This course material is designed and developed by Indira Gandhi National

Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi and Krishna Kanta Handiqui State
Open University (KKHSOU), Guwahati.
 Bachelor of Arts
POLITICAL SCIENCES (BAPS)
BAPS-1
Understanding Political Theory
Block-1
INTRODUCING POLITICAL THEORY

UNIT-1 UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF POLITICAL

UNIT-2 WHAT IS POLITICAL THEORY? THEORIZING THE
POLITICAL
UNIT-3 TRADITION OF POLITICAL THEORY–I (LIBERAL,
MARXIST)
UNIT-4 TRADITION OF POLITICAL THEORY–II
(ANARCHIST, CONSERVATIVE)
UNIT-5 APPROACHES TO POLITICAL THEORY-I:
NORMATIVE, HISTORICAL
UNIT-6 APPROACHES TO POLITICAL THEORY-II:
BEHAVIORAL, POST-BEHAVIOURAL
UNIT-1 UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF
POLITICAL

Structure
1.1 Objectives
1.2 Introduction
1.3 What is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It?
1.3.1 Politics as a Practical Activity
1.3.2 Politics Difficult to Define Precisely
1.4 Nature of Politics
1.5 Politics: An Inescapable Feature of the Human Condition
1.6 What is Politics?
1.7 What is State?
1.7.1 State: Differences on Account of Political Institutions /Social Context
1.7.2 Ralph Miliband‘s Views on the State
1.8 Politics as a Vocation
1.9 The Legitimate Use of Power
1.10 Max Weber on Legitimation
1.11 Legitimation: Central Concern of Political Science
1.12 Process of ‗Delegitimation‘
1.13 Manipulated Consent
1.14 Personnel of the State Machine: The Elite
1.15 Summary
1.16 Exercises
1.17 Reference

1.1 OBJECTIVES

This introductory unit of the first bock of the new course in political theory at the
Bachelor‘s Degree level tells you about the basic meaning of politics and thus, about
the fundamentals of the discipline of political science. After going through this unit,
you should be able to:
 Explain what is politics;
 Explain the meaning of state;
 Describe and explain the concept of power; and

1
  Discuss legitimation and delegitimation.

1.2 INTRODUCTION

The main objective of this unit is to understand the concept of ‗political‘. The essence
of political is the quest for bringing about an order that men consider good. The term
politics is derived from the Greek word polis meaning both ‗city‘ and ‗state‘. Politics
among the ancient Greeks was a new way of thinking, feeling and above all, being
related to one‘s fellows. As citizens they all were equal, although the citizens varied
in positions in terms of their wealth, intelligence, etc. It is the concept of political
which makes the citizens rational. Politics is the activity specific to this new thing
called a citizen. A science of politics is possible, because politics itself follows
regular patterns, even though it is at the mercy of the human nature from which it
arises.

1.3 WHAT IS POLITICAL THEORY AND WHY DO WE NEED IT?

Greek political studies dealt with constitutions and made generalizations about the
relations between human nature and political associations. Perhaps, its most powerful
component was the theory of recurrent cycles. Monarchies tend to degenerate into
tyranny, tyrannies are overthrown by aristocracies, which degenerate into oligarchies
exploiting the population, which are overthrown by democracies, which in turn
degenerate into the intolerable instability of mob rule, whereupon some powerful
leader establishes himself as a monarch and the cycle begins all over again. It is
Aristotle‘s view that some element of democracy is essential to the best kind of
balanced constitution, which he calls a polity. He studied many constitutions and was
particularly interested in the mechanics of political change. He thought that
revolutions always arise out of some demand for equality. Ancient Rome is the
supreme example of politics as an activity conducted by human beings holding
offices that clearly limit the exercise of power. When the Romans thought about
power, they used two words in order to acknowledge an important distinction.

1.3.1 Politics as a Practical Activity

Politics as a practical activity is the discourse and the struggle over organisation of
human possibilities. As such, it is about power; that is to say, it is about the capacity
of social agents, agencies and institutions to maintain or transform their environment,
social and physical. It is about the resources, which underpin this capacity, and about
the forces that shape and influence its exercise. Accordingly, politics is a
phenomenon found in all groups, institutions and societies, cutting across private and
public life. It is expressed in all the relations, institutions and structures that are
implicated in the production and reproduction of the life of societies. Politics creates

2
and conditions all aspects of our lives and it is at the core of the development of
collective problems, and the modes of their resolutions.

1.3.2 Politics Difficult to Define Precisely

A crisp definition of politics one that fits just those things we instinctively call
‗political‘ is impossible. Politics is a term with varied uses and nuances. Perhaps, the
nearest we can come to a capsule statement is this: politics is the activity by which
groups reach binding collective decisions through attempting to reconcile differences
among their members. There are significant points in this definition.

1.4 NATURE OF POLITICS

Politics is a collective activity, involving people who accept a common membership

or at least acknowledge a shared fate. Thus, Robinson Crusoe could not practice
politics. Politics presumes an initial diversity of views, if not about goals, then at least
about means. Were we all to agree all the time, politics would be redundant.

Politics involves reconciling such differences through discussion and persuasion.

Communication is, therefore, central to politics. Political decisions become
authoritative policy for a group, binding members to decisions that are implemented
by force, if necessary. Politics scarcely exists if decisions are reached solely by
violence, but force, or its threat, underpins the process of reaching a collective
decision. The necessity of politics arises from the collective character of human life.
We live in a group that must reach collective decisions: about sharing resources,
about relating to other groups and about planning for the future. A family discussion
where to take its vacation, a country deciding whether to go to war, the world seeking
to limit the damage caused by pollution - all is examples of groups seeking to reach
decisions which affect all their members. As social creatures, politics it part of our
fate: we have no choice but to practice it.

1.5 POLITICS: AN INESCAPABLE FEATURE OF THE HUMAN

CONDITION

So although the term ‗politics‘ is often used cynically, to criticise the pursuit of
private advantage under the guise of public interest, politics is infact, an inescapable
feature of the human condition. Indeed, the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that
‗man is by nature a political animal‘. By this, he meant not just that politics is
unavoidable, but rather that it is the essential human activity; political engagement is
the feature which most sharply separates us from other species. For Aristotle, people
can only express their true nature as reasoning, virtuous beings through participation
in a political community.

3
Members of a group rarely agree; at least initially, on what course of action to follow.
Even if there is agreement over goals, there may still be a skirmish over means. Yet a
decision must be reached, one way or the other, and once made it will commit all
members of the group. Thus, politics consists in procedures for allowing a range of
views to be expressed and then combined into an overall decision. As Shively points
out, ‗Political action may be interpreted as a way to work out rationally the best
common solution to a common problem or at least a way to work out a reasonable
common solution.‘ That is, politics consists of public choice.

1.6 WHAT IS POLITICS?

Everybody has some idea about the meaning of the term politics; to some people the
question may even appear quite superfluous. ‗Politics‘ is what one reads about in the
papers or watches on television. It deals with the activities of the politicians, notably
the leaders of political parties. What is politics all about? Why, precisely, are these
activities ‗political‘ and what defines the nature of politics? If one starts with a
definition couched in terms of the activities of politicians, one might say that politics
concerns the rivalries of politicians in their struggle for power. This would certainly
be the kind of definition with which most people would agree. There would, also,
probably be agreement that politics refers to the relationship between states on an
international scale.

‗Politics is about power and how it is distributed.‘ But power is not an abstract entity
floating in the void. It is embodied in human beings. Power is a relationship existing
wherever a person can impose his will on other persons, making the latter obey
whether they want to or not. Hence, arises a situation characterised by leadership, a
relation of domination and subordination. Max Weber, in his famous lecture of 1918,
‗Politics as a Vocation‘, started by proposing that the concept of politics was
‗extremely broad-based and comprises any kind of independent leadership in action.‘
In whatever context such leadership in action exists, politics is present. In our terms,
political would include any situation where power relations existed, i.e. where people
were constrained or dominated or subject to authority of one kind or another. It would
also include situations where people were constrained by a set of structures or
institutions rather than by the subjective will of persons.

Such a broad definition has the advantage of showing that politics is not necessarily a
matter of government, nor solely concerned with the activities of politicians. Politics
exists in any context where there is a structure of power and struggle for power in an
attempt to gain or maintain leadership positions. In this sense, one can speak about
the politics of trade unions or about ‗university politics‘. One can discus ‗sexual
politics‘, meaning the domination of men over women or the attempt to alter this
relation. At present, there is much controversy about race politics with reference to
the power, or lack of it, of people of different colour or race in various countries. In a
4
narrower sense, however everything is politics, which affects our lives through the
agency of those who exercise and control state power, and the purposes for which
they use that control. In the lecture quoted above, Weber after initially giving a very
broad definition of politics in terms of general leadership went on to produce a far
more limited definition: ‗We wish to understand by politics‘, he wrote, ‗only the
leadership, or the influencing of leadership, of a political association, hence today, of
a state‘. In this perspective, the state is the central political association. A political
question is one that relates to the state, to the topic of who controls state power, for
what purposes that power is used and with what consequences, and so on.

1.7 WHAT IS STATE?

A new issue comes here: what is state? The question is by no means an easy one to
answer, nor is there a general agreement as to what the answer should be. It must first
be noted that there are various forms of the state, which differ from one another in
important ways. The Greek city-state is clearly different from the modern nation state,
which has dominated world politics since the French Revolution. The contemporary
liberal-democratic state, which exists in Britain and Western Europe, is different from
the fascist-type state of Hitler or Mussolini. It is also different from the state, which
existed in the former USSR and in Eastern Europe. An important part of the study of
politics, and certainly an integral element of this book, is the explanation of what is
meant by those terms. The purpose is to show how each form distinguishes itself from
the other and what the significance of such distinction is.

1.7.1 STATE: DIFFERENCES ON ACCOUNT OF POLITICAL

INSTITUTIONS/SOCIAL CONTEXT

States differ in terms of their political institutions as well as in terms of the social
context within which they are situated and which they try to maintain. So, while the
liberal-democratic state is characterised by representative institutions such as a
parliament and an independent judiciary, the leader controls the fascist state. With
respect to the social context, the crucial contrast is between Western and Soviet type
Systems in so far as the former are embedded in a society which is organized
according to the principles of a capitalist economy, while in the latter case the
productive resources of society are owned and controlled by the state. In each case,
therefore, the state is differently structured, operates in a social framework of a very
different kind, and this affects and influences to a large extent the nature of the state
and the purposes, which it serves.

There are different forms of the state, but whatever form one has in mind, the state as
such is not a monolithic block. To start with, the state is not the same as the
government. It is rather a complex of various elements of which the government is
only one. In a Western-type liberal-democratic state, those who form the government
5
are indeed with the state power. They speak in the name of the state and take office in
order to control the levers of state power. Nevertheless, to change the metaphor, the
house of the state has many mansions and of those, the government occupies one.

1.7.2 Ralph Miliband’s Views on the State

In his book ―The State in Capitalist Society‖, Ralph Miliband registers those different
elements, which together constitute the state. The first, but by no means the only
element of the state apparatus, is the government. The second is the administrative
element, the civil service or the bureaucracy. This administrative executive is, in
liberal-democratic systems, supposed to be neutral, carrying out the orders of
politicians who are in power. In fact, however, the bureaucracy may well have its
own authority and dispose of its own power. Third, in Miliband‘s list come the
military and the police, the ‗order-maintaining‘ or the repressive arm of the state;
fourth, the judiciary. In any constitutional system, the judiciary is supposed to be
independent of the holders of government power; it can act as a check on them. Fifth,
come the units of sub-central or local government. In some federal systems, these
units have considerable independence from the central government, controlling their
own sphere of power, where the government is constitutionally debarred from
interfering. The relationship between the central and the local government may
become an important political issue, as witnessed by the controversy in recent British
politics over the abolition of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan
counties, the argument about financing local government, ‗rate capping‘, and so on.
Sixth and finally, one can add to the list representative assemblies and the parliament
in the British system. One may also mention political parties, though they are not
normally part of the state apparatus, at least not in a liberal democracy. They play
their obvious role in the representative assembly and it is there that, at least partly, the
competitive fight between the government and the opposition is enacted.

1.8 POLITICS AS A VOCATION

The point brings us back to Weber and his already quoted lecture, ‗Politics as a
Vocation‘. After arguing that politics is concerned above all with the central political
association, the state, Weber continued by maintaining that a definition of the state
could not be given in terms of the tasks which it undertakes or of the ends it pursues.

There was no task, which specifically determined the state. Therefore, one had to
define the state in terms of the specific means, which it employed, and these means
were, ultimately, physical force. The state, Weber wrote, ‗is a human community that
successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a
given territory‘. There are three distinct elements combined here: a given territory, or
geographical area, which the state controls; the use of physical force to maintain its
control and thirdly, but most important, the monopoly of the legitimate use of such

6
force or coercion. This legitimacy must be acknowledged by most, if not all, of those
who are subject to the state‘s power. Weber concluded that for him politics meant
‗striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power either
among states or among groups within a state.‘

It was also mentioned that each state exists within a particular social context. The
study of politics is vitally concerned with the relationship of state and society. A state
centered perspective on politics does not imply that its study should neglect what
happens in the wider sphere of society and how that may, as Weber says, ‗influence
the distribution of power‘.

A further fact cannot be ignored: this is the continued growth and centralisation of
state power. If one sees the state in terms of a specialised apparatus of domination,
then the history of modern times has been marked by the extension of its scale and
grip. The modern state requires an increasingly complex bureaucracy dealing with a
mounting variety of tasks. It needs larger and more sophisticated armed forces, more
regulative welfare agencies, and engages in a wider range of activities than was the
case before. This extension of the state‘s sphere of action, its growth and
development, applies both to liberal-democratic systems in their capitalist socio-
economic context, and to socialist systems with their collective economic framework.
Weber saw such growth manifested above all in the emergence of a trained, skilled
and rationally effective bureaucracy. Someone of quite a different political and
theoretical background, Marx, agreed with him on this point. Marx wrote in the
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte of the growth of state power in France,
which he saw as typical of the modern state. He described how through socialism,
eventually the state would be abolished and society would govern itself without a
specialised apparatus of repression. Weber, on the contrary, believed that socialism
would need even more officials to administer a collectivised economy and society.

1.9 THE LEGITIMATE USE OF POWER

The point is that, although the state depends on force, it does not rest on force alone.
Here, the notion of the legitimate use of power comes in. Power, in general, and so
the power of the state, can be exercised in different ways. Coercion is one form of
power and perhaps the easiest to understand, but it is not the only one. Not all power
relations are to be understood on the basis of the same crude model. If a lecturer
through force of argument and breadth of knowledge helps students to form their
ideas, such a person exercises a kind of power, though not against the students‘ will.
More to the point, all holders of power try to get those who are subject to their rule to
believe in the rightness and justness of the power they wield. This attempt at
justification in order to make people consent constitutes the process of legitimation.
One can refer to such justified or accepted power as ‗authority‘ to distinguish it from
such power as is obeyed only because of a fear of sanctions. In such a situation of
7
legitimate power, or authority, people obey because they think it is right to do so.
They believe, for whatever reason, that the power-holders are entitled to their
dominant role. They have the legitimate authority, a right to command. In the words
of one recent analyst of power, ‗Legitimate authority is a power relation in which the
power holder possesses an acknowledged right to command, and the power subject,
an acknowledged obligation to obey.‘

1.10 MAX WEBER ON LEGITIMATION

According to Weber, there are three types of legitimation, i.e. three methods by which
the wielding of power can be justified. The first type pertains to traditional
domination. There, power is justified because the holders of power can appeal to
tradition and habit; authority has always been vested in them personally or in their
families. The second type is charismatic legitimation. People obey the power-holder
because of the exceptional personal qualities displayed by the leader. Finally, the
third type is of the legal-rational kind. People obey certain persons who are
authorized by specific rules to command in strictly defined spheres of action. One
might also say that the first two types are of a personal nature, while the legal-rational
type shows a procedural character. As such it corresponds to the modern conception
of political authority. It is, as Weber says, ‗domination as exercised by the modern
―servant of the state‖ and by all those bearers of power who in this respect resemble
him.‘

It is obvious that the power-holders in any system will wish to have their power
accepted as legitimate. Seen from their point of view, such an acceptance will permit
a considerable ‗economy‘ in the use of force. People will obey freely and voluntarily.
The means of coercion, then, will not need to be constantly displayed; they can rather
be concentrated on those who do not accept the legitimacy of the power structure. In
any political system, there will be those who comply with the rules only because non-
compliance will be punished. Clearly, however, the stability of any political system is
enhanced to the degree that people voluntarily obey the rules or laws because they
accept the legitimacy of the established order. Hence, they recognise the authority of
those empowered by the rules to issue commands. In reality, all political systems are
maintained through a combination of consent and coercion.

1.11 LEGITIMATION: CENTRAL CONCERN OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

These are the reasons because of which, as C. Wright Mills puts it, ‗The idea of
legitimation is one of the central conceptions of political science.‘ The study of
politics is centrally concerned with the methods by which holders of power try to get
their power justified, and with the extent to which they succeed. It is crucial in
studying any political system to investigate the degree to which people accept the
existing power structure as legitimate, and thus, how much the structure rests on
8
consent as distinct from coercion. It is also important to ascertain the actual
justifications of power, which are offered; that is to say, the methods by which a
system of power is legitimised. This, as the elitist theorist Mosca points out, is the
‗political formula‘ of any political system. The question of legitimacy, furthermore, is
highly important in dealing with the topics of stability and change of political
systems. Consent may be granted or withdrawn. It is true that political systems can
survive in situations where large sections of the population cease to accord any
legitimacy to the system. The case of South Africa in the recent past may be cited as
an example; similarly, that of Poland, where it seemed that the Jaruzelski regime had
little legitimacy in the eyes of substantial popular elements. The point is that in such a
situation, a regime has to rely mainly on force. It then finds itself in a more precarious
position, vulnerable and open to the impact of fortuitous events. The system may
survive for quite a time. However, once it rests on force far more than on consent, one
condition for a revolutionary change presents itself.

1.12 PROCESS OF ‘DELEGITIMATION’

This explains why a revolution is often preceded by a period when the dominating
ideas of the system are subjected to sustained criticism. One may call this a process of
‗delegitimation‘ whereby the ideas, which justify the existing structure of power,
come under attack. Long before the fall of the ancient regime in France, the ideas of
Divine Right and of autocracy were ridiculed and refuted by the philosophers, the
critics of the absolute state. Such a movement of delegitimation contributed to
undermine the foundations of the old order. It prepared the way for its revolutionary
overthrow. A case in point in modern times would be the fate of the Weimar Republic
when large sections of the German population lost confidence in the democratic
regime and, fearing a communist alternative, gave their support to Hitler‘s National-
Socialist party. The result was the fall of the republic without much of a struggle.
Similar causes had similar effects all over the European Continent. Many western
systems of liberal democracy were overthrown and replaced by fascist or semi-fascist
authoritarian systems as happened in Italy, Spain, Austria and Hungary. The
conclusion, in a general sense, must be that any system loses its stability once it
ceases to enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of its subjects.

Finally, it must be noted that even in normal times, processes of legitimation and
delegitimation are permanent features of any political system. The process of
legitimation is carried on in more or less subtle ways through many channels
available for the legitimation of the existing order. Legitimising ideas are absorbed
from the earliest stages of education, diffused through a variety of forms of social
interaction, and spread especially through the influence of the press, television and
other mass media. Views, which are accepted or considered to be within the
boundaries of the system, are almost forced on readers, listeners and viewers. Action,
which goes beyond those limits, is presented as illegitimate.
9
1.13 MANIPULATED CONSENT

There are still more effective methods available to prevent subversive ideas from
even arising. They may be intercepted at source, the source being the conscious and
even the subconscious mind. An important dimension of power is the capacity to
affect and mould people‘s consciousness so that they will accept the existing state of
affairs without ever becoming aware of alternative possibilities. Consent, then,
becomes manipulated consent. To a certain extent we are all affected by the
prevailing ‗climate of opinion‘. From there an ascending scale leads to a position
where the moulding of minds, manipulation, is made the deliberate purpose of the
state in order to create a monolithic popular mentality. Such was the purpose of
Goebbels‘ propaganda machine in Nazi Germany and this is still, the purpose of any
totalitarian regime.

