hegemony. The social and technical relations of re/production constitute the first condition of the

hegemonic system. The capitalist mode of production is based on the extraction of surplus-value from a "free" wage labour force by the

owners and controllers of the means of production in a system which

combines socialized production with private ownership and surplus

appropriation. Capitalism has historically developed through the

symbiotically related processes of mass proletarianization of the

producers and the socialization, mechanization and commodification

of production within privately owned industry. The separation of the

producer from the means of production and his/her re-articulation with

the capitalist-owned sphere of collectivized, public production ensure

that labour-power can only be reproduced within the commodity circuit. The wage which the labourer receives represents a means of

purchase of subsistence requirements on the capitalist market. In




capital-logic terms, this wage represents the periodic exchange-value of the socially necessary labour contained in the commodities pro duced by the labourer, whose surplus labour, embodied in those same

commodities, is appropriated as surplus value by the capitalist.

The working class family, now predominantly a generative,

consumptive and emotional service unit and tending overwhelmingly towards the nuclearity of form prefigured in the families of cottars and landless day-labourers of the feudal era, is routinely reproduced on the basis of the wages brought home by wage-earning family members

(and/or wage-substitutes/supplements provided by the welfare state) and unpaid domestic labour performed mostly by women and girls. In purely capitalist terms (and controlling for qualifications of gender and "race"), the worker is now doubly "free": both in the sense of freedom from fixed, statutory obligations to (extended) kin, (landed) property and lord, and in the sense of dispossession of the means of

production. Production and consumption are now mediated through the capitalist-controlled commodity market. Producer and consumer

are now separated instances of one and the same subject, and both

instances are externally controlled. Moreover, the dispossessed sub

ject is not just dichotomized as producer/consumer, relinked by the

capitalist market (where s/he sells his/her labour and buys necessary

commodities), but is also, on dispensation from the state, a legal

personality (a citizen, a subject of universal rights and freedoms, a

government and social services category), and by virtue of the sphere bounded by the experiential circuit of re/production, civil society and

the right to privacy, a private individual as well. The fragmented sources of these various identities are hegemonic

constructs: "state", "marketplace" and "private life". These categories do not define the relations of the re/production or the internal dialec tical order; they are derived from the external dialectical order or the

social topography that is produced by relations of economic, political and cultural reproduction. Capitalist relations of re/production are

defined by contradictions of class, race and gender, whose most

concrete sites of reproduction are the family/household, the class/




ethnic group, the neighbourhood and community, the workplace, and

the public realm. State, marketplace and private life are broader and

more general categories representing the external hegemonic frames

through which social relations are mediated or within which they are contained in capitalist society. They are nonetheless more specific

categories than the state/civil society or public/private divide, the latter constituting even broader historico-ideological sites seen from

juridical and non-juridical vantage-points. Figure 1 below demon

strates the fragmented pathways through which hegemonic constructs

are processed and produced in advanced capitalist society.

Bourgeois hegemony is greatly facilitated by the separation of social life into these different spheres. As inhabitants of capitalist society, we are induced to relate to the social world and to arrive at

solutions and resolutions within these boxes, rather than to see how

relations of re/production ? of class, race and gender

? are continu

ous and integrated on all three levels. Moreover, these relations are

obscured by the institutionalized mythology of equality (of citizen

ship, legal subjectivity, commodity exchange, opportunity) that per vades all parts of the social order. The capitalist marketplace, for

example, is a hegemonic institutional site which conceals relations of

re/production. At the same time that an intrinsic property of the person, his/her labour-power, becomes objectified and alienated, s/he acquires

legal subjectivity which includes, among other "freedoms", the power of disposal of the former according to his/her will. It is because labour power becomes a commodity, something allegedly extrinsic to the person, that the legal fiction can be maintained that the relation

between capital and labour is one of (fair) exchange between commod

ity owners (seePashukanis, 1978;Balbus, 1978).Itisthefetishization and fictional equivalence of capital and labour as alienable things and

exchange values that underlie much of bourgeois hegemony, so much

so that many of the struggles against racism and sexism are fought around the objective of entering the fray of universal equivalence on

equal terms with other commodity owners and legal subjects. Mean

while, the subject, as an individual personality with particular feel

ings, values, attitudes, aesthetic tastes, cultural practices and proclivi



FIGURE 1. THE PATHWAYS OF IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION IN ADVANCED CAPITALISM ?

to

IDEOLOGICAL FORMATON/CONSTRUCT




ties, is always allowed to affirm and express all of those in the

"appropriate" setting, that of private life.

