Politics Week Two

Introduction
Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault make sense of complexities of modern forms of social life.
For Foucalut power is everywhere and power relations are embedded in social life.

Gramsci
To Gramsci , the political party has to main functions.
1. Formulate a national-popular collective will of which the modern prince organises
2. To realize intellectual and moral reforms
Will is the basis of all political action and can be meaningful only when it is the will of the
collective. Gramsci says the collective will is the operative awareness of historical necessity.
History evolves through meaningful and willful actions of men before scienti c Lawes and
‘positivist fatalism’. Gramsci is against philosophical positivism in which he thinks social energies
abstracted from man and from will. Incomprehensible. Gramsci clearly rejects the kind of
voluntarism by Thomas Carlyle, that says “hereos or supermen that make history”. Voluntarism
has negative connotations for Gramsci. For Gramsci the will of man is only meaningful when it is
the collective will or more precisely the compact will of a class. Will generates power of action
when it is united and coherent will of a class.

Going to Machiavelli, Gramsci saw him as strategist. The rst element of politics is that there are
the rulers and the ruled. In other words there is a binary relation of power will always persist.
Gramsci borrowed from Macheveli that power relations are embedded in relations of force. His
conception of a three dimensional power relations that can be distinguished in those relations of
force in the society.
1. A relation of social forces independent of human will.
2. A relation of political forces. This refers to the degree of homogeneity, self-
consciousness and politicisation of the social classes.
3. A relation of military forces aka politico-military.
Society consists of relations of force between social classes, upon and around mans self
awareness and against the States politico-military apparatuses.

Gramsci - Philosophy and Ideology

All men are philosophers however some people may reach the most advanced good thought if
they can di erentiate between common and good sense. Common sense means incoherent set of
general held assumptions while good sense is the philosophy of criticism and the superseding of
religion and common sense. How does one reach good sense? By learning to think coherently
and critically. Coherence and criticism according to Gramsci is the only way to avoid conformism.

Gramsci philospophy and politics is inseparable. Common sense is a idealogocial construct

which is accepted because its discourse that follows in “normal times”. The diagnosis and the
critque of the common sense is at the heart of ‘Antonio Gramsci’s “philosophy of praxis”. The
philosophy of praxis is seen as an extension of Marxist-Lenninst tradition which tried to put
socialism on a non-utopian, materialist basis. There must be a unity of theory and pracitice in
which he terms as praxis. This uni cation can only be realised in the sphere of ideologies. One
must be able to develop a critical understanding of self , must be aware of his part of a
hegomonic force. The aim of political philosophy is to lead a cultural battle to transform the
popular mentalities and to di use the philosophical innovations which will demonstrate
themselves to be historically true. Philosophy according Gramsci is revealed as a practical
instrument for organisation and action.

For Gramsci idealogy has to be analysed historically in terms philosophy as praxis, as a

superstructure. Ideologies are accepted as historical necessities to organise and direct human
masses. They have psychological validity and determine the consciousness of men and this
determination may have long lasting e ect vis the structural relations. This is Gramsci’s major
contribution to traditional marxism. Forces of popular beliefs and saw the ideology and
superstructural relations as more or less independent arenas of struggle.

Man is the ‘complex of social relations’ . Man becomes by changing with social relations. Thus
man is composed of three elements:
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 1. Individual
2. Other men
3. The natural world
Power in Gramscian analysis resides in ideology.

Gramsci - Hegemony and the State

Gramsci de nes the state as ‘the entire complex and practical and theatrical activities with which
the ruling class not only justi es and maintains it dominance, but mangers to win the active
consent of those over whom it rules`. The main problematic of the state is to incorporate the will
of every single individual into the collective will turning their necessary consent and collarbation
from corscion tp freedom. This means the state functions to create conformist citizens.

Law in Foucauldian terms not only restricts and repress but also produces and reward. Its
reinforces ‘praise-worthy’ actions as much as criminal actions. Law therefore operates at
structural level. Gramsci classi es the activities of civil institutions as “legally neutral”. The
bourgeoisie did something other classes hadn’t done in history which is to expand their
domination idealogically. It assimilated the entire social network to its own cultural and economic
ideology. The bourgeoisie used the sate apparatus to realise idealogical domination.