Manipulation is ‗power wielded unknown to the powerless‘, as C. Wright Mills

defines it. Peter Worsley points out that ‗the mechanisms by which consciousness is
manipulated are of growing importance in modern society.‘ In Marxist language, such
manipulated consent would eventually produce a ‗false consciousness‘. Against that,
it could be argued that where people are free to choose and to express their choice as
in liberal democratic systems, the manipulation of consciousness is not possible.
Manipulation can only occur where free choice does not exist, as in one party
systems. It is also argued that wherever people are free to choose, but do not infact
choose an alternative to the existing order for example, by supporting parties
committed to radical changes it is safe to assume that the existing structure of society
is broadly ‗what people want‘. This would lead to the conclusion that the importance
of political choice and the ability to freely express that choice cannot be overrated.
However, ‗what people want‘ is to some extent conditioned by various factors.
Choice does not take place in a vacuum. In short, the choice itself cannot be
considered as completely free from the impact of a process of legitimation.

1.14 PERSONNEL OF THE STATE MACHINE: THE ELITE

From the short survey we have so far made of political problems, a few points of
importance emerge which will recur in the following discussion. They chiefly stem
from the fact that state power is structured or broken up, so to speak, into distinct
sectors. It has already been mentioned that the specific relationship of the various
sectors is determined by the political system within which they operate. The internal
structure say, of a communist state. A further question involves the personnel of these
sectors. The state, after all, is not a machine; though the phrase ‗machinery of the
state‘ may be used. The state is a set of institutions staffed by people whose ideas and
basic attitudes are largely influenced by their origin and social environment. The
composition of the state elite is an important problem in the study of politics. J.A.C.
Grifith in The Politics of the Judiciary exemplifies what is meant by the term ‗state
10
elite‘ with reference to a recent study. It shows that in Britain, ‗in broad terms, four
out of five full-time professional judges are products of the elite. It is not surprising
that while discussing ‗judicial opinion about political cases‘, Griffith finds ‗a
remarkable consistency of approach in these cases concentrated in a fairly narrow part
of the spectrum of political opinion.‘

It must be noted here that from different theoretical points of view, different answers
will be given to the question as to how decisive the nature and composition of the
state elite are. Elitist theories accord the highest importance to this factor. In their
perspective, the nature of a political system is best explained by an analysis of its
elite, that ruling minority, which controls the state apparatus. In this perspective,
almost everything depends on the talents and abilities of the leaders. A low quality of
leadership will have disastrous consequences. For that reason, Max Weber was much
concerned with the nature of Germany‘s political leadership. He was in favor of a
strong parliament, which, he believed, would provide an adequate training ground to
produce leaders willing and capable of responsible action. Alternatively, leadership
would fall into the hands of the bureaucracy whose training and life style made them
unsuitable material for creative leadership.

Marxist theories would view the matter differently. They would accord less
importance to the nature of the state elite. The argument would rather be that the
purpose and the aims of state activity are determined less by the elite, but far more by
the social context and the economic framework within which the state system is
located. This structure is of greater significance, in this view, than the character of the
personnel that staff the state machine. Generally, ‗structural‘ theories would
emphasize the constraints on the government stemming from the social structures
within which the government has to operate. Nevertheless, the two types of
interpretation need not be mutually exclusive.

This brings us to a final question, which deals with the relation of state and society.
The phrase, which Marx applied to the Bonapartist state, that its power was not
‗suspended mid-air‘, can be generalised to apply to all types of state systems. Then,
several problems present themselves. How does the power structure of society affect
and constrain the political leaders? To what extent does the state interfere to maintain
and legitimise or, alternatively, mitigate the inequalities of the social system? To what
extent indeed is ‗civil society‘ independent of the state? For some theorists, the
concept of ‗totalitarianism‘ is meant to suggest a situation where society is totally
controlled by state power and, therefore, has no independence at all.

11
1.15 SUMMARY

It may be conceded that understanding the political means understanding the needs,
objectives and goals of human life. It is related with the political activities of human
beings. Politics is the game of power. Various players play this game at the same time
and compete with each other. The state forms the central point of this whole activity,
since in the national affairs it is within the state and in the international affairs, it is
among the states. The state is authorised for the legitimate use of power. Authority is
the right to rule. Authority is a broader notion than power. The dictates of the
situation mean the understanding of the political. It is the product of a situational
event.

It may be conceded that understanding the political means understanding the needs,
objectives and goals of human life. It is related with the political activities of human
beings. Politics is the game of power. Various players play this game at the same time
and compete with each other. The state forms the central point of this whole activity,
since in the national affairs it is within the state and in the international affairs, it is
among the states. The state is authorised for the legitimate use of power. Authority is
the right to rule. Authority is a broader notion than power. The dictates of the
situation mean the understanding of the political. It is the product of a situational
event.

1.16 EXERCISES

1. What is understood by politics as a vocation?

2. What is legitimation? Explain Max Weber‘s views on it.
3. What is deligitimation?
4. What Is State?
5. What Is Politics?
6. Explain the Nature of Politics.

1.17 REFERENCES

1. Alan R. Ball, Modern Politics and Government, Macmillan, London, 1988

2. Carl J. Friedrich, An Introduction to Political Theory, Harper and Row, New
York, 1967
3. David Held (ed), Political Theory Today, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991
4. Lynton Robins (ed), Introducing Political Science: Themes and Concepts in
Studying Politics, Longman, London, 1985
5. Nevil Johnson, The Limits of Political Science, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989

12
UNIT-2 WHAT IS POLITICAL THEORY?
THEORIZING THE POLITICAL

Structure

2.1 Objective
2.2 Introduction
2.3 Understanding ‗theory‘
2.4 What is ‗political‘?
2.5 What is political theory?
2.6 Evolution of Political Theory
2.7 Why do we need political theory?
2.8 Summary
2.9 Exercises
2.10 References

2.1 OBJECTIVE

After going through this unit, you should be able to:

 Explain what is theory ;

 Explain the meaning of political ;
 Describe and explain the concept of political theory; and
 Evolution of Political Theory

2.2 INTRODUCTION

Political theory has been an important component to understand political phenomena.

The subject matter, nature and scope of political theory however have been
differently perceived by different scholars and in different periods of time. Over the
years, political theory has made a transition from speculation and philosophical
claims of consensus to a more conflict-ridden and fragmented arena of the ‗political‘
that has considerably expanded from a narrow focus on the state and government to a
more fuzzy domain that transcends the narrow ‗regiments‘ of political and social. The
relationship between the empirical and the normative has also undergone changes
with a broader agreement towards a mutual engagement between the two. This paper
maps the changing contours of political theory by engaging with the shifts in the

13
notion of the ‗political‘ and how that impacts the role of political theory. Political
theory comprises of two words- ‗political‘ and ‗theory‘. The meaning, nature and
scope of political theory therefore depend on the changing notions of the two
concepts. This essay deals with an introduction to the domain of political theory. It
deals with the definitions/meanings that have been attributed to political theory as
well as the changes that have occurred over the past few years that have changed the
idea of political theory. The essay therefore proceeds in the following manner:

 What is theory and why do we need theory?

 What is distinctive in political theory, or how is it different from other
social theories?
 What have been the changes in the nature and scope of political theory
over the years?
 Why is political theory still important in the study of politics?

2.3 UNDERSTANDING ‘THEORY’

Theories are generally understood as statements that explain a particular event or act.
In this assumption, theory is an explanatory statement. This has however been
contested especially by political theorists. Rajeev Bhargava (2010: 5) contends that
theory is an explanatory statement but that this is not a sufficient understanding of
theory.

Bhargava points out two issues with theory as a mere explanatory statement: first, an
explanatory statement does not constitute a theory, on its own; and second, all
theories are not explanations. For example, if we argue that honour killing exists in
some parts of India because the society is patriarchal, it is an explanation for honour
killing but not a theory of honour killing. Theory therefore delves deeper into the
issue, and is much more than an explanation. Secondly, a few theories may explain or
justify actions, but not all of them. In Bhargava‘s view, there are larger evaluative
questions behind these justifications (ibid). For example, if we explain honour killing
as a manifestation of patriarchy, we may also have to justify why there should be
gender equality, or if there are other forms of equality that are required in conjunction
with gender equality.

How do we define theory then? Theory is a very broad term that implies ―an
explanatory Proposition, an idea or set of ideas that in some way seeks to impose
order or meaning upon phenomena‖ (Heywood 2004: 10). In the nineteenth century,
the term ‗theory‘ had a negative connotation, as it was used to refer to speculations or
‗untested facts‘ (Vincent 2007: 8). Theory has always been, however, linked with
philosophy and knowledge, the earliest evidences being the works of Plato and
Aristotle. However, in Greek philosophy, ‗theoria‘ however was a spectacle or an
event, and not something we build and apply as in the case of modern theories
14
especially after the hegemony of natural sciences (see Vincent 2007). Vincent
however argues that the nature of theory has always followed the broad contours of
philosophy. Rajeev Bhargava defines theory as ―a particular form of language-
dependent systematic expression different from but related to other forms of
systematic reflections on the world‖ (Bhargava 2010: 9-10). This alludes to the fact
that theory is a product of reflections on certain events or experiences, and not mere
explanations. Theorising is the ability of human beings by virtue of their existence as
‗concept-bearing animals‘, who live the world through not only sensory experiences
but also through concepts, images and representations (Bhargava 2010: 6-7). Such
‗lived experience‘ distinguishes human life from the life of other species. However,
all such reflections do not constitute theory.

Theory is therefore distinctive from all thoughtful reflections as well. Bhargava

(2010) defines theory as a form of ―systematic reflection‖ with six distinctive
features:

Conceptual sensitivity
 Rational structure
 Aspiration for a humanly achievable truth and objectivity
 Generality
 An explicit mandate to unearth assumptions and presuppositions
 Strong non-speculative intent.

Bhargava uses these features to demarcate theoretical expositions from ideology,

cosmology, speculations, empirical enquiries, rich insights, ad hoc reflections and all
other related narratives (see Bhargava 2010: 17-8). Conceptual sensitivity is one
distinctive feature of theory. For philosophers and theorists, there is an ―almost
obsessive and self-conscious concern with the internal structure of concepts, with
how concepts relate to one another and come in clusters and how, in turn, they mark
their own boundaries‖ (Bhargava 2010:11). Conceptual sensitivity involves not only
an elaboration of different conceptions of an idea, but also the reasoning as to the
choice of the conception. For instance, it is not only the task of theory to explicate the
different notions of freedom, justice, etc.; a theory of justice should also explain, say,
why a capability theory of justice is chosen over procedural justice. Theories should
also have a rational structure. There should be reasons, and a chain of reasons, that
make a theory. For example, if we are espousing a theory of affirmative action, there
could be many reasons- that this can foster diversity and politics of presence; it
ensures redistribution in favour of the disadvantaged, that it is a corrective to
historical injustice, etc. Though many theorists are particular with a final reason, the
final justification is not a criterion, for it may not be possible.

Bhargava contends that it is this persistent requirement of reasons that enhances the
subversive potential of theories to transform the social order (see Bhargava 2010: 14).
15
A third characteristic of theory is its aspiration to truth and objectivity. Some
theorists, especially natural science theorists are obsessed with Truth and
universalism. Natural science theories claim scienticity and objectivity along with
universalism. Thus, that water freezes at zero degree celsius is a universal truth. Many
theories of social phenomena have also tried this. August Comte‘s ‗science of
society‘ and the behavioural movement in Political Science are examples. However,
especially with post-positivism, social theories have tried to distance themselves from
scientific claims by virtue of the latter‘s deterministic claims, non- accommodation of
the vantage points of the marginalised, etc. However, increasingly, social science
theories emphasize on theories as objective only to the extent that they are not
founded on subjective experiences and prejudices.

They have also increasingly accepted the near impossibility of theories or any form of
Knowledge (including facts) to escape subjectivism. Bhargava thus stresses on an
aspiration to objectivity but underlines the context dependent nature of every theory:
―We must rid ourselves of the illusion that like god, we humans can stand outside all
perspectives and attain god-like objectivity or an eternal truth of the matter‖ (ibid:
15). It may be exceptional for theories to be universal but there should be some
degree of generality in a statement to qualify as theory. For instance, that women are
victims in the existing social order need not be a universal statement, for women
might be exercising agency in certain ways and contexts, and also because some
women may be oppressors as well- for men and women. However, since most
contexts suggest the victimhood of women, it can be a general statement. A theory
should hence cover a ‗wide variety of related but disparate phenomena‘ (ibid: 17).
Also, theories cannot be purely speculative. It should pass through the empirical
phenomena and lived experiences. In other words, modern theories cannot be
exclusively metaphysical.

Shaun Best (2003) points out four characteristics common to all social theories:
 An epistemology, or a body of knowledge of what we know and how we
know
 An ontology, or the nature of reality
 A historical location, i.e., all social theories are products of a particular period
of time and reflects realities of that time
 A set of prescriptions that suggest how we should behave, how the society
should be organized, etc.

Social theories therefore deal with human beings as individuals as well as groups in
society; they deal with society and the interaction of people with social structures,
processes and institutions. Thus, the study of caste hierarchy, the conflicts around
ethnicity, the dynamics of familial and even interpersonal and intrapersonal relations-
all could be differentiated as understandings/ theories of social phenomena and not
natural processes. If this is the case with any social theory that engages with social
16
phenomena, what makes a theory ‗political‘? This can be understood only if we
explore what constitutes the ‗political‘.

2.4 WHAT IS ‘POLITICAL’?

The central question or object of political theory has been ‗what is political‘ (Hindess
1997; Dean 2006: 752; Bhargava 2010). The meaning, nature and scope of political
theory indeed then depend on defining or rather redefining the boundaries of the
political (Held 1991; Farrelly 2003). As Held argues, ―The debate over what
constitutes the ‗political‘ is a debate about the proper terms of reference for political
reflection and about the legitimate form and scope of politics as a practical activity‖
(Held 1991: 7). David Held (1991) argues that prior to the 1970s, ‗political‘ mainly
dealt with nature and structure of government; it was treated as a domain separate
from society and the personal. In such understanding, political theory stood for the
study of the nature of government as well as the proper ends of the government- the
nature and limits of state action, and excluded for instance, the sources of power in
society (Held 1991). For example, secularism as a policy of the state would be part of
political theory but the civic or social relationships between two communities will be
the domain of sociology; the vulnerability perceived in the psyche of a community –
the fear of the other- again would not be accepted in this phase as the proper focus of
political theory. In other words, prior to the 70s, modern social studies was based on
strict disciplinary boundaries that demarcated ‗social‘, ‗political‘, ‗psychological‘,
etc. However, ‗political‘ has increasingly changed today, making the subject of
political theory also more diverse and complex (Held 1991; Ball 1995; Vincent
2007). Thus Andrew Vincent writes, ―…politics is the site of multiplicity of
vocabularies‖ (Vincent 2007: 9). This indeed makes the engagement of political
theory with more diverse issues imperative. Interestingly, the expansion of ‗political‘
also signifies the shift from politics as an arena of consensus to politics as a site of
multiplicity of values, claims, experiences, etc particularly implies the increasing
proximity of political theory to practice: Politics becomes a much more elusive
quarry. Politics is therefore neither an unmediated tabula rasa, nor a way of being
that can be studied on an unproblematic empirical level and then simply be addressed
by theory. The nature of political theory is therefore taken to be both internally
complex and deeply contested (Vincent 2007: 10).

For instance, take the case of classical political philosophy. Most works reflect a
consensus in the goal of state or politics- eudemonia in Aristotle, the General Will in
Rousseau, etc. even liberal political theory, albeit its stress on individualism and
aversion to ends-based theory is based on a single notion of Truth and a universal
notion of the individual. Such consensus has been broken down in contemporary
political theory. Politics is increasingly seen as a site of conflicting values and
interests. For example, except for the deliberative democrats who believe in
consensus, Marxists, feminists, critical race theorists, poststructuralists, etc- all bring
17
out the conflictual nature of the ‗political‘ in their own ways. Bhargava (2010) also
concedes that the term ‗political‘ has multiple meanings. The earliest is the idea of
political as decision making in a political community, a notion Bhargava traces to
ancient Greek polis but also in Arendt‘s idea that living in a polis implies decisions
through words and persuasion and not through force and violence (Bhargava 2010:
20). In this classical view of ‗political‘, Bhargava contends that there is no distinction
between social and political theory and also no separation between empirical and
normative. In this definition of political, ―Political theory is about how and with what
justification decisions are made concerning the good life of a community‖ (ibid: 21).
Akin to David Held‘s contention that the political is no longer an arena of consensus,
Bhargava also argues that with the advent of modernity, differences between and
within groups have become a reality within the political space; this has converted
political to ‗power over others‘ (see Bhargava 2010: 22). The central question of
political theory in this more adversarial and competitive notion of the political is
‗who wields power over whom and why‘ (ibid). However, unlike others who explain
political theory as characterized by a conflict between the normative and empirical, or
as a debate between political theory and political science, Bhargava speaks of a
corresponding change in the relationship between the two after the advent of
modernity: Political science, then, came to mean an empirical enquiry into the
exercise of this power, and political theory, the most general reflection on the
processes, mechanisms, institutions, and practices by which some people are
excluded, by others from significant decision making (Bhargava 2010: 22).

This however is also fraught with the problem that there is an end to the dialogue of
the polis;decisions are taken by the sovereign and political becomes the domain of the
sovereign (ibid: 23). In other words, this represents the transition to the notion of the
political as the domain of the modern state and its institutions and processes; political
science and political theory therefore tended to study exclusively the what - the
components of the state and their existence, as well as the ‗how‘ of decision making
in these institutions. Such notion of political represents a clear separation of political
theory from social theory. While state became the major object of study in political
theory, social theory studied the structures and processes outside the state (Bhargava
2010: 23). The assumption was that the key decision making actor is the state, and
hence a privileging of this narrow definition of ‗political‘. Both Held and Bhargava
therefore agree that the early phase of modern political theory is premised on the idea
that political theory is exclusively about the study of state action and its limits- a very
narrow field.

The narrow definition of political as a realm of state has been challenged especially
by most sections of feminist theory that purport to dismantle the dichotomy between
the public and private, as well as the idea that the public domain is exclusively the
state (Held 1991). The state centrism in political science faced major challenges when
the ‗embeddedness‘ of the state in society or social relations and structures of power

18
was exposed by Marxists, feminists, critical race theorists, postmodernists and others.
For example, take the argument of Gopal Guru (2001) that the Indian Constitution
guarantees legal rights against untouchability but lacks provisions for the moral goods
of recognition, dignity and a guarantee against humiliation. Guru thus concedes that
the legal rights recognised by the state are welcome; however, they do not change
untouchability and other forms of caste discrimination in the civil society. Thus, caste
hierarchies, their manifestations, personal relationships, civil society, the state- all are
part of the political in this example. Also, it implies that the state cannot be studied as
an independent actor. The state migt be free of caste discrimination; but the social
fabric is characterized by casteism and the state may not be untouched by it,
intentionally or unintentionally. Similarly, the radical feminist slogan ‗personal is
political‘ once again pushes the boundaries of the political by also including the
intimate and the private as political. Power is located in patriarchy as a total system
that pervades every aspect of life and society. The locus of the political is not the
state; it is only one of the sites of political, albeit a strong site of power. For socialist
feminists, capitalism and patriarchy were the real loci of power and not the state. This
phase once again collapses the social and political into a single entity. The
postmodernists, especially, brought to the fore the idea that power is not concentrated
in the sovereign as a direct command or control over others; on the contrary, power is
more capillary and disciplinary and is located more in social institutions and norms
(see Foucault 1975). Political theory is not really different from social theory in this
perspective, though postmodernism questions ‗theory‘ itself. In view of these new
developments in the ‗political‘, Bhargava (2010) defines political theory as a
‗particular form of word-dependent systematic reflection‘ with a wide range of
objects of study. Its objects of study include the collective power to take decisions
,about the good life of a political community, conflict over who should take decisions
and the competing visions of good life, mechanisms of power, use of state power, as
well as forms and manifestations of power in locations other than the state (Bhargava
2010: 25-26).