The alienation experienced as a result of the fragmentation of

economic sites (private household, labour market, consumer market, individual enterprise/place of employment, the state or "public sec

tor") is worsened by the further degradation, deskilling and fragmen tation of work itself that occurs, for the majority, in late capitalism. This phenomenon has been masterfully documented and analyzed in a now classic text by Braverman (1974). Thus, before one talks about

the power of ideological hegemony, I believe it is necessary to fully appreciate the "inherent" vulnerability and openness of the techno

social infrastructure to that power.

I propose, therefore, a historical materialist understanding of

bourgeois hegemony which integrates at a fundamental level the

perspectives of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci. (Such an integration, however, is just a beginning, since the visions of Marx and Gramsci

were limited in quite fundamental ways ?

objectively and subjec

tively ?

by the circumscribed historical and social grounds they inhabited as white, Western European, petty bourgeois males in an era

before the full economic blossoming of global imperialism.) Marx's

analysis (1967) of the alienation, objectification and commodification of labour-power and the appropriation of surplus value in an uneven

combination and interdependence of "absolute" and "relative"

forms, continues to accurately account for the driving force behind

capitalism. In my opinion, Marx' s greatest weakness lies in the textual

reduction or suppression of the multifaceted, warm-bodied historical

conditions of his principal (hist?rico-) logical categories, or, more

specifically, his failure to sufficiently account for the extent to which the "pure" proletarianization of one stratum of capitalism's oppressed

subjects was conditioned and buffered by a wider social organization of exploitation along segmented racial-ethnic, gender and interna

tional lines?lines which moreover diverged significantly from those

of the historico-logical "text".4 A second great, and not unrelated, weakness was a serious underestimation and neglect of the role of the




petty bourgeoisie or other "intermediate", non-proletarian, non-bour

geois strata.

Gramsci (1971), on the other hand, could not be accused of the latter neglect: a large part of his reflections on bourgeois hegemony

hinges on the critical role played by the middle strata in its ideological diffusion and cohesion. Gramsci's analysis of hegemony as ideologi cal and cultural domination is more chillingly relevant than ever today.

Although he focusses on superstructural and subjective factors, Gramsci never understates the working classes' "infrastructural" and "objec tive" vulnerability to hegemonic penetration as a result of the techno

economic assault on the last frontiers of their autonomy and self

determination. Indeed, Gramsci's paradigm is precisely concerned

with understanding how the capitalist hegemonic system is "organi

cally" developed through integrated economic, political and cultural

practices. It should be noted, however, that the Gramscian account, like those of most European, or Euro-American Marxists, never

comprehends the extent to which an interclass consensus around

bourgeois rule is held together by the structural divisions and ideologi cal manipulation of "race", (First World/Third World) nation, and

gender. As we look at this paradigm, we need to be aware of this

qualification.

BOURGEOIS HEGEMONY: THE GRAMSCIAN PARADIGM

Gramsci understood well the extent to which "[ideologies], as fur

thered and embodied in the hegemonic apparatus, organize society"

(Sassoon, 1987: 135). He saw intellectual activity as an organic part of not just cultural and political practice but economic practice as well.

He defined intellectuals in the broadest sense possible, as encompass

ing that "entire social stratum which exercises an organizational function in the wide sense ? whether in the field of production, or in

that of culture, or in that of political administration" (Gramsci, 1971:

97). Intellectuals, in their various, relative distances from direct

material activity, form a society's connective tissue. As Sassoon

(1987: 136) points out:




On the one hand Gramsci attempts to demystify intellectual activity perse and on the other he assigns it a specific place and importance within the complex of social relations, thus

arguing both against an idealist tradition and an economistic one.

Just as Gramsci views "the world of production as an economic

sphere which is never simply reduced to the economic but also embodies aspects of the superstructure" {ibid.: 139), he understands

"praxis" as embracing ideologico-cultural as well as politico-econom ic activity. Gramsci (cited in Sassoon, 1987: 111) argues

that not only the philosophy of praxis does not exclude

ethical-political history but that on the contrary its most recent phase of development consists precisely in the

vindication of the moment of hegemony as essential to its

conception of the State and in the 'exploitation' of the

cultural factor, of cultural activity, of a cultural front which

is as necessary as the merely economic and merely political ones.

