7 Civil Society, Political Society and the Reproduction of Class Structures.

Apoorva Gautam

Civil society, political society and reproduction of class structure

The concepts of civil society and political society have been central to the discourse of political sociology and political philosophy. In the context of understanding modern state forms, these concepts appear as terrains upon which contestations between the state and society are played out. This module attempts to understand the debates that underlie this contested relationship bringing to the fore important ideas from both the liberal and Marxist traditions in Western political thought. In section one, we will engage with state-society relationship as presented from a liberal perspective. In section two, we shall attempt to understand how Marxist philosophy and more specifically the ideas of Antonio Gramsci explicate these concepts and their important relationships. Finally, in the last section we will look at Partha Chatterjee’s more recent work on these concepts and the debates around it. Similarly, we will also consider how the stat-society relationship can be used to understand aspects of the workings of the civil society and the Sate in the Indian context.

Section- I

Early liberal thought on civil society and political society:

Among the 17th century philosophers, Locke’s conception of civil and political society follows from the theory of social contract, which lays out the principle of individuals forsaking some of their liberties to the sovereign state in return of protection of other liberties. This move from ‘natural’ social order where individuals defend their own person and property to a system where consented-upon authorities establish and enforce the rule of law gives birth to civil society. This civil society, made up of consenting individuals, is at odds with monarchy. Unlike Locke, Rousseau sees the early period of state of ‘nature’ as a romantic age of peace and absence of possessions. As societies get established, contestations over property require the rule of law. Civil society gets established in order to protect property and maintain peace. Tocqueville, in the 19th century, sharpened the discourse on civil society by arguing that it is this that fosters a community in an otherwise individuated, modern life. It can be effective to keep a check on despotism and allows individual liberties to flourish (Woldring; 1998).In these discussions of civil society speak at a generalised level of the public within a sovereign. But they mark the transition towards modern societies with legal and executive systems. At the core of these ideas are individuals carrying rights and liberties and subject to an established system of law, an important aspect of liberal thought. Further in this discussion, we will look at Gramsci’s conception of civil and political society wherein the central aspect is not liberal individuals but systems of state that maintain class structure.

Section-II

Marxist perspective: coercion and consent

Before discussing Gramsci’s ideas on the subject, just a short note on Marx’s idea of civil society: civil society is seen as characteristic of modern bourgeois society in Marx where all previous ties of community, guilds, etc. have been broken down. Individuals entering economic competition form the civil society with abstracted objectives and with a clear distance and non-interference from the state. Here the economic role of individuals takes primacy. This relation to economic relations- to the base- differentiates civil society from political society where the latter is seen as a part of the superstructure along with aspects of ideology, culture, etc.

According to Gramsci, the role of civil society is more complex. It is in the economic, non-state sphere of the civil where hegemony of the ruling class is organised1. More than the distinction between state and civil society, for Gramsci, the relationship between the two is important. Civil society consolidates the hegemony of the state and through that, the hegemony of the ruling classes. The state consolidates the hegemony of the ruling classes by its coercive powers. The aspect of coercive power is captured by the term political society in Gramsci For Gramsci too, civil society exists in the base i.e. constituted by economic relations and political society as an aspect of the coercive power of state exists in the superstructure. But moving beyond this differentiation, it is both political and civil society that gives the state its distinct nature of exercising coercion and also building consent. This operation of hegemony is important to legitimise the reproduction of the class structure (2007) Like Gramsci, another Marxist thinker concerned with how class structure is reproduced in society is Althusser. He took a closer look at ideology to explain how ‘conditions for production are reproduced’, or how the structures that enable capitalist production get reproduced. The state in all of this enables the hold of the ideology that justifies these structures. The state ensures this through Repressive State Apparatus of punishment, violence, etc. and Ideological State Apparatus of the church, school, etc. which consolidate consent for this ideology (1971). The central point in bringing these thinkers is to bring out the question of reproduction of class structure in society.

1Hegemony is the alliance of classes in a society through which they assume a dominating role. Crucially, hegemony is established through the “power of ideology and values” which reproduce the inequalities between classes, cover up the contradictions amongst them. To put it simply, hegemony ‘manufactures consent’ for the prevailing class structure and power relations and justifies its reproduction. this is the terrain of ideas and values that drive capitalism, apart from economic exploitation (www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/gramsci-and-hegemony/ last accessed on 01-03-2016) (2007). Civil and political societies together form aspects of the state and its apparatus through which hegemony is exercised, although they must not be understood as the same or subsumed under the state.