2.5 WHAT IS POLITICAL THEORY?

The compound term ‗political theory‘ is a product of nineteenth and twentieth

centuries (Vincent 2007: 8).The subject and scope of political theory has been a
contentious issue in recent times. For example, Nelson underscores the dimension of
criticality as crucial to political theory, while Anderson identifies political process as
the subject matter of political theory (see Mion 1987). Different scholars have
therefore identified different issues as the foci of political theory. For example,
Terence Ball argues that there is much scholarship on political theory that tends to
look at political theory as the history of political thought or the study of canons. Ball
defends this methodology in political theory on the ground that interpretation of texts
is inescapable and necessary (Ball 1995: 5). Andrew Heywood speaks of two types of
political theory- traditional political theory and formal political theory. In Andrew
19
Heywood‘s view, traditional political theory is the ―analytical study of ideas‖ or
doctrines in political thought and in that is clearly normative and ethical (Heywood
2004: 10). This is closer to philosophy and literary analysis, while formal political
theory is based on economic model building to study the behaviour of rational, self-
interested actors. All these point to the diversity in the methods, approaches and
subject matter of political theory. At the same time, Dryzek et al. (2006) points out
the commonalities in terms of commitments to democracy, justice, etc. despite the
variety in terms of approaches, methods, etc. This perhaps vindicates Berlin‘s
argument in the 1960s that political theory can survive only in a pluralistic context
and that it cannot be scientific; it should never aspire to be scientific (see Grant 2004:
175). Pluralities therefore are a hallmark of political theory today though we can
identify certain themes like aspirations towards a just society, equality, etc.

One of the contentious debates in political theory has also been its relationship with
political philosophy. Very often, the two are interchangeably used by virtue of the
normative underpinnings of political theory. The discipline of political theory, often
studied as a subset of political science, and more recently, the study of political life, is
by and large, regarded as a normative discipline (see Pettit 1991; Hindess 1997). Leo
Strauss (1988) argues, in a similar vein, that every political action has an end- either
preservation, or change of the existing social arrangement. Writing on political
philosophy, Strauss, defines the goal of the discipline as ―the attempt truly to know
both the nature of political things and the right, or the good political order‖ (Strauss
1988: 345). As Strauss contends, political goal is necessarily about common good
though the latter is essentially controversial (ibid). These perspectives underscore the
primacy of normative and prescriptive tasks of political theory. The normative
essence of political theory is reasserted by Philip Pettit in his work Contemporary
Political Theory (1991). Following Plamenatz, Pettit argues that political theory
should be engaged with the purposes or ends of government, and not how it functions
(Pettit 1991: 1). Pettit outlines three types of endeavours that political theory has been
preoccupied with, which establishes political theory as a normative enterprise: first,
the study of values relevant to assessing political arrangements; second, the types of
arrangements human beings will choose during a social contract; and third, the
arrangements that are feasible. The assessment of values involves two tasks: deciding
the values that are desirable, as well as establishing the relation between them. For
instance, liberty and equality may be two values that are desirable; we also need to
assess their priority in a political arrangement, how much of one can be sacrificed for
the other, etc. As a normative study of political life, political theory is more
concerned with ‗what ought to be and not what is; in other words, it is concerned with
normative ends rather than explanations of political events. The overwhelmingly
normative nature and role of political theory is visible in Philip Pettit‘s definition of
political theory:

20
Political theory is a normative discipline, designed to let us evaluate rather than
explain; in this it resembles moral or ethical theory. What distinguishes it among
normative disciplines is that it is designed to facilitate in particular the evaluation of
government or, if that is something more general, the state (Pettit 1991: 1). Andrew
Vincent in his work The Nature of Political Theory (2007) offers another perspective
on the normative nature of political theory. Vincent contends that standard texts of
political theory are about a certain normative value- democracy, liberty, rights,
justice, etc. - and their promotion.

Hence, ―theory, in this mould, is commonly seen as a form of practical philosophy,

orientated to, for example, certain kinds of substantive conceptual, normative, and
evaluative forms of analysis‖ (Vincent 2007: 1). Thus a definitive goal of political
theory, in Vincent‘s analysis is ‗systematic self-critical reflection‘ (ibid: 2). Vincent
argues that all philosophy implies theorizing or theory, but all political theory is not
philosophy (Vincent 2007: 9). This implies that political theory cannot be reduced to
political philosophy. Others like Ruth Grant (2004) reduce the different normative
questions in political theory into two types: to seek the best political option or to
guard against the worst (Grant 2004: 179). As an example, Grant suggests that Plato
was looking for the former while Locke was concerned about the latter in their
respective engagements with the political.

That political theory is strictly not political philosophy has also been the claim of
many works of political theory (see Mion 1987; Ball 1995; Parekh 1996; Pocock
2006). Mion argues that ‗methodological frustration and philosophical uncertainty‘
are endemic to political theory (Mion 1987: 74). However, political philosophy, in
this perspective, is expected to be linked with and informing political practice and
should be in the service of the political processes. Similarly, J.G.A. Pocock defines
political theory as ―the construction of heuristic and normative statements, or systems
of such statements, about an area of human experience and activity called ‗‗politics‘‘
or ‗‗the political‖‘‘ (Pocock 2006: 165). In this definition, political theory
acknowledges certain norms and procedures through which statements are
constructed, validated and critiqued (ibid: 166). However, Pocock distinguishes
theory from ‗political philosophy‘ in that the latter seeks to find out how these
procedures have been arrived at; in other words, political philosophy seeks to explore
how the discipline of political theory has been constructed (ibid). Elizabeth Frazer
(2008) further makes a distinction between ‗theory of politics‘ and ‗political theory‘.
In Frazer‘s account, the former denotes a certain distancing between theorizing and
the object of theory, whereas political theory emphasizes ‗the extent to which the
theory has political effects…‖ (Frazer 2008: 171).

The subject of political theory however has not been an exclusive engagement with
normativity. Indeed there are others who see the expression ‗political theory‘ itself as
an oxymoron- while theory or theoria deals with the realm of thinking or

21
contemplation, politics is about praxis (see Cavarero 2004). Caverero therefore makes
a case for expressing political theory as ‗politicizing theory‘ rather than as
theorisation of politics, for the latter implies ―the reduction of politics to the
principles of theoria‖ (ibid: 60, italics in original). Political theory has also raised
questions on methods to arrive at these norms or political statements. Vincent (2007)
iterates that the way one theorizes- the method- influences the substance of theory. He
thus calls for study of political theory as not only the conventional domain of ‗internal
substantive matter‘ but also the processes of theorising (ibid: 2). Methodological
discussions have been dominant in the writings of the ‗Cambridge school‘ of
historians of political thought, notably Quentin Skinner, John Dunn and Geoffrey
Hawthorn (see Leopold and Stears 2008). For Ruth Grant (2004), political theory is
not only about moral judgements but also their competing claims. As Grant writes,
―Political theory as a discipline develops diagnostic tools to identify and to
understand what sort of political disagreement is involved in any given situation, and
theorists sometimes construct new alternatives that alter the nature of the conflict‖
(Grant 2004: 184-5). At another level, many writers underscore the limitations of this
division of labour between normative political theory and empirical political theory
(see Shapiro 2004; Swift and White 2008). Adam Swift and Stuart White (2008: 49)
argue that normative political theory can be limited in understanding the real
phenomenon of politics unless coordinated with empirical social science. As Swift
and White point out, ―Some theorists are interested less in evaluating policy options
than in questioning the basic assumptions that govern the way policies are discussed
and decided in systems like our own‖ (Swift and White 2008: 52). This in turn brings
us back to Pettit‘s idea that accords importance to the feasibility of values and moral
judgements. This also suggests possibility of conflict between the desirable and the
feasible. The statement suggests a division of labour between political theory and
other domains of political science. It presumes that political theory is more about
basic assumptions or moral arguments and not about policy options. For example, a
political theorist will be more occupied with reasons to justify the abolition of poverty
or the mitigation of climate change and not in fact choosing a better strategy to
eradicate poverty or address environmental issues. In Swift‘s and White‘s contention,
this could turn out to be a limit for the scope of political theory. Swift and White
therefore recommend collaboration between normative political theory and empirical
social science: For us, the political theorist is making a vital yet distinctive
contribution to a collaborative division of labour. She clarifies concepts, interrogates
claims about how the political community should organize its collective affairs
(including claims about what should count as that community‘s ‗collective affairs‘),
and argues for particular principles (or conceptions of values, or balances of
competing values). It is, typically, only when combined with empirical knowledge, of
the kind generated by social science, that her analysis and justification of fundamental
principles implies particular policies (Swift and White 2008: 68). However, such
collaboration is not new in the study of politics. One cannot argue that political
philosophy or theory have been completely divorced from empirical reality (see Grant

22
2004). Aristotle‘s discussion of regime types in Politics is an illustration (see Grant
2004: 176). Grant contends that empirical political theories cannot be devoid of
normative values. However, for Grant, the unique contribution of political theory lies
in its endeavour to engage in a humanistic study of political life. This indicates the
significance of historical and philosophical dimensions of political theory (ibid: 187).

2.6 EVOLUTION OF POLITICAL THEORY

Political theory is widely held to have originated in the modern period. Political
theory hence is widely regarded as a product of modernity that was ushered in by
Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, there have been
debates regarding the modern origins of political theory. A few scholars are of the
view that political theory has its origins in classical Greece, which witnessed the first
‗reflective approach to the study of politics‘ (Frank 2006: 176). In Jill Frank‘s view,
ancient Greek philosophers transcended the modern boundaries of ‗political‘ by also
reflecting on ethics, virtue, etc. The strength of this approach is explained as follows:
Eric Nelson, in a similar vein, speaks of ‗republican political theory‘ that emerged in
early modern Europe- alluding to the Greek and Roman traditions that qualify to be
described as political theory (Nelson 2006). Contemporary scholars have also alluded
to Islamic political theory, Confucian political theory, etc., challenging the euro-
centrism in political theory. There are however those who endorse and reinstate the
primacy of western political theory as well. John Dunn for instance defends the
relevance of western political theory on two counts: the continuous and self conscious
historical development of political theory; and its rigourous and systematic historical
analysis (see Dunn 1996). Most works on political theory speak of the ‗decline‘ of the
discipline, particularly, normative political theory in the 1950s and 1960s (see Miller
1990; Held 1991; Vincent 2007). The 1950s witnessed the decline of political theory
echoed as its ‗death‘ By Peter Laslett. The horrors of Nazism, the rise of empiricism
and logical positivism, and behaviouralism were responsible for the crisis in political
theory (White 2004: 1). The absence of any ‗commanding work‘ of political
philosophy in the 50s and 60s is taken as the ground for the decline in political theory
(see Berlin 2012). David Held (1991) blames positivism and particularly logical
positivism1 for displacing the place of value judgements and normative political
theory with empirical political science, the hallmark of the ‗behavioural revolution‘.
This was exemplified by David Easton‘s ‗systems approach‘ that eschewed the
normative concerns of the state (see Ball 1995: 39).The resistance to values and
normativity was so profound that Peter Laslett declared the ‗death of political theory‘
for the time being. On a different note, Bhikhu Parekh (1996) challenges the decline
of political theory in the 50s and 60s. Parekh contends that these two decades saw
some of the path breaking works in political philosophy including those of Michael
Oakeshott, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper and many others. The period
also witnessed the reconstruction of Marxist political philosophy by Marcuse,
Althusser, Sartre and Habermas (see Parekh 1996: 504). However, Parekh does
23
recognise the two decades as a distinctive phase in political philosophy for three
major reasons:

 Most of the political philosophers of the period hardly engaged with the works
of others.
 There was an awareness that political philosophy is under stress from various
factors including positivism; hence the general tone suggested that either it
was an impossibility, or was a non-necessity, for the western world has agreed
on philosophical principles.

The idea that all knowledge should be based on sensory perceptions and those social
sciences should also follow the same methodology of natural sciences.

This tended their works to treat political philosophy as a distinct, self-contained mode
of inquiry rather than an extension of political science.

 They critiqued almost all existing paradigms, having been victims of Nazism
and Stalinism. Popper‘s attack on historicism, Oakeshott‘s criticism of
rationalism and Berlin‘s denouncement of moral monism in favour of
pluralistic ends are a few examples.

The fears arising of Fascist and Communist totalitarianism are abundant in these
writings explain the apathy and often resistance to the prescriptive and normative
roles of political philosophy.

Parekh therefore argues that political philosophy was ‗dead‘ not because there was an
absence of works in the field. It was deemed ‗dead‘ because it did not conform to the
established meanings of political philosophy:

As we saw, most political philosophers of the 1950s and 1960s did not share this view
and regarded political philosophy primarily as a contemplative, reflective and
explanatory inquiry concerned to understand rather than to prescribe. Since their
writings did not conform to their critics' narrow standards of what constituted ―true‖
political philosophy, the latter predictably pronounced the discipline dead.

In a similar vein, Terence Ball (1997) alluding albeit to the decline in political theory,
contends that in the 1950s and 1960s, the task of political theory was deemed to be a
mere clarification of concepts that can be used in political science. In other words,
rather than being normative, works of this period wanted to clarify concepts as a
helping hand to empirical political science (ibid: 31). Ball gives the example of
Oppenheim‘s efforts in the 60s to make freedom an empirical concept. Indeed, in his
essay ―Whither Political Theory?‖ Terence Ball represents the debate on the decline
in political theory in the 50s and 60s as a ‗paradox‘: ―political theory was in some

24
quarters dead or dying; and yet it could not die‖ (Ball 1995: 43). Ball explains this by
throwing light on the distinction made by such scholars between ‗first-order
theorizing‘ and ‗second-order theorizing‘. While the first order theorizing was about
political and social arrangements, the second order theorizing was about norms and
political philosophy. Thus both Parekh and Ball bring home the point that
engagements with political philosophy suffered a decline in the 50s and 60s, but
engagements with institutions and processes were very much in vogue. This is
iterated in MacIntyre‘s thesis ‗the end of the end of ideology‘ as he claims that first-
order theorizing was happening even in classrooms and the social movements of the
60s (see Ball 1995: 48). However, by the 1970s, challenges to positivism took the
shape of different alternatives that were engaging not only with meaning and
explanation of social phenomena; they were highlighting the role of history and
contexts for understanding politics. Hermeneutics and other post-positivist
methodologies gradually replaced the scienticism in social studies. The 1962 essay of
Isaiah Berlin ―Does Political Theory Really Exist?‖ throws light on the inefficacy of a
science of politics, since questions of political obligation, nature of political
arrangement, etc. involve conflicting arguments and answers. Indeed, for Berlin, a
society where ends collide or where there is a clash of value judgements is the only
society where political philosophy is possible. Berlin‘s argument is also an attempt to
rescue political theory from the dangers of monistic normativity that were also
regarded as the bases for both fascist and communist totalitarianism in the 40s and
50s.

The revival of political theory is traced to 1970s, particularly with John Rawls‘ A
Theory of Justice (1971). It was also spearheaded by the launch of three journals that
deal with political philosophy: Interpretation (1970), Philosophy and Public Affairs
(1971) and Political Theory (1971) (see Ball 1995; Parekh 1996). For David Held, it
is at this stage of challenging behaviouralism that political theory‘s critical role in
social transformation was also underscored (see Held 1991: 14). Held (1991)
perceives this renewal of political theory in seven forms:

 As the history of political thought- an attempt to interpret the significance of

texts in their historical context. Works of Quentin Skinner and John Dunn are
examples.
 As a form of conceptual analysis- that involves clarification of key concepts
and issues like democracy, sovereignty, justice, rights, etc. For example, John
Rawls‘ attempts to define justice or Hayek‘s work on liberty.
 As a systematic elaboration of the foundations of political value, or as an
invigoration of the moral foundations of political philosophy. Rawls‘ A
Theory of Justice is an example.
 As a form of argument concerned with abstract theoretical questions as well as
practical political issues. For instance, the works by Iris Young, Joshua Cohen
and Jurgen Habermas on deliberative democracy are pointers towards the
25
 limitations of representative democracy; at the same time, they also raise
larger questions of rationality, consensus-building, communicative action, etc.
 Political theory has also, in its new form, been an arena of debate between the
foundationalists like Rawls who reinstate universalist principles, and the
anti-foundationalists who are votaries of the contingency of meaning (eg.
Lyotard, Rorty).

Michael Walzer offers another challenge to political theory through his assertion that
Political philosophy is ‗embedded‘ in a specific community; it can only be an
expression of the self-understanding of that community and is hence municipal in its
scope (see Parekh 1996: 509).
 As a form of systematic model-building. Antony Downs‘ economic theory of
democracy and von Beyme‘s rational choice approach to political science are
examples for this.

One cannot disagree with Held that none of these renewed versions of political theory
are beyond controversies and inconsistencies. What is interesting is that ―political
theory today cannot be based purely on political philosophy or political science‖
(Held 1991: 19, italics in original). Held highlights the brilliant career of political
theory posts its revival in the 70s in its combination of ‗philosophical analysis of
concepts and principles‘ and the ‗empirical understanding of political processes and
structures‘ (ibid). As he writes, ―…political theory can occupy a space between these
forms of inquiry, engaging critically with the competing values and interests that
guide and orient modern politics‖ (Held 1991: 20). The conceptual-normative and the
empirical-analytic and the strategic (the feasibility question- to what extent can we
change the existing arrangements to reach where we expect to) become the vital
components of modern political theory. This is also evident in Parekh‘s argument that
though contemporary political theory has a strong moral dimension, it is more
contemplative and reflective rather than prescriptive; it is not normative in orientation
(Parekh 1996: 509). For example, we should evaluate the different conceptions of
justice, or philosophize a new notion; at the same time, we also need to analyse the
political structures that subscribe to this concept of justice, or find an alternative
political arrangement to apply the concerned idea of justice. For example, when
Amartya Sen evolved his capability-based notion of justice, or the idea of
development as freedom and not mere growth, he also suggested political and social
arrangements that can work out the new propositions. Similarly, Rawls‘ theory of
justice is an engagement with political philosophy as well as practical issues of
politics (see Ball 1995; Parekh 1996). That political theory is no longer normative is
hence not agreed to by everyone. Many writers, as explained earlier, underscore the
essentially normative orientation of political theory (see Pettit 1991; Hindess 1997;
Farrelly 2003; Vincent 1999, 2007; Bhargava 2010). What is striking however is how
all of them also point towards the spaces for social and political arrangements as well
in contemporary political theory.

26
Another feature of political theory post its revival in the seventies is the pluralism in
the discipline in terms of ideas, issues, approaches and methods. The danger of
appropriation of normativity by totalitarian ideologies was addressed by Isaiah Berlin
in his 1962 essay, ―Does political theory still exist?‖. Berlin‘s answer was that
political theory can survive only in a pluralist or potentially pluralist society- a
society with competing and colliding ends (White 2004: 2). And indeed, this
pluralism as been characteristic of political theory till date: From the 1960s to the
present, it is the production of paradoxes that stands out as Western moral and
political thought have confronted the challenges of feminism, multiculturalism,
environmentalism, critical race theory, and novel claims on the part of both
nationalism and cosmopolitanism (White 2004: 3). Andrew Vincent (2007) highlights
the complex and internally contradictory nature of political theory in its modern and
postmodern phases. Vincent concedes that politics itself has become so conflictual
and complex and so has political theory. Vincent argues that there are five
conceptions of political theory, each embodying a definitive foundational element:
classical normative, institutional, historical, empirical, and ideological political
theory. Bhargava‘s explication of normative, explanatory and contemplative political
theories also suggest the multiple foundations and tasks of contemporary political
theory. However, while the complexity and diversity of issues in political theory
expands its scope and ensure its longevity (Barber, cited in Ball 1995), others also
view this expansion as a challenge to the survival of political theory. For example,
Terence Ball (1995) views the distancing of political theory from its own subject
matter-politics- as a major challenge to the discipline. Ball contends that akin to the
behavourists, political theorists in the 80s and 90s also make the mistake of
‗professionalisation‘ of political theory by virtue of their preoccupation with methods,
techniques and the debate over‗meta-theories‘.