Gramsci's analysis of the mechanisms of politico-cultural dom

ination in capitalist society has invested the term "hegemony" with a

special conceptual status in the paradigm of capitalist social reproduc tion. A more general definition can be derived from Gramsci's

analysis, one not inconsistent with the way in which the term has been

used so far. Hegemony, in this wider sense, refers to all modes or

systems of domination which have succeeded, through a politico cultural resolution, in eliciting the "consent and... collaboration" of

the dominated (Gramsci, 1971:242) as a necessary complement to the coercive option or apparatus. Hegemony thus represents the achieve

ment of a kind of social balance or equilibrium, in which the dominat ed accede or adjust to their domination. In Gramsci's particular sense

of the word, hegemony extends beyond the volatile moment of brute

force: a regime which must rely on constant and naked force has not

yet achieved "hegemony". The latter is only truly consolidated

through "successful" and self-sustaining political and ideological domination.




In no system is consent so actively and intentionally elicited as

in the capitalist one. Bourgeois hegemony is manifested in a general ized diffusion of hegemonic ideas and persuasions into all major spheres of civil society, resulting in widespread, participatory and

longlasting social conformity. It is classically predicated, according to

Gramsci, on the existence of a "proper" or "organic" relationship between state and civil society, and a ruling class whose control of the

state is pre-conditioned and reinforced by the victorious exercise of

"leadership" over a sizeable bloc of classes at the level of civil society ? and whose political supremacy, therefore, spans and interlocks

both levels (see especially Gramsci, 1971: 206-9).

According to Gramsci, there are two dimensions to the suprem

acy of a class: domination and direction. The ruling class exercises

"domination" over its enemies and "intellectual and moral leadership" over its allies (ibid.: 57-8). The essence of hegemony lies in the ruling class' success in turning its enemies into its allies. In capitalist society, this success is intimately connected with the creation and expansion of a shared civil society or secular community, real and imagined. The

two moments of class rule, expressed by Gramsci (1971: 263) as

"hegemony protected by the armour of coercion", are different dimen

sions ?f a unity. Sassoon (1987: 112) points out that, for Gramsci:

The political is not defined by, it cannot be understood in terms of, only one of its attributes, of force or consent. It is

both force and consent, authority and hegemony, violence

and 'civilt?'... [He] distinguishes between the two aspects

yet never separates them completely.

The modern State "rules" through coercion and "juridical gov ernment" and through hegemony in civil society. Hegemony, there

fore, must be actively established and consolidated at all three levels

of the social system: the economic, the political and the cultural. The

class which is seeking to achieve hegemony must advance beyond its

"economic-corporative" interests and bring about

not only a union of economic and political aims, but also

intellectual and moral unity, posing all the questions




around which the struggle rages not on a corporate but on

a 'universal' plane, and thus creating the hegemony of a

fundamental social group over a series of subordinate

groups. (Gramsci, 1971: 181-2).

Such leadership is consolidated through the formation of an

organic (but somewhat shifting) "historical bloc", comprising sec

tions of different classes, and converging around a broad ideological and programmatic agenda which manipulates, concentrates and inte

grates, in "universal" codes, a series of appeals to multiple class

fractions. Ultimate success is based on "the winning over to this bloc

of a significant section of the popular classes" (Hall, 1984b: 11). For this to happen, Sassoon (1987: 119) points out,

The interests of the subordinate groups must have some

concrete and not simply ideological weight; otherwise the interests of the dominant class would be merely economic

corporative. The definition of the highest development of a class consists in its ability to represent universal inter ests... Gramsci transforms the notion of politics so that it can comprehend a national-popular dimension. Politics can no longer be reduced, within Gramsci' s problematic, to

the immediate economic-corporative interests of a class.

The highest development of bourgeois hegemony results in an

"integral" and fully "extended" State (i.e., extending into civil soci

ety). According to Sassoon (1987: 123), fascist or authoritarian socialist states are not integral States in the Gramscian sense, since

"neither [has] surpassed more than minimally the economic, coercive

functions of a State which enjoys a restricted positive hegemony".

Thus, Gramsci sees political and cultural practice as an integral

part of the bourgeoisie's transformative activity and mission. The

political and cultural incorporation of the working classes into the

capitalist system is a necessary complement to their economic incor

poration. The capitalist state is not just passively or formally represen tative in a multi-class sense, but is in fact actively and aggressively "educative" in terms of cultivating an inter-class consensus around




bourgeois hegemony. One of the greatest mistakes opponents to

bourgeois rule can make is to not fully understand this. Gramsci (1971: 247) explains:

In reality, the State must be conceived of as an "educator", in as much as it tends precisely to create a new type or level of civilization. Because one is acting essentially on eco

nomic forces, reorganizing and developing the apparatus of economic production, creating a new structure, the conclu sion must not be drawn that superstructural factors should be left to themselves, to develop spontaneously, to a

haphazard and sporadic germination. The State in this

field, too, is an instrument of "nationalization", of accelera

tion and of Taylorization.