Going back to civil society, a useful example for understanding its operation is the media. Especially in the contemporary moment, more than ever before, media disseminates the ideas of consumerism, militarisation, conflict, politics, etc. in ways that endorse the ideology of the ruling class. Opinions of critique have to sustain on independent initiatives. Today we are one step ahead in the process of media generating opinions and consent as the ownership of these media houses too lies with the same minority of corporations which form the ruling class.

Section-III

Partha Chatterjee: Political Society

Now the discussion will move to the work of Partha Chatterjee. Chatterjee has worked with the concepts of political society and civil society to understand contemporary politics in India. The overarching frame is of mapping trajectory of modernity and democracy in India with a special focus on politics at the local level. As mentioned earlier, the cornerstone of liberal thought and also of modern nation states, organised by capitalism, are sovereignty of the state and rights of individuals. Chatterjee argues that rights of citizens in modern nation states are defined by ideas of freedom and equality. These two ideas were mediated by property and community. While property addressed questions of freedom and equality among individuals, the community was to address these questions at a collective level: “propertyand community defined the conceptual parameters within which the political discourse of capital, proclaiming liberty and equality, could flourish.” (Chatterjee; 2004: 30). The civil society, individuated by such citizens, was to check absolutism and help society progress from pre-modern ideologies. Especially on the question of transition to capitalism in the non-Western world, even from a Marxist perspective, the role of civil society in advancement towards modernity and protection of freedom and community was recognised.

Chatterjjee, however, brings out the distinction between citizens and populations. While citizens are the theoretical category of right bearing individuals who participate in the activities of the state, populations are the ‘governed’, vast groups of ‘classifiable’ people who are provided welfare by governmental tools which are also vast networks of surveillance. This shift, which is borrowed from Foucault, marks the trajectory of the 20th century where participatory citizenship has been replaced by technologies of governing. What effect does this have on democratic politics?

It is here that the distinction between civil society and political society becomes relevant. Civil society, for Chatterjjee, is understood in the Marxist conception of civil society as ‘bourgeois society’, “using it in the Indian context as an actually existing arena of institutions and practices inhabited by a relatively small section of the people whose social locations can be identified with a fair degree of clarity. In terms of the formal structure of the state as given by the constitution and the laws, all of society is civil society; everyone is a citizen with equal rights and therefore to be regarded as member of civil society.” (2004: 38).

However, this is an ideal description. The actual arena of contestations between the state and populations is one where the populations have only a tenuous presence as citizens and do not quite engage with the state as members of civil society, and yet are not completely outside the domain of politics. Tools of govern mentality like policies and various government agencies bring them into a relationship with the state. These are not relations as defined by constitutional mandates of civil society and yet they have gathered a process and norms around them over the years.

Chatterjjee takes us to the distinction brought out by the work of Subaltern Studies in the anti-colonial movement between the organised elite domain and unorganised subaltern domain, the latter of which was explained away as ‘pre-political’. To understand the dynamics between the elite and subaltern politics in contemporary times, he introduces the concept of political society. Gramsci also uses this term but according to Chatterjee, while he equates it with the state initially, he later goes into interventions which are beyond the ‘domain of the state’.

The shift of state towards being a facilitator of welfare through governmental tools and sometimes even aided by non-governmental agencies, and shifting terrain of political mobilisation which are even transient, like cultural events, religious events, popular culture, etc., have together enabled the emergence of political society. Often, it even goes against the grain of modern practices and ideologies. An example of this is mobilisation of people often squatting in urban areas, forming slums. Their struggle with municipal authorities against demolitions, the shadowy role of political parties in these struggles, and the resilience of the people in rebuilding their lives and constantly negotiating with authorities are clearly different from the bourgeois nature of civil society and yet is a political contestation with the state.

To clarify with an example, he describes a shanty town near a railway track in Kolkata. This was settled soon after the Bengal famine of 1943 when many people came from rural parts and settled there. After the partition, many refugees from the then East Pakistan also came and settled there. Slowly some men started to take leadership in organising the place and also charging rent from new settlers. These leaders also established political links and prevented attempts by the local administration at demolishing the shacks. By the 80s, while further attempts at demolishing the shacks by railway authorities were foiled, a local welfare association also got formed. Through this, funds were collected; medical centres, libraries, etc. were opened up. The government scheme for health and literacy of children was introduced with of its centres being opened in the colony. The collective which is formed in the colony often acquires services from the state and its agencies through methods that fall in the domain of ‘illegal’. The tapping of electricity is one such example. Chatterjee argues here that while at one level the struggle is to be recognised as a population group which is then the target of state policies, there is another “equally crucial part of the politics of the governed: to give to the empirical form of a population group the moral attributes of a community” (2004: 57). While comprising of communities across castes and the people living in the settlement providing easy categories of govern mentality, they see themselves as one big family. The association that they have formed by no means is a civil society group with legitimate demands from the state. The place itself is a settlement colony: the basic premise of this place is based on illegality. The claims made on behalf of the association invoke the responsibility of the state to provide basic services to its people. These are clearly political claims but they are also dependent on many contextual factors.