2.7 WHY DO WE NEED POLITICAL THEORY?

There has been a wide variety of reasons that justify the utility of political theory.
Those like Michael Freeden (see Freeden 2005) who want to differentiate between
political theory and political philosophy primarily underscore the role of theory in
understanding and facilitating the political processes. Some others are uncomfortable
with what Ian Shapiro calls the ‗narcissistic‘ tendency of political theorists, wherein
they treat political theory as a specialised activity disengaged from the discipline of
political science (see Shapiro 2004). Ruth Grant (2004) makes it a central task of
political theory, albeit the tensions with ‗political science‘, for a mutual engagement
with politics, without becoming a science. Grant‘s argument is therefore on lines of
mutual engagement between the normative and the empirical All these works on
political theory bring to focus the mistake of separating the empirical and the
normative. The mutual engagement of philosophy and political theory is underlined
by Bhargava as vital to understanding the role of political theory. Contemporary
27
theory, Bhargava argues, performs four ‗interrelated functions‘: ―It explains at the
most general level possible, it evaluates and tells us what we should do, and it
speculates about our current and future condition. It also tells us who we are‖
(Bhargava 2010: 28). Depending on the roles of theory, Bhargava classifies them as
explanatory, contemplative and normative theories (Bhargava 2010). Bhargava
alludes to two functions common to social and political theory – interpretation and
explanation, and secondly providing insights into social phenomena that may not be
completely explained by empirical inquiries- the ‗contemplative‘ role of political
theory (Bhargava 2010: 35-6). For example, the interpretative and explanatory role of
political theory may be explained in an inquiry as to why women face discrimination
despite constitutional guarantees of equality. For example, Max Weber‘s thesis that
Protestant ethic was responsible for the rise of capitalism is an explanatory theory
(Bhargava 2010: 42). Similarly, Engels‘(1884) argument that the rise of private
property, and the consequent patrilineal inheritance led to the ‗world historic defeat of
the female sex‘ explains the rise of inequality of sex and patriarchy in relation to
property. As far as contemplative role of political theory is concerned, the assumption
is that certain phenomena cannot be explained completely by facts or empirical
studies. An example is Gandhi‘s critique of modern civilization in Hind Swaraj as he
is contemplating the ill effects of modern civilization rather than looking at societies
that have taken the road to modern civilization (Bhargava 2010). Another example is
Marx‘s analysis of capitalism and the prospective transition to socialism and
communism. In other words, this approach argues that facts cannot capture and
explain all of reality, and they have to be supplemented with some degree of
contemplation. `

Political theory can also be a space for value pluralism. For example, Isaiah Berlin
(1962) sees theory as the arena of value pluralism rather than as a prescription of
common good. Politics here is distinct from the social, as politics is regarded as a
sphere of political freedom, where individuals can choose their own values. Similarly,
Hannah Arendt‘s proposition of separating the personal from the political represents
the fears of potentially totalitarian tendencies of normative theories. As Moon (2004)
argues, Berlin brings `home the point that values are essentially plural; they are
incommensurable and their order or priority cannot be established.

Thus Berlin and Arendt do not prescribe norms; they however see politics as a space
to evaluate competing claims of values- politics as a realm of value pluralism. Ruth
Grant (2004) on the contrary gives a different picture. She argues that determining
relative significance of values is necessary if political theory engages with complex
problems. That leads us to a third role of theory-normative. Political theory primarily
is seen here as either an arena of evaluation of norms or even as the instrument
towards designing a good society or leading a good life. Value judgements and the
‗ought‘ questions are critical in politics. In Bhargava‘s viewpoint, facts cannot
explain everything, and value judgements become necessary in political theory. In his

28
account, it is normativity that makes political theory irreducible to social sciences and
empirical theories (Bhargava 2010: 38). Bhargava therefore lays down three major
functions of political theory, which other social theories do not undertake, which he
explains as the distinctive functions of political theory. First, political theory offers a
―general reflection on the ‗human condition‘‖ – this is more philosophical and closer
to metaphysical knowledge; second, the exercise of power as well as the mechanisms
of exercise of power- this involves not only studies of state but also on the capillaries
of society, if they are sites of power; third, political theory is also the ―study of how
this power should be wielded, by whom and why, and in the light of which values and
ideas of the good life‖ (Bhargava 2010: 41). The third element, Bhargava emphasises,
is a prescriptive, normative and largely an ethical function of political theory (ibid).
Evaluation of judgements and the methods of arriving at these principles of normative
evaluation become significant for political theory in this distinctive function.

2.8 SUMMARY

The meaning, nature and scope of political theory have undergone changes over time.
Political theory has moved away from the narrow focus on state; to that extent that it
has become more diverse and has encroached into the terrains of social theory and
even phenomenology as in the case of experiential or standpoint theories. Political
theory today engages with norms; however, it is also preoccupied with empirical
questions including how to design necessary political arrangements for the cause of
justice, equality, etc. At the same time, the anti foundationalism presented by
postmodernism challenges the idea of theory itself. While postmodernism questions
meta-narratives or ‗grand theories‘, the ‗micro theories‘ also become questionable, for
perceptions may vary with subjects and subject positions. From this angle, political
theory has made a long trajectory from universalism to particularisms, from
objectivism to subjectivism and from foundationalism to anti-foundationalism.

2.9 EXERCISES

1. What is theory?
2. What is Political?
3. What is political theory?
4. Why Do We Need Political Theory?
5. Explain the evolution of Political theory

29
2.10 REFERENCES

1. B.Barry, ‗The Strange Death of Political Philosophy‘ in Democracy, Power

and Justice : Essays in Political Theory, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989

2. Sir I. Berlin, ‗Does political theory still exist?‘ in P. Laslett and W.G.
Runciman, Philosophy, Politics and Society, 2nd series (eds.) Blackwell,
Oxford, 1964

3. D. Marsh and G. Stoker, Theory and Methods in Political Science, Macmillan,

London, 1995

4. Vincent, Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 1997

5. Rajeeb bhargava, political theory, pearson,

6. Andrew Heywood, politics, palgrave foundations, Macmillan

30
UNIT-3 TRADITION OF POLITICAL THEORY-I: LIBERAL
& MARXIST

Structure
3.1 Objectives
3.2 Introduction
3.3 The Characteristics of the Liberal – Marxist Traditions
3.4 The Liberal Tradition versus the Marxist Tradition
3.5 Versions of the Liberal Tradition
3.5.1 Classical Liberalism
3.5.2 New Liberalism
3.5.3 Libertarianism
3.5.4 Equalitarian Liberalism
3.6 Country Specific Liberal Traditions
3.6.7 Liberalism in the U.S.A.
3.6.8 Liberal Tradition in Continental Europe
3.6.9 Liberal Tradition in India
3.6.10 Liberal in Conjunction
3.8 Versions of the Marxist Tradition
3.8.1 Marxism
3.8.2 Leninism
3.8.3 Maoism
3.8.4 Other Marxist Versions
3.8.5 Western Marxism
3.8.6 Latin American Marxism
3.8.7 Indian Marxism
3.9 Summary
3.10 Exercises
3.11 References
3.1 OBJECTIVES

This unit deals with the Liberal – Marxist tradition which taken together and spread
across the world represented proposing and defending a set of principles, public
institutions and practices which were markedly different from other political
traditions.
31
Taken apart, they represented the most significant ideological cleavage in the world
in the past two centuries. After going through the unit, you will: Know the
characteristics of the Liberal – Marxist traditions as a whole; be able to demarcate the
liberal tradition from the Marxist tradition;
 Be able to identify the significantly different expressions of the Liberal
tradition;
 Be able to identify the significantly different expressions of the Marxist
tradition; and be able to suggest the impact that these traditions left on
political theory and practice.

3.2 INTRODUCTION

A tradition is a broadly shared body of ideas, beliefs and practices handed down and
believed to be enjoying continuity across generations. A tradition is something
accepted and is common place relative to ideology, which involves partisanship and
advocacy. An ideology, however, by finding a wider acceptance could become a
tradition and sometimes by singling out certain elements of a tradition for advocacy
and ignoring the rest, a tradition could become an ideology. Often we find the liberal
political being pitted against the Marxist political tradition. Mainstream expressions
of these traditions in many respects are significantly different from each other so as to
justify such a stance. However, in relation to other political traditions, there are many
issues and concerns which are shared between these two traditions so as to make them
look alike vis-a-vis the former. It provides a justification to consider the Liberal
Marxist tradition together. Even with respect to themselves there is a vast space
philosophical, epistemological and even substantial stipulations shared between them.
While there is much that makes the Liberal-Marxist tradition a continuum, there are
also major cleavages between them and significant differences arising there from. Of
course, the extents of differences vary across their specific tendencies. Therefore,
each one of them can be considered as an independent tradition. What constitutes the
Liberal tradition on one hand and the Marxist tradition on the other? It is difficult to
lay down the boundaries of either of these traditions or both of them considered
together, although there may not be much of a disagreement on what constitutes their
respective cores. There is, however, little agreement on their elements that are
mutually congruent and those that set them apart. Further being traditions, and not
merely theories, the Liberal and Marxist traditions are inclusive covering within their
scope critically reflected views of their respective theories on a range of issues and
concerns; the habits and dispositions of those who service these traditions; the world-
views they are based on or support and the ways of life they spawn. As traditions,
they get fused with common sense and shape many of our unreflected ways even
before we make our deliberated choices by invoking them as a whole or a few or their
elements.

32
3.3 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LIBERAL – MARXIST
TRADITIONS

We can identify some characteristics that are common for the Liberal-Marxist
tradition as a whole. They are shared across the tradition, although the way we draw
the boundaries of the tradition and mark the internal cleavages within it may affect
our perception of these characteristics. The Liberal-Marxist tradition is distinctly a
part of the modern civilisation and consequently, shares a common ground with some
of its central premises. This tradition sometimes attempts, methodologically or
substantively, to coopt perspectives and elements from the pre-modern civilisations.
Sometimes, an attempt may be made to construct a pre-history of this tradition by
digging into the past. In the West, some of the scholars have traced Liberal and
Marxist ideas and elements of ways of life among the Greeks and in early
Christianity. Similarly in India, scholars have found strong traces of this tradition in
Buddhism. Nevertheless, it does not make this tradition pre-modern, but retrieves
akin elements from the past into its fold while remaining essentially modern.

The Liberal-Marxist tradition is grounded on collective human experience, reason and

argumentation much more than pre-modern political resting on custom, usage,
authority or revelation. The medieval Christian tradition for instance, saw revelation
as a uniquely privileged site providing access to truth. The Marxist – Liberal tradition
may think that revelation cannot be a source of truth as far as constituting the
common good is concerned and may such contending conceptions of it. Being
reflective about their own understanding, the Liberal and Marxist traditions could not
prevent investigation into their own premises, formulations and recommendations and
in the process, led to reformulation of their own positions and that too drastically, at
times. The freedoms to which these traditions were committed to such as speech,
expression, access to knowledge and information inevitably opened the door wide to
pluralism of beliefs and values, which were in tune with free inquiry. Both reflective
understanding and personal liberty, therefore, led to pluralism of beliefs and practices.
Liberals and Marxists agreed on a large number of issues as significant. In many
respects, they shared a common conception of human beings and the centrality of
man on earth. Both considered their explorations as reasonable and warded off
prejudices and localisms of all sorts. Both of them believed that freedom and a
political community conductive to freedom are values to be greatly cherished. They
upheld the essential equality among human beings and the singular role that man is
called upon to play in nature. Both of them believed that political participation opens
up prospects for greatly enriching life. Ultimately, human beings have to take charge
of their collective life and destiny and cannot let this charge be handed over to an all-
merciful God or to the bounty of public institutions. However, they profoundly
disagreed on the understanding and implications of issues. They disagreed on the
prioritisation of concerns and mapped their consequences differently. Sometimes, one
of them ignored an issue, which the other thought as significant. The Liberal-Marxist
33
tradition as a whole saw the role of the masses positively. They were committed to
draw the masses actively into the political domain and determine its course. They,
however, differed on how to conceptualise the masses and how they could assert their
say. Sometimes, their positions varied overtime. Liberals who were initially
enthusiastic about drawing the masses into the political arena against autocracy and
political fragmentation started dragging their feet on the question once they were in
power and resorted to the language of the rule of law and constitutionalism. Similarly,
Marxists renounced the language of self-rule and resorted to that of responsibility
once the Marxist parties were in power. The Liberal-Marxist tradition is directed at
understanding and stipulating the basis, the extent and limits of public authority rather
than merely attuning to it. Attunement to the political system as a whole and the role
one was expected to play in it were the hallmark of the pre-liberal-Marxist traditions.
The basis, the extent and limits of public authority rather than merely attuning to it.
Attunement to the political system as a whole and the role one was expected to play
in it were the hallmark of the pre-liberal-Marxist traditions. The pre-modern political
traditions were confined in space and time. On the contrary, the Liberal-Marxist
traditions, proposed, procedurally and substantially, universal designs of organising
and reorganising world.

3.4 THE LIBERAL TRADITION VERSUS THE MARXIST TRADITION

While the Liberal tradition shares common ground with the Marxist tradition, in
many respects, they cannot be collapsed into each other. There are significant
differences between them. Further, these differences assume specific forms when we
compare different versions of one tradition with those of the other. Liberalism
assumes a relatively fixed and rounded off conception of human nature. Human
nature, in this conception, is endowed with rationality and agency as integral to it.
Marxism, on the other hand, sees human nature as a historical product. It is shaped in
the vortex of the social relations it is located in while it, in turn, shapes those very
social relations. While Marxism does not deny human rationality and agency, it
argues that they are circumscribed by and have to take into account prevailing social
relations. Given its emphasis on agency, the Liberal tradition often tends to make
freedom and equality metaphysical conditions of human existence and they precede
legal and political order. Since Marxists believe these human agencies to be hedged in
by the prevailing social relations, they tend to appreciate necessity and the factors that
qualify, shape and direct human choices. They formulate conditions and strategies to
expand the space for freedom and equality. Marxists subscribe to a theory of history,
which argues that societies go through both quantitative and qualitative changes. The
former involves growth in productive forces and corresponding political, legal and
cultural changes. The latter denotes transformation of prevailing social, political and
cultural arrangements that uphold such relations. Generally, Liberals do not take the
historical antecedents of social agents seriously, except hypothetically, to enable them
and the society and state they live in to highlight certain characteristics of human
34
beings as Hobbes or Locke do prior to the formulation of the social contract.
Liberalism tends to give more foreplay to the human mind to construe reality.
Marxism tends to demarcate the sphere of objective reality from the subjective
appropriation of the same. Further, it accords primacy to the former over the latter.
However, Marxism agrees that ideas, when they become practices or take possession
of the hearts and minds of the people, could become independent actors. There is a
marked distinction in the concepts and categories that Marxism deploys for social
analysis and advocacy relative to what Liberalism does. For Liberalism, concept and
categories such as ‗human‘ rights and freedoms, civil society, representation,
separation of powers, public opinion, justice and equality are central to its discourse.
Marxism, however, has its framework in a body of concepts such as classes and class
struggle, modes of production, production relations and productive forces, base and
superstructure, surplus appropriation, state, revolution and transitions. Marxism lays
stress on social classes as basic units of a society. It does not wholly undermine the
individual agency, but a historical role is ascribed to social classes. By and large,
Liberalism privileges the individual rational agent and invests him or her with the
capacity to make autonomous decisions and pursue a life of his/ her own. Marxism
draws attention to the processes underway in a class divided society, which stunts and
distorts human life and deprives human beings from exploring the rich potentialities
or their life. Generally, Liberals confine human beings to a limited sphere of shared
aspirations and leaves them to determine the kind of human being they wish to be by
employing their freedoms. By and large, Marxism tends to provide a comprehensive
explanation of the course of human affairs and man‘s relation to nature compared to
Liberalism. Marxism is not otherworldly. It makes the world inform our ends and
purposes. It, however, need not exclude certain spiritual pursuits as it envisages a rich
constitution of the self by freely determining subjects. While there are persuasive
strands of thought within Liberalism that confine human striving to this world, it is
much more open to wards accommodating the transcendental and other-worldly
strivings of human beings. Liberals easily leave greater space for spiritual and other
worldly pursuits. Marxism subscribes to a state of affairs where there is no
exploitation and where a rich constitution of the self goes hand in with the
decomposition of the community. Its theory of history considers the course of class
struggle in a capitalist society as oriented towards such an end. Liberalism while
upholding various kinds of equalities attempts to balance them with freedom of
choice. It is disposed to reform the existing society than to strive after a society
founded on non-exploitation and non-oppression. Community was not central to the
Liberal imagination. However, in the wake of the rise of communitarianism as a
distinctive body of thought, Liberals are attempting to reach out to community in a
big way. Marxists have a well formulated and passionate conception of revolutionary
transformation. Liberals tend to make the present human condition as eternal and
permanent and if they subscribe to political radicalism, it is narrowly circumscribed
as a last resort. For Marxists, revolutionary transformation is placed on the agenda by
the turn social relations take, while for the Liberals it is a moral act in defense of

35
rights and justice. Marxists and Liberals differ on the conception, role and necessity
of the state. Liberals tend to accept the state as an unavoidable evil. Its denial begets
greater harm than its sufferance. Marxists see the state as an historical product arising
in the wake of the irresolvable class antagonisms in society. Claming to represent the
society, it lords over the society and ensures the interests of the dominant classes.
They argue that the state will wither away with the dissolution of class conflicts and
class relations.

Liberalism has enjoyed a close kinship with capitalism historically. Certain versions
of Liberalism such as classical liberalism are closely intertwined with the early
phases of the development of capitalism. Some of the tends of Liberalism such as
freedom of trade and occupation and equality before law can be effectively employed
to argue a case for capitalism. By its appeal to general human conditions and shared
citizenship, it tends to ignore class relations and thereby, let class dominance to
prevail. Although Liberalism could be distanced from capitalism, it has not succeeded
in doing so, at least so far, as the kind of rights it avows tends to defend private rights
over productive resources. Marxism, of course, is committed to the overthrow of
capitalism and sees most of the evils of modern society as due to its association with
capitalism.

There is also a major difference between the different versions of Marxism in relation
to the Liberal versions. Many of the later versions of the Marxist tradition considered
themselves as the authentic bearers of the legacies of their founding fathers. Leninism
claimed to be the exclusive bearer of the legacies of Marx and Engels. Similarly,
Maoism declared itself as the inheritor of the legacy of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The
subsequent Liberal versions rarely claim themselves as the authentic voices of the
preceding versions. They claim a philosophical and moral affinity, but not faithful
continuity. The different versions of Marxism are deeply stamped by the thought of a
specific thinker compared to the Liberal versions. Therefore, distinct versions of
Marxism often go under the name of their distinguished proponent. In the Marxist
tradition, although the later versions claimed an exclusive legacy of the tradition for
themselves, they infact, became increasingly exclusive. Such exclusiveness combined
with the claim that it represented the authentic tradition, led to internecine conflicts
among the claimants. The Liberal tradition, however, allowed greater deal of internal
differences and conflicts. The triumph of one did not bring forth the elimination of
the other. The Marxist versions, inspite of their claim to represent the whole, became
confined while Liberal versions without necessarily claiming themselves as the ‗true‘
or ‗authentic‘ bearers of the tradition were able to reach out to the larger tradition.

3.5 VERSIONS OF THE LIBERAL TRADITION

The Liberal tradition went through several mutations as its internal co-ordinates
assumed different significance as they were challenged and critiqued. Further, it gave
36
rise to several regional variations as it came to be formulated in interface with diverse
ideological and social contexts. The following versions of this tradition could be
considered as notable.