A key element in the struggle for the "hearts and minds" of the

people is the popularization, "massification", and dissemination of

hegemonic ideology. Hegemonic ideology refers particularly to those longstanding "ruling ideas" which have been systematized, institu

tionalized and popularly packaged, and have filtered through civil

society across class boundaries. These ideas come to be incorporated into class-related ideological repertoires in idiosyncratic and pragmat ic ways, but in ways which nonetheless leave their basic assumptions

unchallenged ? even to the point where they are converted into

"beliefs" or "truths", or imagined rights and freedoms (Gramsci, 1971 :

242). The effectiveness of hegemonic ideology can often be judged by its ability to accommodate and transform or re-direct the intent of

oppositional forms.

Hegemonic ideology is no mere direct expression of ruling class

consciousness (though it may be that as well); it comprises, most

importantly, differently mediated forms of ruling class philosophy. A distinction can be made for example between dominant ideology as an

expression of "spontaneous" and "private" ruling class consciousness, as "separated theory" or systematized and organized philosophy, as

"mass" or "popular" hegemony, and as law and institution. Ruling class ideology attains truly "hegemonic" proportions (i.e., in the




integral or extended sense) to the extent that it is internalized within the forms and content of working class culture. As Gramsci's biogra

pher, Fiori (1970: 238) points out:

The philosophy of the ruling class passes through a whole tissue of complex vulgarizations to emerge as "common

sense": that is, the philosophy of the masses, who accept the morality, the customs, the institutionalized rules of

behaviour of the society they live in.

How has the ruling class managed to win the consent of the

subordinate classes in this way? In addressing this question, we get back to Gramsci's understanding of political and cultural domination as a praxis: it does not "happen" spontaneously, much as it is

manifested in the spontaneous conformity of "common sense". For

Gramsci, this is where the role of the intellectuals comes in. The

intellectuals (of the bourgeoisie) are the organizers and articulators of

the hegemony ; they provide the "connecting fibres within and between areas of social reality" (Sassoon, 1987: 134). According to Gramsci,

every new class coming into prominence creates alongside itself

various strata of intellectuals who serve as its deputies in all areas of

social reproduction. "The capitalist entrepreneur creates alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political economy, the organizers of a new culture, of a new legal system" (Gramsci,

1971:5). The intellectuals give to their patron class "homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in

the social and political fields" (ibid.). As "superstructural" functionaries, intellectuals always have a

somewhat mediated relationship to production, wherever they are in

the social structure, but (a) they occupy a range of distances from the

actual production process, and (b) they span a range of classes. While intellectuals tend to be drawn overwhelmingly from the middle and upper registers of the social hierarchy, they are not exclusive to those

levels. Thus, "intellectual" does not denote a particular objective class

position, but a class function. Gramsci appears to uphold a relative

autonomy between the "technical" and "ideological" dimensions of




the class-related intellectual function, so that the functionary's role is

not necessarily ideologically explicit (or even consciously collabora tive). (See Sassoon, 1987: 134-146).

Gramsci makes a distinction between organic and traditional

intellectuals. This is a very complex part of his analysis and its

parameters shift somewhat. However, certain aspects of the distinc

tion are basic. 'Traditional" intellectuals are a relatively autonomous,

relatively transhistorical social category of self-styled professional thinkers: "men of letters, philosophers, artists" (Gramsci, 1971: 9). These intellectuals emerge from strata of the petty and middle bour

geoisies "which traditionally 'produce' intellectuals" (ibid.: 11). Traditional intellectuals (which would include religious clergy, uni

versity professors, journalists, writers, artists, teachers) typically serve as strong hegemonic supports, notwithstanding their self-iden

tification and appearance as independent of dominant economic

interests and as the specially mandated curators, conservators, inter

preters and reproducers of a historically accumulated body of suppos

edly independent and ideologically neutral or supra-class thought. Thus, not only do these intermediate groups tend to be the producers of ideological diplomats of the ruling class par excellence (because of

their subjective and objective "inter-class" location), but, also, capi talist hegemonic ideology in particular becomes imbued, through their mediation, with a strong flavour of middle-class "neutrality", and

as such tends to be strongly persuasive.