Many of the examples of political society come from struggles of populations for livelihood. In a 2008 article, Chatterjee classifies peasantry, artisans and petty producers in the informal sector as comprising of political society. He argues that in the last three decades the role of the state has shifted towards a more penetrative one, providing basic facilities like health, education, etc. either itself or through other agencies. This expectation from the state is accompanied by a greater dispossession of those who form the class of peasantry and artisans through the process of capitalist growth and accumulation2. Schemes like MGNERS, the Public Distribution System of food for the poor, mid-day meal schemes for children in schools, etc. are all efforts towards this reversal, in his formulation.

While the state cannot provide all of its population with facilities there is also a calculation of ‘political expediency’ in the provision of basic facilities. Members of political society then, “have to pick their way through this uncertain terrain by making a large array of connections outside the group—with other groups in similar situations, with more privileged and influential groups, with government functionaries, perhaps with political parties and leaders. They often make instrumental use of the fact that they can vote in elections… But the instrumental use of the vote is possible only within a field of strategic politics” (2004: 40- 41). Chatterjee clearly sets this apart from the bourgeois civil society with its legal/ constitutional space. He sees this as the terrain of politics that do not form ‘citizens’ of the state but its ‘population’. Drawing parallels from the Subaltern Studies distinction of elite and subaltern anti-colonial politics, the engagement with modernity which is the bedrock of civil society gets complicated here with mobilisations which are more communitarian and along the lines of not just strict party lines but many overlaps of culture, kinship, religion, popul ar culture, etc.

2 He borrows this construction of ‘non-transition’ or reversal of capitalist accumulation as brought about by the state through its services from KalyanSanyal.

In more recent formulations, Chatterjee has argued that interests of political society such as that of landed elite, local traders and producers play a role in electoral mobilisations. This stands along with the influence of a capitalism-dominated bourgeois civil society. As such, the older model of agricultural elite, the capitalists and the bureaucracy as the three dominant classes operating in a space “supervised by a relatively autonomous state” has been replaced by the dominance of corporate capitalist class in the post-liberalisation phase. To this extent, Chatterjee, associates civil society with the corporate capitalist class and political society with non-corporate, informal sector: “Civil society is where corporate capital is hegemonic, whereas political society is the space of management of non-corporate capital” (2008: 58). The material conditions and aspirations of the middle and elite classes is linked to the rise of corporate capital, as he argues, and go along claims of, “legal rights of proper citizens, to impose civic order in public places and institutions and to treat the messy world of the informal sector and political society with a degree of intolerance” (2008: 58).

The non-corporate, political society also has its routes and processes of mobilisation mostly for livelihood issues, operating within the market and government regulations. Many leaders in these groups are potential local politicians and they work with innovation. Such groups are more powerful in urban areas, as compared to rural areas. On the other hand, these groups and their mobilisations still exclude many. Chatterjee particularly refers to non-agrarian lower castes and adivasis who depend on forests, “Political society and electoral democracy have not given these groups the means to make effective claims on govern mentality. In this sense, these marginalised groups represent an outside beyond the boundaries of political society” (2008: 61). He concedes that while these groups mobilise on grounds of discrimination and difficulties in sustaining livelihood, they do not envision structural changes and transformation of political power. The only group that is envisioning transformations is the capitalist class to which other must ‘respond’ as they move from stagnation to uninhibited accumulation. To summarise, in contemporary India, civil society and political society are bound by the logic of the state reversing capitalist growth and accumulation by means of ‘social sector expenditures’, through which the state partially sustains the livelihood of the poor and the overall system of capitalist accumulation is negotiated and maintained.

Critique of Chatterjee’s formulation of political society

Several scholars have engaged Chatterjee’s conceptualisation of civil and political society, especially as it attempts to theorise the contemporary moment of local level politics in India. The following section will look at some the responses to his arguments.

Sarkar (2012) brings out the emphasis on the transgression of the ‘legal’ in Chatterjee as a problematic. While the legal system is full of contradictions, the excessive emphasis on it and its transgressions cannot be the sole routes of doing politics. This extends into the emphasis on legal and statist categories of understanding in Chatterjee. It is only in negotiations with the state that the terrain of civil or political society is recognised, whereas the emphasis of the Foucauldian perspective (governmentality) is also as much about the self (and subjectivity) in this negotiation. Also, the arguments towards political society do not look at people’s resistance which have taken a legal route and yet moved towards state’s guarantee of livelihoods and dignity as in the case of legislations like NREGA, RTI, etc.