3.5.1 Classical Liberalism

John Locke (1632-1704) is the central figure as far as this version is concerned. It
fused together a relatively coherent body of ideas and dispositions. It unleashed and
directed the course of social and political process in markedly different ways than
hitherto accustomed. It instilled and promoted a different set of norms and values. It
gave rise to a characteristic set of public institutions and subjected them to the
scrutiny of its own principles. It attempted to fashion a commonsense and way of life
infused by its ideas and dispositions. It made selective forays into the legacies
available to it to retrieve elements conducive to the forging of this agenda. Classical
Liberalism subscribed to certain individual rights such as life, liberty and property,
while there were significant differences on the perception of these rights, there was a
predominant tendency to perceive them as expressions of natural law that informed
human beings. Many thinkers who avowed this version argued that human beings
were brought into society and were wielded together into a common will and
authority through a social contract. In such a formulation, human nature was
conceived as pre-social rather than formed in and through associational ties and
belonging. Human nature was cast by this version into a timeless and universal scale
emptying if from historical and contextual anchoring. Classical Liberalism,
particularly the Lockean version of it, believed that private property was not created
by civil society but was prior to it. Civil society and state had no right to interfere in
it. On the contrary, it was indispensable for the pursuit of common good. Liberty, in
this version, was conceived in its negative connotation as absence of restraint.
Classical Liberalism conceived the role of civil society and state as basically
protective of rights. Therefore, state could not interfere in the domain of rights in the
name of promoting some other value or impose limitation on the scope of rights,
unless protection of rights itself required such an intervention. It stood for a limited
government. It proposed a number of mechanisms to keep the government within
bounds. The sphere of rights begot a civil society made of different associations and
groups who monitored and constantly kept a watch over the activities of the state. The
various freedoms enabled a civil society to maintain a constant and continuous watch
over the organs of government. A representative legislature, separation of powers,
securing dispersal of public authority across different organs of government and
periodic elections were central to the disposition of this version. It avowed majority
consent rather than majority rule. It did require every adult to express his
representational preference through his vote. Virtual representation, i.e.,
representation through those entitled to act as such, was enough? The economic
counterpart of this version was free market and laissez-faire. Infact, classical
liberalism admirably suited as an ideology for the emerging bourgeois class with its

37
characteristic emphasis on private property, limited and formal avowal of freedom
and emphasis on freedom of trade. Freedom of exchange expressed in market was
supposed to assign a fair value to the product on exchange. It was construed as
keeping the state at bay.

3.5.2 New Liberalism

Many ideas of New Liberalism, which consolidated itself as a distinct version of

Liberalism by the end of the 19th century, were initially formulated by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778). Liberty for him was not merely freedom of choice, but is the
creative ability of people to realise their full potential as human beings. Participation
in the affairs of the community expanded creative potentialities tremendously by
placing at one‘s disposal collective resources against the solitary resources one could
muster in the pre-social state. Participation in the political community and its
processes enabled one to discover his real will and to shed contingencies of passing
and lingering prejudices. New Liberalism was deeply influenced by the thought of
German enlightenment and particularly by the ideas of Emmanuel Kant and F.W.G.
Hegel. Kant distinguished between a real and rational self, which he considered as a
higher and a lower self moved by desires provoked by the senses. The higher self was
the genuine locus of freedom. True freedom for Kant was freedom heteronomy i.e.,
subjection to the will of the other and from empirically caused desires. ―Such
independence‖ Kant wrote ―is called freedom in the strictest, i.e., transcendental
sense.‖ This is the freedom of the pure autonomous rational will, rightly according to
the purely formal moral law it gives to itself, obstacles to want satisfaction or limits
upon choice are not constraints upon such freedom, but everything that hinders a
moral life based on pure reason. Hegel sought to give to Kantian freedom a social and
political expression. He argued that freedom expressed in the sphere of the particular
and limited pursuits beguiles itself as freedom. He argued, ―It is the moral whole, the
state, which is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom;
but on the condition of his recognising, believing in and willing that which is
common to the whole‖. Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) was to formulate the
framework of the new liberal version more anyone else. He attempted to reverse the
terms of classical liberalism by drawing attention to the quality of the political
community and its institutions enabling one to exercise the kinds of choices one
would wish to exercise. He argued that a community possessing law and government
and which relies not on force, but on the consent of its citizens is the indispensable
condition for freedom. Members of such a community feel morally obligated to one
another and it is such concerns and supports that enable one to make the kind of
choices that one makes. Citizens under such a dispensation accept their
responsibilities to the state and towards other citizens because their own lives and
liberties get respected and promoted in the process. For New Liberals, freedom is a
value to be cherished. However, a particular kind of state and society are the
preconditions for the sustenance of such a value. Freedom requires morally formed

38
individuals and social institutions make possible the formation of such individuals.
These institutions in turn are expressions of the activity of its members. In Green‘s
formulation, rights and law were integral to freedom. Rights safeguard those
freedoms which individuals and social groups claim for themselves and grant to
others. In law the creative reason of the political community is at work, transcending
narrow interests and establishing conditions, for the nurturing of freedom. The system
of law guards the rights of citizens. The state removes the obstacles to and provides
the condition favouring moral development. The state is not merely governmental and
legal institutions of a society, but includes citizens and independent associations
participating in the making and execution of governmental decisions and policy. New
Liberalism reconceptualised human nature from being a timeless one to a dynamic
one. Human nature is formed and informed by the kind of institutions and supports
that nurture and nourish it and these institutions and supports in turn, reflect the kind
of human beings that sustain them. New Liberalism opened the way for economic
interventionist policies, welfare measures and redistribution of wealth. It provided
arguments and justifications to tackle problems of unemployment and poverty. It
sought a more equalitarian and cooperative society. The emphasis of the new liberals
on the health of institutions as a pre-requisite for the formation of a robust citizenry
was a powerful impulse for the making of a welfare state.

3.5.3 Libertarianism

In the past three decades, there has been a sustained attempt to limit and circumscribe
the role of the state in the economy and society and valorise the role of the market. It
has brought into vogue a version of liberalism called ‗libertarianism‘. It asserts the
primacy of liberty vis-a-vis other values. It narrows down liberalism to what is
permissible with the existence of the market, in which it sees the embodiment of
freedom. Some of the important spokespersons of libertarianism are Robert Nozick,
Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. The Libertarians deplore the welfare state, which
they think has become ‗unlimited‘. It acts as if it knows what is good for the citizens
rather than let the citizens decide what each one of them thinks is good for himself. It
is critical of governments by majorities, which have degenerated into exercises for the
pursuit of power by concluding deals with various groups for the division of spoils.
Majority rule has become a rule based on a coalition of various minority interests.
Libertarians, therefore, strive to dissociate liberalism from majority rule. Against a
situation where governments feel free to make any law they see fit, libertarians
advocate that people should be Free to Choose (Title of one of the books by Milton
Friedman and his wife). They call for a minimal state, which would be merely
concerned with determining, arbitrating and enforcing the rules of the game. They
want to transfer the moral entitlement to the individuals composing a society from the
state, which has come to arrogate it to itself. The right to property, which libertarians
consider as a matter of convention, is regarded as central to freedom by them. F.A.
Hayek was to say, ―What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private

39
property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own
property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the
means of production is divided among people acting independently that nobody has
complete power over us, that we as individual can decide what to do with ourselves‖
Libertarians attempt to set up an unbreakable bond between freedom, the market and
the efficient pursuit of policies and measures. They feel that the existence of liberty
leaves room for the unforeseeable and the unpredictable upon which science and
civilization rest. They argue that our most useful knowledge is inherently
decentralized and available to person for rapid adaptation rather than placed at the
disposal of the planners. Changes in the ground situation make the elaborately
designed plans archaic. An individual is better equipped to arrive at relevant and
appropriate knowledge and put it to optimum use rather than welfare state
bureaucracies. Markets facilitate rational allocative decisions by disseminating
relevant knowledge. The markets, according to them, cannot involve coercion as free
agents freely negotiate themselves in its arena. Therefore, for a free system to thrive,
it is not enough that the rule of law prevails, but that it ensures that the market will
work tolerably well.

3.5.4 Equalitarian Liberalism

An important version of liberalism that has been formulated in recent years has been
equalitarian liberalism. John Rawls‘ pioneering work presented in A Theory of Justice
(1971) and Political Liberalism (1993) has contributed greatly to the elaboration of
this perspective. Rawls in A Theory of Justice is critical of utilitarianism, which
employs net aggregate satisfactions to assess the fairness of public policy and
institutions. Rawls feels that such a position runs the risk of undermining liberty by
stipulating a good prior to choice, upholding a form of majoritarianism that does not
prioritise utility by rights and tending to make human persons instrumental for the
satisfaction of others.

Against the utilitarian canons and falling upon the moral theory of Immanuel Kant,
Rawls argues a just order should be based on the principles of ―Self before its Ends‘
and ‗Right prior to Good‘. It is the self through deliberations and choice that
identifies the ends to be pursued rather than certain pre-given ends determining the
course a person should take. Such a perspective is considered deontological as it is
not committed to certain prior ends governing our activity. Rawls resorts to the social
contract device to formulate the principles on which all can agree to base their social
and political institutions. These principles are: (1) Each person is to have an equal
right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others, (2)
Social and economic liberties are to be arranged in such a way that they are both (a)
to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions
open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. Each of these principles
has their consequences. The first principle generates specific rights and duties such as

40
right to speech, assembly, conscience, personal property and political liberties with
regard to voting and holding of office. The second principle regulates the fair
distribution of wealth and power. Rawls proposes a constitutional, legal, judicial and
civil life based upon these principles.

In Political Liberalism, Rawls finds the conception outlined by him in A Theory of

Justice as not taking into account the plural, but reasonable comprehensive pursuits of
life that prevail in a modern democratic society. For the purpose, he proposes the idea
of justice as fairness as a free-standing view on which the reasonable ways of life
agree and thereby, find an overlapping consensus. Accordingly, he modifies the two
principles that he had proposed in A Theory of Justice to an extent. These principles
advocate and express an egalitarian form of liberalism by emphasizing on three
elements. These three elements are (a) the guarantee of the fair value of the political
liberties which is not satisfied with their pure formal value; (b) fair equality of
opportunity and (c) the difference principle, according to which the social and
economic inequalities are to be adjusted so that greatest benefit accrues to the least
advantaged.

3.6 COUNTRY SPECIFIC LIBERAL TRADITIONS

The versions of the liberal tradition that we have outlined above understand the
significance and relationship across a body of ideas, beliefs and values and the
consequences that flow there from differently. These versions blazed their own
distinctive trails in different societies. Some of these societies displayed greater
receptivity to certain versions in relation to others. For instance, new liberalism
exerted a great deal of influence on the Indian National Movement and for years on
the policies of the country after independence.

Cultural expressions of different Political Traditions countries and their

constitutional, legal and political expressions domesticated some of these versions
making their liberal traditions greatly homegrown.

3.6.7 Liberalism in the U.S.A.

The American version of liberalism threw up certain distinctive body of ideas which
over the years interacted with the different versions of liberalism that came into
vogue. In the U.S.A., the right to representation was not virtual as in Britain and tied
to the concerns of the constituency and its electorate rather than to the interests of the
political community as a whole. Further, through the system of representation,
identifying the ‗better sort‘ of people was emphasized. In the U.S.A., emphasis on
property and local interests was much stronger. Further government was conceived in
much more interventionist terms in the U.S.A. than the laissez-faire doctrine
visualised in Britain. At the same time, the notion of popular sovereignity, which the
41
people as a political community continuously exercised and guarded, come to be
deeply ingrained in the U.S.A. The institutional complex of liberalism too was
differently emphasized. Divisible sovereignty, which enhanced localism and reduced
the dangers of centralism, independent judicial branch, respect for rule of law and
separation between religion and government found greater emphasis in the U.S.A.
relative to Britain. Civil associations and their political significance in the U.S.A.
were noted by the great French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville. He saw
it as a counterweight to democratic despotism that he felt was a potential threat in the
U.S.A.

―If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must
grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions increases‖ (A.
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York, Random House, p. 118)

American liberalism threw up its characteristic idea of pluralism. It argued that the
state in only one of the associations that a person is engaged with at a point of time.
There are other associations with whom he is bound in terms of his interests and
loyalties and every association is supreme in its own chosen field. Therefore, the state
has no overriding powers and needs to function alongside other associations.

3.6.8 Liberal Tradition in Continental Europe

The liberal tradition in continental Europe is complex and layered. The pre-Rousseou
a liberal tradition in France had a certain distinctive emphasis. The various freedoms,
of speech, belief, association and press were pronounced in the work of Voltaire. The
Physiocrats argued strongly for the freedom of the market. The philosophers stressed
on reason as a bond uniting all men and women. There was also a powerful civic
republican tradition in France which at times joined hands with liberal concerns and
agendas.

Rousseau‘s conception of radical democracy and the relation that he set up between it
and liberty ran counter to the formation of factions and interest groups. Factions
upheld partisan interests and could not be squared with the real will formulated by the
general will. The French state, which was supposed to be the bearer of this general
will, was conceived as having a direct relationship with citizens. Between citizens and
the state, there were no other interests. On the contrary, American kind of pluralism
thrived on the assertion of such interests.

Liberalism in other parts of the continent took on strongly rationalist overtones. This
was the case particularly in Germany. It was directed against autocracy, feudal
fragmentation and the dominant say the Church had on beliefs and morals.

42
The relationship between tradition and nationalism remained ambivalent. When
liberalism consolidated itself directing itself against feudal fragmentation, autocracy
and the Church, it often went with nationalism and consolidated a version of
liberalism called liberal. But there also emerged a brand of nationalism supported by
the Church and traditional interests which directed itself against liberal nationalism.

3.6.9 Liberal Tradition in India

India has a liberal legacy that goes back for about 200 years now. There are some
distinct emphases in this tradition. It called for social reforms as integral to the
national project in India, which was simultaneously conceived as liberal. Liberals in
India argued that the existing social institutions in India were not conducive to the
pursuit of rights and liberties. Social reforms aimed at reform of the caste system and
gender relations. They directed themselves against certain prevalent social evils such
as sati, prevention of widow remarriage and illiteracy. Unlike the Indian National
Congress, Indian liberalism sought constitutional reforms enthusiastically.

Constitutionalism was to become an important plank of the liberal project in India.

The liberals denounced the existence of untouchability in India and called for its
speedy abolition. They favoured a governmental complex where power is both
separated across different organs as well as decentralised. Secularism was integral to
the liberal project in India. It demanded that religion be not mixed up with the affairs
of the state, no religion be preferred over the others and the state remains neutral in
religious matters. According equal treatment to all religions too has its roots in the
liberal legacies in India.

The liberal project in India involved a strong state which enabled citizens and groups
to pursue goals and values which they regarded as their own and which were in tune
with the substantial characteristics of their projects. Such a state was held in check by
the division and distribution of powers and their decentralisation and by interweaving
the great diversity of India into its fold. Equal treatment of citizens came to be
qualified by according preferential treatment to groups and communities who suffered
disadvantage of one kind or the other.

The Liberal project in India has existed in an uneasy relation with the demands of
nationalism and democracy. It has made extraordinary demands on its citizens calling
upon them to be equally regardful of others which inevitably involve differential
regard, particularly in a context of age-old hierarchical relations and exclusive ways
of life.

The above three cases of the spread of liberal tradition in India are not exhaustive.
They, however, demonstrate the variegated reception that this tradition found across
the world.

43
3.6.10 Liberal in Conjunction

One of the major ways that liberalism has succeeded in being acceptable is by
cohabiting with variegated perspectives and ways of life. There are a bewildering
number of such combinations from the widely accepted such as ‗liberal democracy‘
and ‗liberal nationalism‘ to the relatively recent conjunctions such as ‗liberal
communitarianism‘. In all such uses, the term ‗liberal‘ does not carry the same
connotations, but acquires a deeply context-bound meaning.

3.8 VERSIONS OF THE MARXIST TRADITION

Like the liberal tradition, the marxist tradition too has several distinct expressions as
it came to be expounded and interpreted, took stock of the changing class relations
and applied to distinct and unevenly developed societies. The following versions of
this tradition are noteworthy.

3.8.1 Marxism

Marxism refers to a body of thought and social practices that took hold of the radical
forces directed against capitalist society from the second half of the 19th century. At
the head of these radical forces was the working class. Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) gave
expression to the central core of this thought and shaped the emerging socialist
movement. His friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) was his life-long
partner in this endeavour.

As a current of thought, Marxism was formulated by critiquing German Idealism,

political economy centered in Britain and the currents of Utopian Socialism that
prevailed in different quarters. It claimed to be scientific socialism and argued that
socialist practice is directed against the entire capitalist order and can be led only by
the proletariat. It sketched developments that led to the capitalist mode of production,
pieced together the various relations informing it and suggested the role of the
proletariat in transforming these relations. Given the uneven development of
capitalism, it saw the role of the working class differently in different countries. In
some, it might join hands with others for a democratic revolution and elsewhere, it
could head an alliance for a socialist revolution.

Marx grounded his social understanding on a distinct philosophical and

epistemological basis, which he called as materialist dialectics and is popularly
known as Dialectical Materialism. It distinguished being from thinking and accorded
primacy to the former over the latter. Some of the characteristic features of this
perspective were the following: The mode of being is inter-related but contradictory.
The inter-related and contradictory character of reality begets its differential and
uneven expressions and sets the course of its transformation. There are two kinds of
44
transformations: The first is quantitative which does not change the basic
characteristics of reality. The second alters the very character of being as the
contradictions internal to the constitution of being find expression, reconstituting it
afresh. However, new contradictions inform the being even when it goes through
qualitative transformations. The kind of contradictions constituting an object cannot
be foretold, but need to be grasped. Lenin later called it as the ‗concrete analysis of
the concrete situation‘.

Marx saw human beings as labouring creating and recreating themselves in the
process. Through his labour, man creatively engages himself with nature and begets
his bonds with other human beings, both associational and sensous. As long as
productive forces were little developed, everyone had to be productively engaged to
eke out his living. With the development of the means of production, however, the
productivity of labour increased, resulting in surplus, over and above the immediate
social needs. This surplus production, however, was appropriated by a certain social
strata leading to class relations and class antagonism between those who produce and
those who appropriate the social surplus. Marx and Engels find certain other
contradictions such as between manual and mental labour and town and countryside
as inextricably bound with the above contradiction. Given the class antagonisms in
society, the state emerges to hold the antagonistic classes in check and thereby enable
the reproduction of society. However, given the fact that the reproduction of society
takes place on the basis of certain dominant relations, the state becomes the agency
par excellence of the dominant classes.

Marx argues that different societies have gone through several modes of production
till the rise of capitalism. A mode of production consists of the economy made of a
specific combination of productive forces and relations among produces, or
production relations. He calls it as the base. The spheres of politics, law, religion and
culture are intimately connected to the base and get shaped by it. He calls them as
superstructures.

In his Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he says

“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite
relations, who are independent of their will, namely relations of production
appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.
The totality of these relations of production constitute the economic structure of
society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to
which correspond definite forms of social consciousness‖ (K. Marx, A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy, Moscow, Progress Pub., 1970, p. 20) Marx
argues that social agents caught in a particular mode of production pursue
development of productive forces. However, when it is not possible to do so within
the prevailing production relations, they resort to changing production relations
thereby precipitating revolutionary transformation.

45
For Marx, capitalism is the final mode of antagonistic class relations. This mode of
production develops productive forces to an extent unthinkable before. It is also a
mode that envelops the whole world bringing all the extant elements of other modes
of production under its sway. The basic class contradiction in this mode of production
is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. There are other classes and strata
within a capitalist society. They begin to get polarised across the basic classes in the
course of the development of productive forces. Marx argued that the polarisation of
the working class and peasantry is essential for the pursuit of revolutionary
transformation.

Marx argued that capitalism is susceptible to periodic crises resulting in a huge loss of
productive forces. He also felt that along with the development of capitalism, there
also develops the working class which initially deals with capital on terms set by the
latter. However, as class relations turn sour, the working class is no longer prepared
to abide by the terms set by capital. When further development of productive forces,
i.e., a state of affairs providing overall satisfaction to a society, cannot be ensured the
politically organised working class will launch its attack on the prevailing state power
and replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such a political shift will
inaugurate the phase of socialism, which will undermine capitalist relations and pave
the way for communism.

Marx saw communism as a mode of production where the productive forces belong to
the community as a whole and they are developed to the highest level so as to meet
the needs of each and every one of its members. It makes human beings free to pursue
the kind of work, which they relish and consider as the prime want of their life. Such
a society, he feels comes to be governed by the principles ―From everyone according
to his capacity; to everyone according to his need‖. Marx thought that as long as
labour was a necessity, there could not be freedom. Only with communism man
becomes truly fee.

Communism can dawn only by putting an end to such age-old contradictions such as
town and countryside and manual and mental labour. It will do away with division of
labour. Marx thought that communism will lead to the highest development of the self
along with the recomposition of the community.