In Gramscian terms hegemony is the idealogical predominance of bourgeois values and norms
over the subordinate classes which accept them as normal. To analyse the concept of hegemony
you have to di erentiate between civil and political society. Civil society refers to insitutions that
seem outside the sphere of state control aka private. And political society is is what we ordinary
call the state. Civil society us the mechanism of domination which functions through consensus
whereas political society functions through force.

Althusser: A materialist conception of Ideology

Ideology according to Althusser is real and determines the way a human being acts, thinks,
produces. That is the reason why ideology is “material”, it is directly linked to the production
process. The means through which ideology materialises is through the ISA.

ISA vs RSA. The ISA uses ideology to voluntarily submit the masses. Which requires the
mechanism of displine in which Foucalt says is used to ensure conformity and docility of people.
The education system, church, media and family are examples of ISA. Althusser rejects the idea
that man can function outside ideology and its domain. Ideology in Martin Carnot’s words
recognise individuals as subjects, subjects them to the ‘subjects’ of ideology itself.

Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault is a French historian who tried to theory about power. Power for Foucault is
everywhere and man can not escape the power relations that make up society.

The main di erence between Foucault and Gramsci is that Gramsci is a marxist and locates
power in some centralised agency while Foucault follows Nietzschean tradition and di uses
power relations into the very grain of individuals.

Foucault is generally concerned with the question of ‘how’ and concentrates bringing light to
power relations ;locating their position and nding out point of applications and methods used.
Hes research is to see how man is turnt into a subject through power relations.

For Foucalt man can be an individual as long as he is conscious of power relations surrounding
him, he can therefore resist them. Foucault is a humanist in the Althuserian sense because he can
give weight to human will and the capacity to avoid these objectivising power relations. According
to Foucault there are three types of struggle. Struggle against exploitation, domination, and
subjections has become more important. All three are apparent in todays social system. Foucault
de nes the State as a central source of power. He maintains that the State has both totalling and
individuating power. Similar to Gramsci’s theory about hegemony, Foucault says the Western
State has intergrated old techniques of power of Christianity.

The repressive hypothesis and the state

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 The State for Foucault means an entity with legitimate power of coercion. Both Gramsci and
Foucalt are against the use of ‘The repressive hypothesis’ that is the political society as a locus pf
power. The di erence between Gramsci and Foucalt is not in what they’re saying but in how they
say it. Foucault is distancing himself from Marxism.

Power and Ideology

The concept of power is everywhere in Foucault analyses as well as in his theory. He de nes
power as the name that one attributes to a couple strategical situation in a particular society.
Power is omnipresent. Similar to Gramsci, Foucault also sees power as a realtionoof force that
only exists in action.

1. Power is not something that is acquired, seized or shared. It is exercised from many di erent
points.
2. Power relations are not exterior to other relations (economic for example)
3. Power comes from below, there is no binary opposition between the rulers and the ruled
4. Power relations are both intentional and non subjective.

So the main di erence between Foucault and Gramsci on the topic of power is that Foucault
believes that power is not localised in some points Gramsci says that it is. Ideology for Foucault
is the level of ‘speculative discourse’ that cannot explain the great technologies of power. For him
its abstract notion such as ideology can not explain the real e ects of power relations in the
society. Thus for Foucault there is no human subject whose consciousness is more prone to the
e ects of idealogical power than is his body to the e ects of physical force.

Foucault's concept of governmentality, explored in various writings including his book "Security,
Territory, Population," examines how power operates through institutions and practices of
governance. In this framework, power is not just exercised through coercion but also through
techniques of governing individuals and populations. Foucault analyzes the emergence of modern
forms of governmentality, tracing its roots in practices of discipline and surveillance. He highlights
the role of knowledge production, particularly disciplines like economics and statistics, in shaping
governmental strategies. Foucault's exploration of governmentality sheds light on how power
operates in complex and often subtle ways, in uencing behaviors and shaping social norms
through diverse mechanisms of control and regulation.
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