"Organic" intellectuals "belong as a category to the same histor

ical time as a new class which creates and elaborates them" (Sassoon,

1987:138). In this sense, it appears that traditional intellectuals can be

won over to an organic role. Organic intellectuals are those who

provide direct organizational, moral and intellectual leadership from

an integral, non-separated location within the ambit of the economi

cally and politically functioning class. Organic intellectuals "of the

bouregoisie might include different categories of technicians, techno

crats, bureaucrats, managers and politicians as well as media workers,

teachers, social workers, psychologists and officers of the judicial and




coercive systems. This group includes all those who organize, ma

nipulate and manage the productive forces of the society?human and

non-human, infrastructural and superstructural ? in a particular

social direction. Gramsci notes that the class which is "developing towards dominance" tries to assimilate and conquer the traditional

intellectuals ideologically, and does this all the more successfully to the extent that it simultaneously develops its own organic intellectuals

(Gramsci, 1971: 10). The practices of the intellectuals are thus critical to the develop

ment and maintenance of bourgeois hegemony. They help to bring the state and civil society into close conformity with each other by educating and adapting the popular classes to the principles and demands of "the Law" and the various hegemonic institutions, and by

winning them over to a "conception of the world" which belongs to the

rulers. This ideological incorporation and homogenization of the

population is the superstructural counterpart to (and partly the result of) the accelerated development of the infrastructural forces, as

Gramsci (1971: 247) has noted.

Formal education is the critical means of production ? or

cultural capital, to use a contemporary term ? of the society's intellectuals. Gramsci saw this cultural capital as having an objective, historical and scientific core which needed to be socialized and made universally available, whatever its subjective trappings. He observed

that the social gradations among intellectuals in the capitalist system

corresponded closely to those of the hierarchical range of educational

institutions from which they graduated. Gramsci thus addressed the

problem of educational hegemony primarily in terms of access rather than curriculum, although a basic philosophy about curriculum can be inferred from his writings (see Entwistle, 1979).

For Gramsci, the educational system was hegemonic in so far as

it segregated and streamed students into class-based institutions, thus

denying working class students access to the classical-humanist

philosophical and scientific heritage which represented the accumu

lated wisdom of the ages or "the enriched patrimony of the past"




(Gramsci, cited in Entwistle, 1979:69). Gramsci felt strongly that the educational system should not patronize working class students by

sacrificing the need for training in intellectual discipline and the transmission of an established body of historical knowledge and information, both of which were necessary cognitive resources for a

critical engagement with bourgeois hegemony. The working classes

could only truly contest bourgeois hegemony on the grounds of a

higher, universal, rational culture and intellectual development. Gramsci essentially supported schooling for the working classes to the extent that it provided these critical cognitive resources ? in the only

way possible, through instruction and intellectual training ? and

rejected it to the extent that it separated (objective) instruction from education. He also supported schooling which combatted the "folk loric" basis of "common sense", replacing it with "good- sense"

(Entwistle, 1979). While Gramsci's failure to address the transmission of Western

philosophical traditions (i.e., in the education of children and adoles

cents) as ideological inculcation is problematic in a racist and sexist

society, his critique of fascist educational reform in Italy is instructive here. Gramsci denounced the new libertarian, essentialist pedagogical

philosophy that emerged in Fascist Italy as "educativity" rather than education. The 1923 educational reforms stressed spontaneity, free

dom and spiritual development and the celebration of experience over the transmission of "objective" knowledge and information (see Entwistle, 1979:18-110). According to Entwistle (iW?.:82), Gramsci saw a connection

between political authoritarianism and the educational

dogma of free pupil activity, with its denial of teaching as concerned with transmission of information which needs

to be acquired by the learner as a cognitive resource

necessary for critical engagement with the educated and

well-informed adversary, and for the creation of a cultural

and political counter-hegemony.




Such educational dogma "[makes] the learner the prisoner of the present and, if the political present is a tyranny, [leaves] him without cognitive resources to question the propaganda that what exists is the

best of all possible worlds..." (ibid.:&3).

Gramsci's preoccupations can be seen therefore as a fundamen tal critique of a bourgeois educational system which shifts, contempo

raneously and cyclically, between two positions: the conservatism of

rigid, hierarchical curricula and segregated schooling and the liberal ism of an open curriculum which ingenuously (and not so ingenu

ously) celebrates experience and spontaneity and stresses individual

choice and responsibility. Both systems "inherently" disadvantage the working classes, who have been cognitively deprived in social terms.