Baviskar and Sundar (2008) problematize the oppositional categories set up by Chatterjjee as in corporate- non-corporate, civil society- political society, etc. in the case of accumulation of capital, the interlink ages between corporate and mercantile (instead of non-corporate) capital is not one of opposition but mutual support. In fact, particularly in the sector of welfare measures for agriculture, much of the use of resources is directed towards the market by local agents even if it crushes the small, subsistence farmers. Baviskar and Sundar take most strongly to the opposition of civil and political society wherein the former is argued to be working in the terrain of civil mechanisms, rights and legality. Political society is imagined to be negotiating with the law, flourishing in a messy terrain of illegality. They argue that it is in fact the bourgeois civil society, emerging from the capitalist class, which flouted laws, taken advantage of established systems, resorted to violence and engaged in most ‘uncivil’ practices. Examples from Singur where the state government evicted peasants to allow Tata motors to establish a production plant and when the peasants resisted they were beaten up, raped and killed; militarisation in the adivasi regions of central India for extraction of natural resources and several others reveal the ‘illegality’ of the capitalist class and the state’s endorsement of it. They argue for a more complex history of the growth of corporate capitalism in India.

Shah critiques Chatterjee at many levels (2008). He expresses his discontent at usage of class as the central axis of power by Chatterjee when it is fairly established in the Marxist tradition that caste is an equally potent axis of power. Caste, region, ethnicity, religion, etc. have been grounds of mobilisation in the same period that Chatterjee is looking at. While these aspects find mention in his work, they do not measure up as fault lines along which analysis is built. Similarly, the peasantry in his work is an undifferentiated mass when in fact the agrarian sector has been highly stratified during and even before the colonial period. Here too caste has been an important factor of material stratifications. The ‘subsistence’, ‘self-sufficient’ agriculture that Chatterjee talks about, which has changed a few decades ago according to him, has in fact not existed in this simplistic fashion for a really long time now. Shah traces ‘social sector expenditure’ as a phenomenon which had taken roots much before the liberalisation period. In fact the unrest of the 90s had prompted the Indira Gandhi government to take many steps towards welfare measures for the poor. If anything, the state has abdicated itself from these responsibilities, as visible in the intensification non-state actors led programmes in rural areas- those spaces where the state needs to intervene most urgently. Finally, Shah disagrees with Chatterjee on his reading of the MGNRES programme as another ‘social sector expenditure’. To Shah, this reading of the programme falls into the trap of over-deterministic readings, something Marxists have been accused of. Just at the level of the fact that the poorest of India effected a legislative change and in the process of which the old tradition of exploitative ‘thekedaar’ could be put an end to is indicative of the possibilities of subversion even under the heavy hand of corporate capitalist. He invites Chatterjee to be open to the surprises history might reveal.

Finally, John and Deshpande (2008) point out the lack of engagement with the texts on growth of capitalism in agriculture, wherein processes of accumulation have not generated the results that older conceptualisations of capitalist accumulation assume. Unlike Shah, they find programmes like MGNREGS ‘after thoughts posed on to the agenda electoral compulsion’. In any case, they argue that Chatterjee’s analysis of these policies suffers from equating intentions with outcomes. The need to ‘reverse’ the processes of accumulation by schemes for the poor might be conceived as such but they are not working out in that way on the ground. They take up Chatterjee’s argument of lack of transition or transformation as perceived by political society groups. They wish to know the implication of the lack of these narratives and/ or are they being written in different scripts for example, the aspirational move to urban areas by rural youth? They contend that although the explication of the political society theory is based on ‘thin’ descriptions of the urban poor, the rural poor is dealt with really broad strokes. Further, the exclusion of people from political society is only briefly mentioned. What would be important, in their perspective, is an analysis of the processes through which this exclusion happens. Also this exclusion is not a monolith, in their opinion and needs further probing. In this regard, the struggles of adivasis and also the Maoists in some of the most naturally abundant regions which have seen ‘worst forms of primitive accumulation and state repression’ could be a shadow zone that needs more probing (2008; 86). A similar shadow zone is migration of adivasi girls/ women to urban areas to find jobs as domestic workers. The nature of their work which is isolated and framed in ideas of ‘servitude’ leaves them out of the mobilisations of political society. The exclusion of Muslims in the contemporary situation where they are being pushed out of mainstream politics by alienation and deprivation is yet another set of experiences of a group which are not articulated in the way Chatterjee imagines ‘political society’. These examples illustrate the disaggregation of the exclusions of political society, which along with a better grasp on the changes in the rural India are important if Chatterjee’s ideas have to be made more rigorous in their grasp on contemporary India.