Marxism called for a profound critique of the then existing socialism which he
thought were based upon utopian ideals. For him revolutionary practice is not an act
of the will and cannot be launched at any time. It requires the maturation of the
appropriate social conditions. However, class itself was both a reflection and
intensification of the contradictions of a society.

46
3.8.2 Leninism

Based on Marxist ideas, socialist parties arose sometimes struggling against existing
parties bearing the label. These parties were committed to a profound transformation
of the existing social relations through revolutionary transformation. Coincidentally,
liberal democracy too at this stage was increasingly becoming inclusive conceding a
number of political rights to the workers. One of the tasks that confronted the nascent
socialist parties was to define their relation with liberal democracy. There was also
the problem of the relation between the socialist party on one hand and the movement
organised around trade unions, cooperative, media and elections. There were also
profound changes in the nature of capitalism underway at this stage. How will these
changes affect the corpus of Marxist idea? This was an important issue before the
socialist parties. At the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th, we
find the rise of national movements struggling for their nationhood. The relationship
of the socialist movement to these nationalist struggles was yet to be worked out; and
finally as socialism spread across the world unevenly shaped by capitalism, the stage
of the revolution and the strategy appropriate for the same were important issues for
consideration.

Confronted with these challenges, we find a strong current of reformism developing

within the socialist movement initially given expression to by Edward Bernstein, an
important ideologue and leader of the German Socialist party. He called for a revision
of Marxism as a number of its tenets were outdated. He questioned proletarian
internationalism and sought to insert the workers within the nation-state. He did not
want the party to lead the movement but instead, the German Socialist Party, saw the
socialist revolution as a continuation and intensification of the agenda of the liberal
democratic revolution.

Lenin intervened at this stage and attempted to formulate a characteristic response to

all these questions. Lenin distinguished liberal democracy sharply from the
revolutionary pursuits of the working class and argued that the working class cannot
emancipate itself by expanding the framework of liberal democracy. He called for a
break from the mould of liberal democracy. In his well-known work what is To Be
done, he argued that the working class movement without being led by the socialist
party will be caught within the ambit of capitalism. He, therefore, called for a party
autonomous from the movement and capable of providing revolutionary leadership to
the working class movement as a whole. Lenin acknowledged that they were
profound changes in the nature of capitalism, changes which were not available to
Marx when he wrote on capitalism. However, instead of qualifying Marx‘s ideas on
capitalism, these changes, he argued, confirmed Marx‘s analysis. He termed the great
changes underway in capitalism as imperialism, which on account of the
contradictions inherent in it opens the door for revolutionary transformation. Lenin
distinguished between oppressed nationalities and oppressor nationalism. He argued

47
that the oppressed nationalities are struggling against dominant nationalism, which
are the agents of imperialism. Therefore, he called for a global solidarity between
revolutionary movements led by the working class and oppressed nationalities.

The uneven spread of capitalism, Lenin argued, called for the concrete analysis of the
concrete situation that a revolutionary movement confronts in each country. He
submitted Russia to such an analysis and redrafted the revolutionary design for Rusia.
Based upon his analysis of imperialism, Lenin argued that although Russia was not
industrialised like Western Europe and the proportion of the workers in the
population as a whole was small, there was no possibility of the further development
of productive forces in Russia. It would be inserted more and more in the imperialist
network. He considered Russia the weakest link in the imperialist chain as all the
contradictions were concentrated there: It had not gone through an agrarian
revolution; its bourgeois was weak; its state apparatuses were autocratic; there were
few civil liberties and the state was hugely dependent on foreign capital while at the
same time it nurtured the ambitions of being a great power.

Lenin saw the bourgeois deserting its liberal claims in the wake of the growth of the
working class movement as well as under the demands of imperialism. It made him to
stress the need for a violent overthrow of the existing state apparatuses so as to make
space for the exercise of power by the proletariat.

Lenin rejected the modes of institutionalisation of political power brought about

under liberal persuasion. He felt that its modes of representation, separation of powers
and periodic elections were meant to be devices to keep the masses away from
political power. He argued that the soviets must be the organs of power under
socialism. All powers were to be concentrated in the soviets and the revolutionary
masses should have a direct say in running its affairs. At the same time, Lenin stood
for a centralized economy with the small industry making place for the big. When
centralisation and bureaucratisation, however, threatened to eat up revolutionary
gains, Lenin called for an autonomous organisation of worker-peasant alliance to
subject these processes to revolutionary accountability. There were contradictory
stances in these approaches, which were to tell on the revolutionary credentials of the
emerging Soviet state.

3.8.3 Maoism

Mao-Ze-Dong was to raise fundamental questions on revolutionary transformation

from the perspective of colonies and people subjected to colonial domination.
Colonial domination generally enlisted the support of feudalism and reactionary
forces as the social base of its support. There was little autonomous development of
capitalism in the colonies. There was not merely a feeble bourgeoisie, but a relatively
insignificant proletarian base. A peculiar stratum of bourgeoisie arose under such

48
conditions which nurtured it by being the middleman of imperialist capital. Mao
called it as ‗compradore bourgeoisie‘. Besides, there were differences in the nature of
colonial domination; some were fully colonies and the others were semi-colonies.
Mao drew attention to the issue of the issue of culture under colonialism wherein the
languages mores, beliefs and habits of subject peoples were subjected to
marginalisation and subordination under the imperialist culture.

The nature of the revolutionary task in such societies, he argued, was to bring forth a
new kind of democracy, which he called as New Democracy. For Mao, this was a
radical form of comprador bourgeoisie. Such a revolution, he felt, must release the
masses from age-old bonds they were subject to, release their energy and enhance
their capacity to determine the course of their own emancipation. It required a
conscious attempt to promote nationalist culture vis-à-vis the imperialist culture. Who
can bring about such a revolutionary transformation? Mao argued that the bourgeoisie
cannot lead such a revolution in China and the only class under capitalism which can
do so were the proletariat. But given the presence of the industrial proletariat in
China, it can become effective only by firmly joining itself with the poor peasantry
and leading the agrarian revolution. The task of the Communists Party as the
vanguard of the revolution therefore, was to bring about an agrarian revolution.

Such an agrarian revolution cannot be undertaken by concentrating on urban

revolution, but by shifting over to rural revolution and joining hands with the
struggling peasantry. Urban uprising in the conditions of China, he felt, was mere
adventurism. How to bring about such an agrarian revolution? The strategy, he
suggested was a protracted armed struggle by liberating areas and moving on to
liberated regions. Guerilla tactics he found suitable to confront the enemy particularly
at the initial stages.

Mao also spelled out the strategy of the agrarian revolution in greater detail. It
involved basing oneself firmly on landless and poor peasants, taking in the middle
peasant and enlisting the support of the rich peasant as much as possible. He also
argued that depending on the kind of enemy that the revolution faced, the issues
identified for agrarian transformation need to be modified.

Therefore, one of the major shifts that Mao heralded was the shift of revolutionary
locale from urban areas to rural areas; founding a new axis of worker-peasant alliance
and suggesting a specific strategy for the agrarian transformation. Mao argued that
certain conductive external conditions were needed for the realization of a strategy of
this kind for the establishment of new democracy. He felt that the existence of the
Soviet Union was such a condition. Otherwise, the agrarian could be nipped in the
bud by hostile forces. For Mao, new democracy was a different form of democracy in
comparison to liberal democracy. Liberal democracy was tilted towards capitalism,
while new democracy was tilted towards socialism. New democracy was the form

49
appropriate for colonies/semi-colonies under conditions of imperialism and it would
create enabling conditions for the building of socialism capitalism. The second major
innovation of Mao lies in understanding socialist transformation.

He departed significantly from the Russian model in this regard. He argued that under
socialism, primacy must lay on transforming production relations rather than merely
developing productive forces. Socialism is a stage of transition from capitalism and
communism. During this entire stage, there is the class struggle between the capitalist
line and the communist line of advance. The struggle must not be merely against
survival of old capitalist relations, but against capitalist relations that constantly
emerge from the contradictory location of socialism. He argued that existing
government, party and societal relations exclude the masses from asserting their
direct and collective control over common affairs. Therefore, primacy under
socialism must be still on the question of power rather than on development. The
Cultural Revolution was supposed to be a political revolution under conditions of
socialism to build socialism.

Mao argued that building socialism should not be mirrored in the imagery of
capitalist development, as a passive process unfolding behind the masses. It should be
a process in which the masses directly participate and determine the course of
developments. The free creativity of the masses should find open expression under
socialism and they should not be subjected to bureaucratically drawn plans. He felt
that the state apparatuses and development agendas require major alteration and
reorientation under socialism. It is necessary that agriculture and industry be
developed, but they need to feed on each other and complement from the upwards.

Therefore, it was required that the commune, as the self-sufficient and self-governing
unit under socialism, be developed and resources and recognition be accorded to it.
Mao argued that under socialism, it is necessary to break the division between manual
and mental labour and town and countryside. Labour campaigns were launched to
make administrators and professionals undertake certain number of hours of manual
work.

For Mao, the cultural sphere became very crucial under socialism, advancing or
retarding the march towards communism depending on the significance accorded to
it. Values such as the middle path of Confucius, he felt, were meant to balance off the
extremes and not to strengthen revolution. These ideas threw China into continued
turmoil. The revolutionary zeal expressed in Mao was to be contained after his death
by policy of modernisation initiated by Deng-Ziao-Ping.

50
3.8.4 Other Marxist Versions

Marxism has thrown up numerous other versions, which have survived as distinct
traditions in several countries offering limited or more comprehensive resolution of
issues. Some of these proposals have remained merely at the level of theory and have
not been effectively translated into practice.

3.8.5 Western Marxism

Something, scholars have identified a distinct tradition of Western Marxism. It is,

however, composed of the work of a variegated body of intellectuals, political parties,
trends of thought, working class and radical initiatives and even individual witnesses.
Its legacy remains deeply fragmented, uneven, contested and even contradictory.
While it has made attempts to capture power through elections, mass uprisings and
armed insurrections, its primary investment lay in shaping intellectual and civic
tendencies and developing a sustained critique of capitalism. Some of the important
spokes/persons of this tradition are Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht, George
Lukacs and Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci and Jean Paul Sartre, Theodor Adorno and
Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin and Bertold Brecht and in recent years, Louis
Althusser, Michael Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. It has spawned a number of
distinct schools of thought such as Council Communism, Austro-Marxism, The
Franfurt School and Structural Marxism. There is the palpable influence of Leon
Trotsky in some strands of this tradition. Radical feminism has been an important
input in this tradition in recent years. Strong traces of psychoanalysis, particularly of
Sigmund Freud, can be found in some of its orientations and inclinations. Some of its
following features are noteworthy:

i) It identified alienation, fetishization and commodification of social

relations as important issues before the socialist movement.
ii) It has been deeply apprehensive of the loss and stunting of critical reason
under the sway and machinations of capital.
iii) It has drawn attention to the domain of superstructures, particularly culture
and argued for the need to contend against dominance, suppression,
repression and marginalisation manifest in this sphere. It has drawn
attention to the presence of subaltern cultures and the creative possibilities
they hold out to contend against dominance and pose radical alternatives.
iv) It has displayed a strong commitment to the promotion of socialist
democracy and for the purpose shown greater sensitivity to learn lessons
from liberal democracy. It has displayed greater sensitivity towards
political values such as freedom and rights. It has been deeply critical of
some of the socialist regimes for disregarding democratic norms and the
restrictions they have placed on freedoms and rights.
51
 v) It has tried to face the predicament of the failure of revolutionary socialist
movements in the West by advancing alternative explanations. The work
of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, has been pioneering in this
regard. He explores the issue of the reproduction of dominance of the
dominant classes by invoking consent of the dominated. These alternative
explanations have called attention to the intervention of socialists in the
arena of civil society, ideology and popular cultures much more
differently than earlier versions of Marxism suggested.
vi) Western Marxism has tended to stress on mass movements and popular
mobilisation for the purpose of political ascendancy of the proletariat. The
stress on revolutionary violence that we find in Leninism and Maoism is
less visible in this version.

3.8.6 Latin American Marxism

Dependency and exploitation reproduced in their relations with the developed world,
particularly the U.S.A., has remained an important theme in Latin American
Marxism. The local structures of economy and power that collude in reproducing
dependency and exploitation figure prominently in its lore. Given the coercive role of
the state in the reproduction of the system of dominance, Latin American Marxism
has invested a great deal of attention on capturing the loci of political power. Armed
struggle and resistance have been the inevitable outcome of such a focus.

The Catholic Church has a powerful presence in Latin America. The radical
movements under the auspices of Marxist organisations have often prompted the
Church to think and redefine its goals and objectives differently. One of the major
attempts in this direction is the formulation of a version of theology called ‗liberation
theology‘, which attempts to relate struggles against oppression with the salvific
message of Jesus.

3.8.7 Indian Marxism

For long, Indian Marxism took shelter under the ideological formulations and
guidance of Soviet and Chinese Marxism. However, it has attempted to strike on its
own with regard to the following issues:
i) It has attempted to come to terms with Indian nationalism in whose
formulation it did not have many roles to play, unlike the Communist
Party in China.
ii) Mass movements, particularly, those avowed to non-violent pursuit of
their goals have been central to Indian nationalism. Marxism has rarely
been exposed to movements to this scale. Indian Communism while being
well disposed to such movements and pioneering some of them under its
own leadership, has not adequately reflected on them.

52
 iii) Indian Communism confronted parliamentary democracy and it raised a
number of theoretical issues before it. However, over the years it has come
to accommodate itself to its demands while attempting to save itself from
being wholly absorbed within electoral pragmatism.
iv) The great Indian diversity, uneven levels of development and pluralism
have posed great challenged before Indian Communism pulling it in
different directions and occasioning splits and splits. Hitherto, it has
demonstrated little theoretical capacity to handle these social realities,
although it has displayed greater political ingenuity to form political
coalitions and alliances for the purpose.

3.9 SUMMARY

The Liberal-Marxist tradition as a whole has led to the constitution and reconstitution
of the world as no tradition has done so far. It is generally believed that the Liberal
tradition is hostile to the Marxist tradition. This unit highlights the issues they have in
common and the mutually shared consequences that flow from their core concerns. At
the same time, the Liberal tradition is markedly different from the Marxist tradition
and it would do them great injustice if they were to be collapsed into each other. This
unit highlights the differences between these traditions.

There is no uniform liberal tradition. We can think of several versions of the liberal
tradition. This unit provides an outline of some of the important versions of the liberal
tradition based on the shifts in its central tenets on one hand, and appropriations of
this tradition by a political community on the other. For the first, we have considered
classical liberalism, new liberalism, libertarianism and equalitarian liberalism. For the
second, we have dealt on american liberalism and continental liberalism. The Marxist
tradition too has undergone major transformation over-time. This unit provides a
sketch of the tradition that Marx and Engels initiated, the Leninist recasting of this
legacy and the Maoist version of this tradition. In terms of the appropriation of this
tradition, we have outlined the West European, Latin American and Indian version of
this tradition.

3.10 EXERCISES

1. What is liberalism?
2. Explain Classical Liberalism.
3. What is Equalitarian Liberalism?
4. Explain Liberal Tradition in India.
5. What are the different Versions of the Liberal Tradition?
6. What are the different Versions of the Marxist Tradition?

53
3.11 REFERENCES

1. Avineri S., The Social and Political Thought of K. Marx, Cambridge, CUP, 1968.

2. Carr E.H., the Bolshevik Revolution, London, Penguin, 1966.

3. Ch‘en Jerome, Mao and the Chinese Revolution, Oxford, OUP, 1965.

4. Clandin, F., Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, London,

Penguin, 1975.

5. Ghose S., Modern Indian Political Thought, New Delhi, Allied, 1984.

6. Honduj N., Lenin‘s Political Thought, London, Macmillan, 1977.

7. Hartz L., the Political Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American

54
UNIT-4 TRADITION OF POLITICAL THEORY-II:
ANARCHIST & CONSERVATIVE
Structure

4.1 Objective
4.2 Introduction
4.3 Definitional concerns
4.4 Individualist anarchism vs. social anarchism
4.5 Ends and means
4.6 Participation in statist democracy
4.7 Democracy in anarchism
4.8 Violence and non-violence
4.9 Pacifism
4.10 Individualism vs. collectivism
4.11 Identity politics
4.11.1 Gender
4.11.2 Ethnicity
4.11.3 Religion
4.12 Capitalism
4.13 Globalization
4.14 Conservatism
4.15 Meaning of Conservatism
4.16 Numerous use of the term ‗Conservatism‘
4.16.1 Temperamental Conservatism
4.16.2 Situational Conservatism
4.16.3 Political Conservatism
4.17 Conservatism: its characteristic Features
4.18 History and Tradition
4.19 Human Imperfection, Prejudice and Reason
4.20 Organic Society, Liberty and Equality
4.21 Authority and Power
4.22 Property and Life
4.23 Relation and Morality

55
 4.24 Some Representative Conservatives
4.25 Summary
4.26 Exercises
4.27 References

4.1 OBJECTIVE

After going through this unit, you should be able to:

 Explain what is Anarchism;
 Explain the meaning of anarchism in Democracy;
 Describe and explain the meaning of Conservatism, and Numerous use of the
term ‗Conservatism‘ and
 Discuss History and Tradition of Conservatism, Organic Society, Liberty and
Equality.
 Explain what is conservatism;
 Explain the use of the term conservatism;
 Describe and explain the meaning of political Conservatism, and Numerous
use of the term ‗Conservatism‘ and Discuss History and Tradition of
Conservatism, Organic Society, Liberty and Equality

4.2 INTRODUCTION

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be
undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority and
hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism,
known as anarchists, advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary
associations. While anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and
harmful, opposition to the state is not its central or sole definition. For instance,
anarchism can entail opposing authority or hierarchy in the conduct of all human
relations.

Anarchism is often considered a far-left ideology and much of its economics and
legal philosophy reflect anti-authoritarian interpretations of communism,
collectivism, syndicalism, mutualism, or participatory economics. As anarchism does
not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular worldview, many anarchist
types and traditions exist, not all of which are mutually exclusive. Anarchist schools
of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism
to complete collectivism. Strains of anarchism have often been divided into the
categories of social and individualist anarchism, or similar dual classifications. Other
classifications may add mutualism as a third category, with some considers it part of
individualist anarchism and others regard it to be part of social anarchism.
56
There are many philosophical differences among anarchists concerning questions of
ideology, values and strategy. Ideas about how anarchist societies should work vary
considerably, especially with respect to economics. There are also disagreements
about how such a society might be brought about—with some anarchists being
committed to a strategy of nonviolence while others advocate armed struggle.

4.3 DEFINITIONAL CONCERNS

Anarchist schools of thought encompass not only a range of individual schools, but
also a considerable divergence in the use of some key terms. Some terms such as
socialism have been subject to multiple definitions and ideological struggle
throughout the period of the development of anarchism. Others such as capitalism are
used in divergent and often contradictory ways by different schools within the
tradition. In addition, the meanings of terms such as mutualism have changed over
time, sometimes without spawning new schools. All of these terminological
difficulties contribute to misunderstandings within and about anarchism. A central
concern is whether the term anarchism is defined in opposition to hierarchy, authority
and the state, or state and capitalism. Debates over the meaning of the term emerge
from the fact that it refers to both an abstract philosophical position and to
intellectual, political and institutional traditions, all of which have been fraught with
conflict. Some minimal, abstract definitions encourage the inclusion of figures,
movements and philosophical positions which have historically positioned themselves
outside, or even in opposition to, individuals and traditions that have identified
themselves as anarchist.

While opposition to the state is central, there is a lot of talk among scholars and
anarchists on the matter and various currents perceive anarchism slightly differently.
Hence, it might be true to say that anarchism is a cluster of political philosophies
opposing authority and hierarchical organization (including the state, capitalism,
nationalism and all associated institutions) in the conduct of all human relations in
favour of a society based on voluntary association, freedom and decentralisation.
However, this definition has its own shortcomings as the definition based on
etymology (which is simply a negation of a ruler), or based on anti-statism
(anarchism is much more than that) or even the anti-authoritarian (which is an a
posteriori concussion).Major elements of the definition of anarchism include: a) the
will for a non coercive society; b) the rejection of the state apparatus; c) belief in
human nature, although it is even harder to define it than anarchism; and d) a
suggestion on how to act to pursue the ideal of anarchy.