Gramsci appears less preoccupied than Althusser (1971:123-173) with the school as primarily an Ideological State Apparatus no matter what its instructional base, perhaps because he is more optimistic about the working class student's ability to resist ideological incorpo ration and "critically engage" with prevailing ideological interpreta tions, once s/he has acquired the necessary cognitive tools. (Indeed,

Gramsci stressed that, whatever the hegemonic intent, learning was

not a passive activity.) As such, Gramsci sees the school as both a

necessary site of human social reproduction and a site of class (and

gender, and "racial") contestation. He separates out cognitive instruc

tion and learning, as socially necessary practices, from their hegemonic moment, and thus avoids Althusser's error of appearing to reduce

them to the latter. At the same time, his analysis of bourgeois

hegemony assures us that he understands public schooling to be

ideological (in the hegemonic sense), but it can be neither wished away nor assumed to be all-powerful: it must be critically engaged.

This position is in keeping with Gramsci's profoundly anti essentialist belief that alternative hegemonies cannot be fashioned out

of thin air or on the narrow terrain of (class, gender or ethnic) "folklore" and common sense but must grow out of a fully extended

and grounded counter-hegemonic practice.




CONCLUSION

In this article, I have tried to demonstrate the complexity and contra

dictory nature of the advanced capitalist state. These are primarily reflected in the (apparent and real) counterposition between the

bourgeoisie's pre-emptive monopoly of social property and the uni versal and shared realm of civil society which confers legal equiva lence and subjecthood on all citizens. The juridico-ideological prin ciples of legal equality are applied in the compartmentalized institu tional sites of different social practices, serving to fracture and alienate

(subordinate group) social identity and deflect the fundamental con

tinuity of relations of class, "race", and gender. At the same time, their

application, through the practices of Gramsci's "intellectuals", serves

to diffuse and consolidate bourgeois hegemony throughout the social

system and to incorporate subordinate groups within its ambit. In my opinion, Gramsci's analyses provide a critical complement to Marx's

political economy at the theoretical level (since Marx's historical case

studies, as well as his philosophical and informal political writings, are well known).51 see the strength of Gramsci's contributions in two

fundamental areas:

i) He problematized and rendered visible the processes of ideologi cal and cultural incorporation as a critical, relatively autonomous

and deliberate part of the capitalist project, reflecting, moreover, the attainment of an advanced and stable form of capitalism.

ii) He produced a new concept of revolutionary or emancipatory politics as necessarily involving a protracted and fundamental

process of cultural contestation in the context of an engaged and

pro-active counter-hegemonic movement.

NOTES

1. This is precisely the proposition addressed at great length in a recent book

(McDermott, 1991).

2. See Cain and Hunt (eds., 1979) for a discussion of this distinction in Marx.




3. "Reproduction" is the term I have chosen to designate the combined activities of goods-production and human-reproduction. Goods-production is a general reference to the production and servicing of consumer and producer goods. Human-reproduction is a combined reference to biological reproduction (which, strictly speaking, includes childbearing and breastfeeding) and non

biological reproduction (which includes childrearing, the day-to-day physical and emotional nurturance and "servicing" of human beings, typically within a

family household, and household maintenance activities). In most pre-capital ist societies, both goods-production and human-reproduction were confined within a single extended "domestic sphere", thus generally conceived. In

capitalist society, there is a separation between human-reproduction in an immediate sense, which becomes the exclusive preoccupation of an attenuated

private family/domestic sphere, and goods-production, which now takes place in the public commodity sphere. However, the boundaries are somewhat

ambiguous. The processing of certain subsistence goods for immediate con

sumption that routinely takes place in the home, referred to in capital-logic terms as the "transformation of exchange-values into use-values", can conceiv

ably be regarded as part of goods-production. Also, the physical and emotional

"servicing" of human beings which takes place in the public sphere (in anywhere from restaurants to counselling offices) could be seen as part of

human-reproduction.

4. See the polemic between Poulantzas (1973; 1976) and Miliband (1969; 1973).

5. See Green (1980^ for a discussion of the general amnesia (or at least lack of

prominence) surrounding the question of colonialism in analyses of capitalism as a mode of production in the work of "Western" Marxists, beginning, to some extent, with Marx hin)self.

6. Examples of these are, respectively: Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1964), and with F. Engels, The German Ideology (1970) and On Colonialism

(1976).

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