To summarise, the concepts of civil and political society are crucial in trying to understand the relationship between state and society. The liberal underpinnings of the concept of civil society, even as they illuminate this relationship, do not point out to the role of these systems have in reproducing the class structure of the society. Gramsci’s conceptualisation of civil society as producing consent and political society as representing the coercive powers of state together reveal the production of hegemony of the ruling class and state’s fundamental role in that.

Bringing these concepts to India and contextualising them in local level politics, Partha Chatterjee sees civil society as the domain of the bourgeoisie with its rights-bearing members who make claims upon the state and are linked with the corporate economy. Those who do not belong to this class and are seen by the state as ‘populations’ that have to be governed, engage in negotiations with the state that play themselves out in the shadow of ‘illegality’. These are often struggles for sustaining livelihoods and they adopt methods which are different from the regular party-cadre based politicking. These groups constitute the space of political society and have linkages with the non-corporate economy. They are at the receiving end of state’s welfare measures which Chatterjee sees as a ‘reversal’ of the process of capitalist accumulation, how much ever asymmetrical this reversal might be.

Critics of this argument problematise the emphasis on ‘illegality’ (Sarkar; 2012) of political society groups when in fact it is the elite, who are members of civil society, who most often violate laws and manipulate state’s agencies to their advantage (Baviskar, Sundar; 2008). The centrality of structures other than class, like caste, ethnicity, etc. has been missing in Chatterjee’s analysis as pointed out by Shah (2008). The intensifying abdication of the state from its responsibilities, which it has passed on to non-state agencies, needs more emphasis. Over determination of processes that are unfolding has been pointed out. John and Deshpande (2008) highlight the broad strokes with which the rural scenario has been painted and also argue that the processes of exclusion of certain groups from political society need to be analysed with more depth.

Further readings

Cohen, John L and Andrew Arato. (1994). Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press.

– Chatterjee, Partha. (2008). Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.
– Kaviraj, Sudeepta and Sunil Khilnani. (2001). Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
– Gudavarthy, Ajay (ed.). (2012). Reframing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society. London: Anthem Press.—— (2013). Politics of Post-Civil Society: Contemporary History of Political Movements in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
– Laine, Jussi. (2014).’ Debating Civil Society: Contested Conceptualizations and Development Trajectories’. International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law. Vol. 16, no. 1, pp 59- 77 http://www.icnl.org/research/journal/vol16iss1/debating-civil-society.pdf
– Menon, Nivedita and Aditya Nigam. (2007). Power and Contestation: India since 1989. London: Zed Books.
– Menon, Nivedita, Aditya Nigam and Sanjay Palshikar (ed.). (2014). Critical Studies in Politics: Exploring Sites, Selves Power. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
– Sentanio, Benny D. ‘Somewhere in Between: Conceptualizing Civil Society’: https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/177/31603.html
– Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus: Notes Towards an Investigation. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press.
– Baviskar,Amita and NandiniSundar. (2008). ‘Democracy versus Economic Transformation?’ Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 43, Issue No. 46, pp 87-89.
– Buttigieg, Joseph A. (1995)‘Gramsci on Civil Society’.boundary. Vol. 22, No. 3 pp. 1-32.
– Chatterjee, Partha. (2004). The Politics of the Governed : Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press.

– (2008) ‘Democracy and Economic Transformation in India”. Economic and Political Vol 43, No. 16, pp 53-62.
– Jichang, WEN (2015). Study on Marx’s Theory of Civil Society and Alienation Canadian Social Science Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 70-75.
– John, Mary and Satish Deshpande. (2008). Theorising the Present: Problems and Possibilities. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 43, No. 46, pp 83-86.
– Locke, John “Of Political or Civil Society” from Second Treatise on Civil Government. Online Source: Public Opinion Documents – HIST351 (2015)
– https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/state_civil/index.htm accessed on 09.03.2016 Published in 2007.
– Sarkar, Swagato. (2012). ‘Political Society in a Capitalist World’. In Ajay Gudavarthy(ed) Re-framing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society.London: Anthem Press, pp 31-48. Shah, Mihir. (2008). ‘Structures of Power in Indian Society: A Response’. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 43, No. 46 pp 78-83.
– Woldring, Henk E. S. (1998) ‘State and Civil Society in the Political Philosophy of Alexis de Tocqueville’. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. Vol. 9, No. 4 pp 363-373.