Nonetheless, anti-capitalism is considered a necessary element of anarchism by most

anarchists. Usages in political circles have varied considerably. In 1894, Richard T.
Ely noted that the term had "already acquired a variety of meanings". In its most
general sense, these included the view that society is "a living, growing organism, the
57
laws of which are something different from the laws of individual action". Several
years earlier in 1888, the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker included the full
text of a "Socialistic Letter" by Ernest Lesigne in his essay on "State Socialism and
Anarchism". According to Lesigne, there are two socialisms: "One is dictatorial, the
other libertarian".

4.4 INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM VS. SOCIAL ANARCHISM

Due to the many anarchist schools of thought, anarchism can be divided into two or
more categories; the most used being individualist anarchism vs. social anarchism.
Other categorizations may include green anarchism and/or left and right anarchism
disambiguation needed. Terms like ana rcho-socialism or socialist anarchism can also
be used as synonymous for social anarchism, but this is rejected by most anarchists
since they generally consider themselves socialists of the libertarian tradition and are
seen as unnecessary and confusing when not used as synonymous for libertarian or
stateless socialism vis-à-vis authoritarian or state socialism. Anarchism has been
historically identified with the socialist and anti-capitalist movement, with the main
divide being between anti-market anarchists who support some form of decentralised
economic planning and pro-market anarchists who support free-market socialism,
therefore such terms are mainly used by anarcho-capitalism theorists and scholars
who recognize anarcho-capitalism to differenciate between the two. For similar
reasons, anarchists also reject categorizations such as left and right anarchism
(anarcho-capitalism and national-anarchism), seeing anarchism as a libertarian
socialist and radical left-wing or far-left ideology.

While most anarcho-capitalists theorists and scholars divide anarchism into social
anarchism vis-à-vis individualist anarchism meaning socialism vs. capitalism, seeing
the two as mutually exclusive although accepting all anarchist schools of thought
under anarchy on the basis of voluntaryism, anarchist theorists and scholars opposing
to anarcho-capitalism reject this, not seeing them as a struggle between socialism and
capitalism or as mutually exclusive, but instead as complementary, with their
differences mainly being based on the means to attain anarchy, rather than on their
ends, arguing against certain anarcho-capitalist theorists and scholars who see
indvidualist anarchism as pro-capitalist and reiterating that anarchism as a whole is
socialist, meaning libertarian and anti-statist socialism. As an example, many
anarcho-communists regard themselves as radically individualists, seeing anarcho-
communism as the best social system for the realization of individual freedom.
Notwithstanding the name, collectivist anarchism is also seen as a blend of
individualism and collectivism. Indeed, anarchism is generally considered an
individualist philosophy, opposing all forms of authoritarian collectivism, but one
which does see the individual or the community as complementary rather than
mutually exclusive, with anarco-communism and social anarchism in particular most
rejecting the individualist–collectivist dichotomy. Finally, social anarchism is a term

58
used in the United States to refer to Murray Bookchin's circle and its omonymous
journal.

Schools of thought like anarcha-feminism, anarcho-pacifism, anarcho-primitivism,

anarcho-transhumanism and green anarchism, among others, can have different
economic views and be either part of individualist anarchism or social anarchism. For
instance, to differenciate it from individualist anarchism most anarchists generally
prefer using social anarchism, a term used to characterize certain strides of anarchism
vis-à-vis individualist anarchism, with the former focusing on the social aspect and
generally being more organisational as well as supporting decentralised economic
planning and the latter focusing on the individual and generally being more anti-
organisational as well as supporting a free-market form of socialism, respectively,
rather than seeing the two categories as mutually exclusive or as socialist vis-à-vis
capitalism, leading to anarchism without adjectives. For instance, mutualism,
especially the theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, is seen as the middle or third
category between social anarchism and individualist anarchism, although it is often
considered part of social anarchism and sometimes part of individualist anarchism.
Proudhon spoke of social individualism and described the mutualism and the freedom
it pursued as the synthesis between communism and property.

From a materialist perspective, individualist anarchism is simply the anarchist form in

the pre-capitalist and largely agrarian and merchantilist capitalism before the
Industrial Revolution, during which individualist anarchism became a form of
artisanal and self-employed socialism, especially in the United States. Instead, social
anarchism is anarchism in an industrial society, being the form of industrial or
proletarian socialism, with post-left anarchy and its criticism of industrial technology
and anti-workerism arising in a post-industrial society. Thus, such anarchists may
simply see this categorization in these terms. Despite their differences, these are all
different forms of libertarian socialism. Before socialism became associated in the
20th century with Marxist–Leninist states and similar forms of authoritarian and
statist socialism, considered by critics as state capitalism and administrative
command economies rather than planned economies, the word socialism was a broad
concept which was aimed at solving the labour problem through radical changes in
the capitalist economy. This caused issues between traditional anarchists and
anarcho-captalists, whose understanding of socialism is that of the 20th century
Marxist–Leninist states and whose school of thought is generally not recognized as
part of anarchism.

Anarchists like Luigi Galleani and Errico Malatesta have seen no contradiction
between individualist anarchism and social anarchism, with the latter especially see
the issues not between the two forms of anarchism, but between anarchists and non-
anarchists.

59
4.5 ENDS AND MEANS

Among anarchists, there is no consensus on the legitimacy or utility of violence in

revolutionary struggle. For example, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Emma
Goldman and Errico Malatesta wrote of violence as a necessary and sometimes
desirable force in revolutionary settings. At the same time, they denounced acts of
individual terrorism; see Bakunin's "The Program of the International Brotherhood"
(1869) and Malatesta's "Violence as a Social Factor" (1895). Other anarchists such as
Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Day and Mahatma Gandhi have been advocates of pacifism.

Anarchists have often been portrayed as dangerous and violent, possibly due to a
number of high-profile violent actions, including riots, assassinations, insurrections
and terrorism committed by some anarchists as well as persistently negative media
portrayals. Late 19th-century revolutionaries encouraged acts of political violence,
called propaganda of the deed, such as bombings and the assassinations of heads of
state to further anarchism. However, the term originally referred to exemplary forms
of direct action meant to inspire the masses to revolution and propaganda of the deed
may be violent or nonviolent.

While all anarchists consider antimilitarism (opposition to war) to be inherent to their

philosophy, anarcho-pacifists take this further by following Tolstoy's belief in
pacifism. Although numerous anarchist-related initiatives have been based on the
tactic of nonviolence (see Earth First! and Food Not Bombs), many anarchists reject
pacifism as an ideology, instead supporting a diversity of tactics. Authors Ward
Churchill (Pacifism as Pathology, 1986) and Peter Gelderloos (How Nonviolence
Protects the State, 2005; "The Failure of Nonviolence", 2013) have published
influential books critical of pacifist doctrine which they view as ineffectual and
hypocritical. In a 2010 article, author Randall Amster argued for the development of a
"complementarity of tactics" to bridge the pacifist and more militant aspects of
anarchism.

As a result of anarchism's critical view of certain types of private property, many

anarchists see the destruction of property as an acceptable form of violence or argue
that it is not in fact violence at all. In her widely cited 1912 essay Direct Action,
Voltairine de Cleyre drew on American historical events, including the destroying of
revenue stamps and the Boston Tea Party as a defense of such activities.

Many anarchists participate in subversive organizations as a means to undermine the

establishment, such as Food Not Bombs, radical labor unions, alternative media and
radical social centers. This is in accordance with the anarchist ideal that governments
are intrinsically evil and that only by destroying the power of governments can
individual freedoms and liberties be preserved. However, some anarchist schools in
theory adopt the concept of dual power which means creating the structures for a new
anti-authoritarian society in the shell of the old, hierarchical one.

60
4.6 PARTICIPATION IN STATIST DEMOCRACY

Anarchist street art in Madison, Wisconsin declaring: "Our dreams cannot fit in their
ballot boxes"

While most anarchists firmly oppose voting, or otherwise participating in the state
institution, there are a few that disagree. The prominent anarchist Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon stood for election to the French Constituent Assembly twice in 1848. In the
1890s, Paul Brousse developed the concept of libertarian municipalism in
Switzerland which involved participating in local elections. Anarchists have opposed
voting for multiple reasons. Taking part in elections has historically resulted in
radicals becoming part of the system they oppose rather than ending it. Voting
acknowledges the state's legitimacy.

During the 2004 United States presidential election, the anarchist collective
CrimethInc. launched "Don't Just Vote, Get Active", a campaign promoting the
importance of direct action rather than electoral change. Anarchists in other countries
often engage in similar anti-voting campaigns and advocate a more pragmatic
approach, including voting in referenda. Other prominent anarchists like Howard
Zinn and Noam Chomsky have pledged their support for progressive candidates such
as Ralph Nader. In addition to merely voting, some anarchists such as Proudhon and
more recently Icelandic activist Smári McCarthy have stood for and won elections to
national legislative bodies. American individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner
argued that voting was a legitimate means of self-defense against the state and noted
that many supporters of the state consider both voting and abstention to be
acknowledgments of the state's legitimacy. Spooner's essay "No Treason" offers an
individualist anarchist rebuttal to the argument that existing democratic governments
are justified by majority consent.

During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, there was debate within anarchist
circles about whether to take an abstentionist position, vote for independence, or to
vote to remain in the United Kingdom, thus anarchists rarely fitted into the easy
binary of Yes/No voters of the referendum, with all seeking to go beyond the choices
offered at the ballot box. There was also a debate about what Scottish independence
would mean for the anarchist movement and social struggle. Groups like the
Anarchist Federation in Scotland (mainly in Edinburgh and Glasgow) took a critical
stance skeptical of the benefits of Scottish independence.

Within the United Kingdom, there was considerable debate around the Brexit vote in
2016. Anarchists are traditionally opposed to the European Union, yet the vote was
seen as one imposed by two factions of the right-wing. Yet again, there was debate
about whether to vote to Remain in the European Union, abstain (some left
communists argued for abstaining) or vote to Leave since the United Kingdom
government (the Conservative Party) was mostly in favour of remain while UK
Independence Party and far-right parties favoured Leave. There was also debate
61
within the left amongst anarchists and those who considered themselves to have a
Lexit (Left Exit position). The victory of the Leave side united anarchists whether
voters or abstainers against the racist incidents and rise of right-wing populism and
neo-nationalism which was considered to have happened following the result of the
vote. Many anarchists and anti-authoritarian leftists argue Brexit was negative for
social struggles and migrants in particular and considerable efforts were made to
analyze why the Leave result happened.

4.7 DEMOCRACY IN ANARCHISM

For individualist anarchists, "the system of democracy, of majority decision, is held

null and void. Any impingement upon the natural rights of the person is unjust and a
symbol of majority tyranny". Libertarian municipalist Murray Bookchin criticized
individualist anarchists for opposing democracy and said majority rule is consistent
with anarchism. While preferring the term assembly rather than democracy, Bookchin
has in turn been accused of municipal statism, i.e. non-anarchism. Later, Bookchin
renounced anarchism to identify himself as an advocate of Communalism.

4.8 VIOLENCE AND NON-VIOLENCE

Anarchists have often been portrayed as dangerous and violent due mainly to a
number of high-profile violent acts including riots, assassinations and insurrections
involving anarchists. However, the use of terrorism and assassination is condemned
by most anarchist ideology, although there remains no consensus on the legitimacy or
utility of violence. Some anarchists have opposed coercion while others have
supported it, particularly in the form of violent revolution on the path to anarchy.

Some anarchists share Leo Tolstoy's Christian anarchist belief in nonviolence. These
anarcho-pacifists advocate nonviolent resistance as the only method of achieving a
truly anarchist revolution. They often see violence as the basis of government and
coercion and argue that as such violence is illegitimate, no matter who is the target.
Some of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's French followers even saw strike action as
coercive and refused to take part in such traditional socialist tactics.

Other anarchists advocate Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication that

relates to peoples fundamental needs and feelings using strategies of requests,
observations and empathy yet providing for the use of protective force while rejecting
pacifism as a compromising strategy of the left that just perpetuates violence.

Other anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Errico Malatesta saw violence as a
necessary and sometimes desirable force. Malatesta took the view that it is "necessary
to destroy with violence, since one cannot do otherwise, the violence which denies
[the means of life and for development] to the workers" (Umanità Nova, number 125,
6 September 1921).

62
Between 1894 and 1901, individual anarchists assassinated numerous heads of state,
including:

 French President Sadi Carnot (1894)

 Empress consort Elisabeth of Austria (1898)
 King Umberto I of Italy (1900)
 United States President William McKinley (1901)

Such propaganda of the deed was not popular among anarchists and many in the
movement condemned the tactic. President William McKinley's assassin Leon
Czolgosz claimed to be a disciple of Emma Goldman. Goldman disavowed the act,
although she did not condemn Czolgosz's motivations in doing it. Goldman included
in her definition of anarchism the observation that all governments rest on violence
and this is one of the many reasons they should be opposed. Goldman herself did not
oppose tactics like assassination until she went to Russia, where she witnessed the
violence of the Russian state and the Red Army. From then on, Goldman condemned
the use of terrorism, especially by the state, but she still supported most other forms
of revolutionary violence throughout her life. In a debate with a pacifist five years
before her death, she countered that "the organized force used against the followers of
Gandhi has finally forced them to use violence, much to the distress of Gandhi" and
concluded that "as a method of combating the complex social injustices and
inequalities, non-resistance cannot be a decisive factor" (non-resistance was the term
for nonviolence used by Tolstoy and other early 20th century pacifists). Goldman at
this time was an information officer for the anarchist militias of the Spanish
Revolution which were committed to armed struggle.

Depictions in the press and popular fiction (for example, a malevolent bomb-throwing
anarchist in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent) helped create a lasting public
impression that anarchists are violent terrorists. This perception was enhanced by
events such as the Haymarket riot, where anarchists were blamed for throwing a
bomb at police who came to break up a public meeting in Chicago. More recently,
anarchists have been involved in protests against World Trade Organization (WTO)
and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings across the globe which the media
has described as violent or riots. Traditionally, May Day in London has also been a
day of marching, but in recent years the Metropolitan Police have warned that a
"hardcore of anarchists" are intent on causing violence. Anarchists often respond that
it is the police who initiate violence at these demonstrations, with anarchists who are
otherwise peaceful sometimes forced to defend themselves. The anarchists involved
in such protests often formed black blocs at these protests and some engaged in
property destruction, vandalism, or in violent conflicts with police, although others
stuck to non-violent principles. Those participating in black blocs distinguish between
violence and property destruction as they claim that violence is when a person inflicts
harm to another person while property destruction or property damage is not violence,
although it can have indirect harm such as financial harm. Most anarchists do not

63
consider the destruction of property to be violent as do most activists who believe in
non-violence.

4.9 PACIFISM

Most anarchists consider opposition to militarism to be inherent in their philosophy.

Some anarchists take it further and follow Leo Tolstoy's belief in non-violence (note
that these anarcho-pacifists are not necessarily Christian anarchists as Tolstoy was),
advocating nonviolent resistance as the only method of achieving a truly anarchist
revolution.

Anarchist literature often portrays war as an activity in which the state seeks to gain
and consolidate power, both domestically and in foreign lands. Many anarchists
subscribe to Randolph Bourne's view that "war is the health of the state". Anarchists
believe that if they were to support a war, they would be strengthening the state
indeed, Peter Kropotkin was alienated from other anarchists when he expressed
support for the British in World War I.

4.10 INDIVIDUALISM VS. COLLECTIVISM

While some anarchists favour collective property or no property, others such as some
American individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner
support private property while opposing property titles to unused land. Tucker argues
that collectivism in property is absurd: "That there is an entity known as the
community which is the rightful owner of all land, I maintain that the community is a
non-entity, that it has no existence". He was particularly adamant in his opposition to
communism, even to the point of asserting that those who opposed private property
were not anarchists: "Anarchism is a word without meaning, unless it includes the
liberty of the individual to control his product or whatever his product has brought
him through exchange in a free market that is, private property. Whoever denies
private property is of necessity an Archist". Similarly, Albert Meltzer argued that
since individualist anarchists like Tucker promote the idea of private armies, they
actually support a "limited State", contending that it "is only possible to conceive of
Anarchism which is free, communistic and offering no economic necessity for
repression of countering it". Anarcho-communists reject the criticism, pointing to the
principle of voluntary association that underpins their theory and differentiates it from
state communism. Some individualist anarchists are willing to recognize such
communism as a legitimate form. Kevin Carson writes that "free market, libertarian
communist, syndicalism, and other kinds of collectivist anarchists must learn to
coexist in peace and mutual respect today, in our fight against the corporate state, and
tomorrow, in the panarchy that is likely to succeed it".

Some forms of anarcho-communism such as insurrectionary anarchism are strongly

influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing anarcho-communism is the
best social system for the realisation of individual freedom. Hence, most anarcho-
64
communists view anarcho-communism itself as a way of reconciling the opposition
between the individual and society. Furthermore, post-left anarchists like Bob Black
went as far as to argue that "communism is the final fulfillment of individualism. The
apparent contradiction between individualism and communism rests on a
misunderstanding of both. Subjectivity is also objective: the individual really is
subjective. It is nonsense to speak of "emphatically prioritizing the social over the
individual,‖. You may as well speak of prioritizing the chicken over the egg. Anarchy
is a "method of individualization." It aims to combine the greatest individual
development with the greatest communal unity". Indeed, Max Baginski has argued
that property and the free market are just other "spooks", what Stirner called to refer
mere illusions, or ghosts in the mind, writing: "Modern Communists are more
individualistic than Stirner. To them, not merely religion, morality, family and State
are spooks, but property also is no more than a spook, in whose name the individual is
enslaved — and how enslaved! Communism thus creates a basis for the liberty and
Eigenheit of the individual. I am a Communist because I am an Individualist. Fully as
heartily the Communists concur with Stirner when he puts the word take in place of
demand — that leads to the dissolution of property, to expropriation. Individualism
and Communism go hand in hand". Peter Kropotkin argued that "Communism is the
one which guarantees the greatest amount of individual liberty provided that the idea
that begets the community be Liberty, Anarchy. Communism guarantees economic
freedom better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee wellbeing,
even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a day's work". Dielo Truda
similarly argued that "this other society will be libertarian communism, in which
social solidarity and free individuality find their full expression, and in which these
two ideas develop in perfect harmony". In "My Perspectives" of Willful Disobedience
(2: 12), it was argued as such: "I see the dichotomies made between individualism
and communism, individual revolt and class struggle, the struggle against human
exploitation and the exploitation of nature as false dichotomies and feel that those
who accept them are impoverishing their own critique and struggle".

The Right to Be Greedy is a book published in 1974 by an American Situationist

collective called For Ourselves: Council for Generalized Self-Management which
Black describes it in its preface as an "audacious attempt to synthesize a collectivist
social vision of left-wing origin with an individualistic (for lack of a better word)
ethic usually articulated on the right‖. Its authors say that "the positive conception of
egoism, the perspective of communist egoism, is the very heart and unity of our
theoretical and practical coherence‖. The book was highly influenced by the work of
Max Stirner, with Black humorously suggesting that it was a synthesis of Marxism
and Stirner's philosophy which may be called Marxism–Stirnerism just as he wrote an
essay on Groucho-Marxism, writing in the preface to The Right to be Greedy: "If
Marxism-Stirnerism is conceivable, every orthodoxy prating of freedom or liberation
is called into question, anarchism included. The only reason to read this book, as its
authors would be the first to agree, is for what you can get out of it".

65
Although commonly misconcepted, Marxism rejected egalitarianism in the sense of
greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of
the abolition of classes based on the division between workers and owners of
productive property. Marx and Engels believed that an international proletarian
revolution would bring about a socialist society which would then eventually give
way to a communist stage of social development which would be a classless,
stateless, moneyless, humane society erected on common ownership. However,
Marx's view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal
interest (such as a universal notion of equality), but it was about the creation of the
conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires,
making his notion of communist society radically individualistic. Marx was a
proponent of two principles, the first ("To each according to his contribution")
applied to socialism and the second ("From each according to their ability, to each
according to their needs") to an advanced communist society. Although his position is
often confused or conflated with distributive egalitarianism in which only the goods
and services resulting from production are distributed according to a notional
equality, Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as abstract and bourgeois in
nature, preferring to focus on more concrete principles such as opposition to
exploitation on materialist grounds and economic logic. Instead, he is a believer in
human freedom and human development. For Marx, the "true realm of freedom"
consists in the "development of human powers as an end in itself". As a result, he
conceives of a communist society as one in which "the full and free development of
every individual forms the ruling principle". Hence, Marx justified the forms of
equality he did advocate such as the communal ownership and control of the
economy on the grounds that they led to human freedom and human development
rather than simply because they were egalitarian, writing that in such a society there
are "universally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their own
communal relations, are hence also subordinated to their own communal control".
This communal control includes "their subordination of their communal, social
productivity as their social wealth".

4.11 IDENTITY POLITICS

4.11.1 Gender

Anarcha-feminism is a kind of radical feminism that espouses the belief that

patriarchy is a fundamental problem in society, but it was not explicitly formulated as
such until the early 1970s during the second-wave feminist movement.

Early first-wave feminist Mary Wollstonecraft held proto-anarchist views and

William Godwin is often considered a feminist anarchist precursor. Early French
feminists such as Jenny D' Héricourt and Juliette Adam also criticised the misogyny
in the anarchism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon during the 1850s. While most anarchists
of the period did not take these ideas seriously, others such as Florence Finch Kelly

66
and Moses Harman held gender equality as a topic of significant importance.
Anarcha-feminism garnered further attention through the work of early 20th-century
authors and theorists including Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre.

In the Spanish Civil War, an anarcha-feminist group called Mujeres Libres organized
to defend both anarchist and feminist ideas.

4.11.2 Ethnicity

Black anarchism opposes the existence of a state, capitalism and subjugation and
domination of people of color and favors a non-hierarchical organization of society.

Theorists include Ashanti Alston, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin and Sam Mbah. Some of
these theorists have had past experiences with the Black Panther Party and came to
anarchism after they became critical of the Black Panther Party's brand of Marxist–
Leninism. Anarchist People of Color (APOC) was created as a forum for non-
Caucasian anarchists to express their thoughts about racial issues within the anarchist
movement, particularly within the United States. Anti-Racist Action is not an
anarchist group, but many anarchists are involved. It focuses on publicly confronting
anti-Semites, racists, supremacists and others such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi
groups and the like.

Most modern and historical anarchists describe themselves as anti-racists. Many early
anarchists, notably Lucy Parsons (a person of color and formerly an enslaved
American), viewed racism as one of many negative side-effects of capitalism and
expected that it would vanish in a post-capitalist world. However, among modern
anarchists anti-racism plays a more prominent role and racism is typically viewed as
one of several forms of social hierarchy and stratification which must be destroyed.
No anarchist organizations have ever included racism as part of its platform and many
particularly modern formations include explicit anti-racism, with the national-
anarchist movement being rejected as part of anarchism for his perceived racism,
among other reasons. For instance, American anarchists were alone in opposing
racism against Chinese and Mexican workers in the late 19th century and early 20th
century. Since the late 1970s, anarchists have been involved in fighting the rise of
neo-fascist groups. In Germany and the United Kingdom, some anarchists worked
within militant anti-fascist groups alongside members of the Marxist left. They
advocated directly combating fascists with physical force rather than relying on the
state. Since the late 1990s, a similar tendency has developed within anarchism in the
United States.

Anti-Racist Action is one of the largest grassroots anti-fascist and anti-racist

organizations in North America today and counts many anarchists among its
members. Their tactics, centered on directly confronting neo-fascist and white-
supremacist groups, are considered controversial both within the anarchist movement

67
(where they are sometimes portrayed as well-intentioned, but ineffective) and in
mainstream society (where they are often portrayed as violent and disruptive).

Many anarchists also oppose the concept of race itself, arguing that it has no
biological basis in science and is a social construction designed to divide the working
class and preserve capitalism.

A minority of historically prominent anarchists have been accused of racism, e.g.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin.

4.11.3 Religion

From Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin to the Spanish anarcho-

syndicalists, most anarchists have questioned or opposed organized religion,
believing that most organized religions are hierarchical or authoritarian and more
often than not aligned with contemporary power structures like the state and capital.
Nonetheless, others reconcile anarchism with religion.

Christian anarchists believe that there is no higher authority than God and oppose
earthly authority such as government and established churches. They believe that
Jesus' teachings and the practice of the early Church were clearly anarchistic. Some of
them feel that the teachings of the Nazarenes and other early groups of followers were
corrupted by contemporary religious views, most notably when Theodosius I declared
Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christian anarchists
who follow Jesus' directive to turn the other cheek are usually strict pacifists,
although some believe in a limited justification of defense, especially defense of
others. The most famous advocate of Christian anarchism was Leo Tolstoy, author of
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, who called for a society based on compassion,
nonviolent principles and freedom. Christian anarchists tend to form experimental
communities (such as the Catholic Worker). They also occasionally resist taxation.

Buddhist anarchism originated in the influential Chinese anarchist movement of the

1920s. Taixu, one of the leading thinkers and writers of this school, was deeply
influenced by the work of Christian anarchists like Tolstoy and by the ancient
Chinese well-field system. In the late 19th century, the Ghadar movement in India
(see Har Dayal), influenced by Buddhist thought and by Swami Dayananda Saraswati
(founder of Arya Samaj), saw anarchism as a way of propagating the ancient culture
of the Arya (not to be confused with the much later appropriation of Aryan identity
by Nazism).[136] Buddhist anarchism was later revived in the 1960s by writers such
as Gary Snyder; an incarnation of this school of thought was popularized by Jack
Kerouac in his book The Dharma Bums.

With its focus on the environment and equality along with its often decentralized
nature, Neopaganism has led to a number of Neopagan anarchists. One of the most
prominent is Starhawk, who writes extensively about both spirituality and activism.

68
Discussing the anarchist movement in Britain in 2002, Adam K. has argued that it
"has an especially ignorant and hegemonistic perception of the Muslim community"
which he attributed to "the Anglo-centric nature of the movement". Quoting the
statement that "Islam is an enemy of all freedom loving people" from an anarchist
magazine, he argues that this is "no different to the bigoted rhetoric of George Bush
or even BNP leader Nick Griffin".

4.12 CAPITALISM

Throughout most of its history, anarchism has been defined by its proponents in
opposition to capitalism which they believe can be maintained only by state violence.
Anarchists generally follow Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in opposing ownership of
workplaces by capitalists and aim to replace wage labor with workers' associations.
These anarchists also agree with Peter Kropotkin's comment that "the origin of the
anarchist inception of society lies in the criticism of the hierarchical organisations and
the authoritarian conceptions of society" rather than in simple opposition to the state
or government. They argue that the wage system is hierarchical and authoritarian in
nature and consequently capitalism cannot be anarchist. Conversely, anarcho-
capitalists generally support wage labor and oppose workplace democracy which
most anarchists support, claiming that wage labor is voluntary. However, most
anarchists argue that certain capitalist transactions, including wage labor, are not
voluntary and that maintaining the class structure of a capitalist society requires
coercion which violates both anarchist principles and anarcho-capitalism's non-
aggression principle itself. Anarchists who support wage labor do so as long as the
employers and employees are paid equally for equal hours worked and neither party
has authority over the other. By following this principle, no individual profits from
the labor of another. Those anarchists describe the wages received in such an
employer-employee relationship as the individual laborer's full product and generally
envision that in such a society every worker would be self-employed and own their
own private means of production, free to walk away from employment contracts.

Some supporters argue that anarcho-capitalism is a form of individualist anarchism.

However, most early individualist anarchists considered themselves "fervent anti-
capitalists [who see] no contradiction between their individualist stance and their
rejection of capitalism". Many defined themselves as socialists. These early
individualist anarchists defined capitalism in various ways, but it was often discussed
in terms of usury: "There are three forms of usury, interest on money, rent on land
and houses, and profit in exchange. Whoever is in receipt of any of these is a usurer".
Excluding these, they tended to support free trade, free competition and varying
levels of private property such as mutualism based on occupation and use property
norms. It is this distinction which has led to the rift between anarchism and anarcho-
capitalism. Historically, anarchists considered themselves socialists and opposed to
capitalism, therefore anarcho-capitalism is considered by many anarchists today as
not being a form of anarchism. Furthermore, terms like anarcho-socialism or socialist
69
anarchism are rejected by most anarchists since they generally consider themselves
socialists of the libertarian tradition, but they are nevertheless used by anarcho-
capitalism theorists and scholars who recognize anarcho-capitalism to differentiate
between the two. Ultimately, anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who coined
the term itself and developed such philosophy through the 1970s, stated that
individualist anarchism is different from capitalism due to the individualist anarchists
retaining the labor theory of value and many writers deny that anarcho-capitalism is a
form of anarchism at all, or that capitalism itself is compatible with anarchism.
Seeing it instead as a form of New Right libertarianism.

Anarchist organisations such as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (Spain) and
the Anarchist Federation (Britain and Ireland) generally take an explicitly anti-
capitalist stance. In the 20th century, several economists began to formulate a form of
radical American libertarianism known as anarcho-capitalism. This has met resistance
from those who hold that capitalism is inherently oppressive or statist and many
anarchists and scholars do not consider anarcho-capitalism to properly cohere with
the spirit, principles, or history of anarchism. While other anarchists and scholars
regard anarchism as referring only to opposition to the non-privatisation of all aspects
of the state and do consider anarcho-capitalism to be a form of anarchism, Gary
Chartier has joined Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long, Charles W. Johnson, Brad
Spangler, Sheldon Richman and Chris Matthew Sciabarra in maintaining that because
of its heritage and its emancipatory goals and potential radical market anarchism
should be seen by its proponents and by others as part of the socialist tradition and
that market anarchists can and should call themselves socialists, echoing the language
of libertarian socialists like American individualist anarchists Benjamin Tucker and
Lysander Spooner and British Thomas Hodgskin. In particular, Chartier has argued
that proponents of a genuinely free market, termed freed market to distinguish them
from the common conception which these left-libertarians (referred to as left-wing
market anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians) believe to be riddled with
statist and capitalist privileges, should explicitly reject capitalism and identify with
the global anti-capitalist movement while emphasizing that the abuses the anti-
capitalist movement highlights result from state-tolerated violence and state-secured
privilege rather than from voluntary cooperation and exchange. Indeed, proponents of
this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free
markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions these ideas support
anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical and pro-labor positions in economics;
anti-imperialism in foreign policy; and thoroughly radical views regarding such
cultural issues as gender, sexuality and race.

One major issue and divide between anarchism and anarcho-capitalism are the terms
capitalism and socialism themselves. For anarcho-capitalists, capitalism mean the free
market rather than actually existing capitalism (of which they are critics, arguing that
the problem rests on corporatism and state capitalism, a term coined by German
socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht, but whose concept can be traced back to anarchists like
70
Mikhail Bakunin and Jan Wacław Machajski, rather than capitalism itself) as
advocated by anti-capitalists and socialism is conflated with state socialism and
Marxist–Leninist states. However, the term socialism originally included any
opponent of capitalism, a term coined in the 18th century to mean a construed
political system built on privileges for the owners of capital. Contra anarcho-
capitalists, anarchists argue that capitalism necessarily rest on the state to survive and
state capitalism is seen as the inevitable result of both capitalism and state socialism.
Furthermore, the free market itself for classical economists such as Adam Smith did
not necessarily refer to a market free from government interference as it is now
commonly assumed or how anarcho-capitalists see it, but rather free from all forms of
economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities, implying that economic
rents, i.e. profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or
eliminated as much as possible through free competition. While anarcho-capitalists
who argue for private property which supports absentee and landlordism ownership
rather than occupation and use property norms as well as the homestead principle are
considerated right-libertarians rather than anarchists (this is due to anarchism
generally viewing any absentee ownership and ownership claims on land and natural
resources as immoral and illegitimate and seeing the idea of perpetually binding
original appropriation as advocated by some anarcho-capitalists as anathema to
traditional schools of anarchism as well as to any moral or economic philosophy that
takes equal natural rights to land and the Earth's resources as a premise), other
anarcho-capitalists are closer to mutualism and are considered part of free-market
anarchism which argue that a true free-market or laissez-faire system would be best
served under socialism rather than capitalism.

As a whole, anarchism is seen part of the socialist tradition, with the main divide
being between anti-market anarchists (most social anarchists, including anarcho-
communists, anarcho-syndicalists and collectivist anarchists) who support some form
of decentralised economic planning and pro-market anarchists (certain individualist
anarchists, including free-market anarchists and mutualists) who support free-market
socialism. As such, Chartier has argued that anarcho-capitalists should reject
capitalism and call themselves free-market advocates, writing that "it makes sense for
freed-market advocates to name what they oppose "capitalism." Doing so calls
attention to the freedom movement's radical roots, emphasizes the value of
understanding society as an alternative to the state, underscores the fact that
proponents of freedom object to non-aggressive as well as aggressive restraints on
liberty, ensures that advocates of freedom aren't confused with people who use
market rhetoric to prop up an unjust status quo, and expresses solidarity between
defenders of freed markets and workers as well as ordinary people around the world
who use "capitalism" as a short-hand label for the world-system that constrains their
freedom and stunts their lives".

Another major issue and divide within anarchism and anarcho-capitalism is that of
property, more specifically the issues of private property. By property, or private
71
property, ever since Proudhon's book What is Property?, published in 1840,
anarchists meant possession (or what other socialists, including Marxists and
communists, distingue as personal property) which he considered as liberty
("Property is liberty") versus productive property (such as land and infrastructure, or
what Marxists terms the means of production and the means of labor) which he
considered as theft ("Property is theft"), causing him to also say "Property is
impossible". However, individualist anarchists like Tucker started calling possession
as property, or private property. Anarcho-capitalists generally make no such
distinction. Such distinction is extremely important to anarchists and other socialists
because in the capitalist mode of production private and personal property are
considered to be exactly equivalent. Instead, anarchists make the following
distinctions:

Personal property, or possession, includes items intended for personal use (e.g. one's
toothbrush, clothes, homes, vehicles and sometimes money). It must be gained in a
socially fair manner and the owner has a distributive right to exclude others.

Anarchists generally agree that private property is a social relationship between the
owner and persons deprived (not a relationship between person and thing), e.g.
artifacts, factories, mines, dams, infrastructure, natural vegetation, mountains, deserts
and seas. In this context, private property and ownership means ownership of the
means of production, not personal possessions.

To anarchists and socialists alike, the term private property refers to capital or the
means of production while personal property refers to consumer and non-capital
goods and services.

4.13 GLOBALIZATION

Many anarchists are actively involved in the anti-globalization movement, seeing

corporate globalization as a neocolonialist attempt to use economic coercion on a
global scale, carried out through state institutions such as the World Bank, World
Trade Organization, Group of Eight and the World Economic Forum. Globalization is
an ambiguous term that has different meanings to different anarchist factions. Many
anarchists use the term to mean neocolonialism and/or cultural imperialism (which
they may see as related). Others, particularly anarcho-capitalists, use globalization to
mean the worldwide expansion of the division of labor and trade which they see as
beneficial so long as governments do not intervene. Anarcho-capitalists and market
anarchists also see the worldwide expansion of the division of labor through trade
(globalization) as a boon, but they oppose the regulation and cartelization imposed by
the World Bank, World Trade Organization and "managed trade" agreements such as
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free
Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Many also object to fiat money issued by central banks
and resulting debasement of money and confiscation of wealth. Groups such as
Reclaim the Streets were among the instigators of the so-called anti-globalization
72
movement. The Carnival against Capitalism on 18 June 1999 is generally regarded as
the first of the major anti-globalization protests. Anarchists such as the WOMBLES
have on occasion played a significant role in planning, organising and participating in
subsequent protests. The protests tended to be organised on anarchist direct action
principles with a general tolerance for a range of different activities ranging from
those who engage in tactical frivolity to the black blocs.

4.14 CONSERVATIVE TRADITION

Introduction

Conservatism, as a philosophy dedicated to the defense of an established order or an

attitude with a defensive strategy to maintain the present status quo or in the classical
sense of a 'right-wrong ideology', is an important intellectual force today. That it is
flourishing in the realm of ideas can be seen in a core of principles recognised in most
societies of our times. The philosophers of conservatism are one in highlighting the
principles on which conservatism bases itself. These principles, as Clinton Rossiter
sums up, are: (i) The existence of a universal moral order sanctioned and supported
by organised religion; (ii) The obstinately imperfect nature of men in which unreason
and sinfulness lurk always behind the curtain of civilized behavior; (iii) The natural
inequality of men in most qualities of mind, body and character; (iv) The necessity of
social classes and orders, and the consequent folly of attempts at leveling by force of
law; (v) The primary role of private property in the pursuit of personal liberty and the
defense of social order; (vi) The uncertainty of progress, and the recognition that
prescription is the chief method of such progress as a society may achieve; (vii) 'The
need for a ruling and serving aristocracy, (viii) The limited search of human reason
and the consequent importance of traditions, institutions, symbols, rituals and even
prejudices; (ix) 'The fallibility and potential tyranny of majority rule, and the
consequent desirability of diffusing, limiting and balancing political power.

Conservatism, as, a mood, prefers liberty over equality; tradition over changes;
history over politics; past over present or at least the future; prudent over inquisitive
man; and ordered society over society demanding changes.

4.15 MEANING 'OF CONSERVATISM

The term 'conservative' has a variety of meanings. It may refer to a person with a
moderate or cautious behavior, or a life style that is conventional, even conformist, or
a fear of, or refusal to change. Conservatism is an ideology which opposes more than
it favours. Andrew Haywood ('Political Ideologies') rightly says that: "There is, for
example, some truth in the belief that conservatives have a clearer understanding of
what they oppose than what they favour". To that except, conservatism is a negative
philosophy which preaches resistance to or at least wary suspicion of change: it is,
therefore, a defence of the status quo. In this sense, conservatism is a political attitude
rather than an ideology. People may be considered to be 'conservative' when they
73
resist change, without subscribing to a conservative political creed. The Stalinists in
the former Soviet Union who opposed Gorbachev's 'Perestroika' and 'Glasnost‘, were
'conservative' in their action, but certainly not conservative in terms of their political
ideology. The desire to resist change may be a recurrent theme within conservatism,
but what distinguish a conservative from people of other ideologies are the distinctive
arguments and values which a conservative employs in upholding his objectives.

Conservatism is more than an 'attitude of mind' or an 'approach to 1ife' or what Hugh

Ceril said 'a natural disposition of the human mind'. Conservatives, in fact, prefer to
base their arguments on experience and reality rather than abstract principles.
Conservatism is neither simple pragmatism, nor more opportunism. It is based upon a
particular set of political beliefs about human beings, the societies they live in, and
the importance of a distinctive set of political values. As such, 'like liberalism and
socialism, it can rightfully be described as an ideology' (Andrew Haywood).

The essence of conservatism, Russell Kirk (The Conservative Mind) says, "is the
preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity and that for the conservative,
custom, convention, constitution, and prescription are the roots of a tolerable civil
order". He adds that "forces of great power in nations are prescriptions in favour of
local rights and private property, of habits of life, prejudices in favour of old
decencies, the family, and religious dogmas‖.

De Kirk lists six canons of conservative thought:

1. A "belief in a body of natural law which rules society and conscience."

2. A "love of variety and the mystery of human existence, as opposed to
narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism and utilitarianism."
3. A "conviction that civilized, society requires orders and classes as opposed to
a 'classless' society: equality in the judgment of God and before courts of law.
Equality of condition means equality in servitude and boredom."
4. "Freedom and prosperity are inseparable, or else government becomes the
master of all,"
5. A "faith in prescription, for customs, conventions and old prescriptions are
checks upon anarchy and man's lust for power."
6. "Change may not be good reform; a statesman's chief virtue is prudence."

Conservatism is the philosophy of individualism, of an autonomous individual, of an

individual with inalienable rights, of an individual rooted in strong moral values, of
an individual nurtured in traditions.

4.16 NUMEROUS USES OFTHE TERM 'CONSERVITISM'

It is much easier to locate the historical context i.e., period between 750 and 1850 as
a response to the rapid series of changes in which conservatism evolved than to
specify what is or what the conservatives believe. Sometimes, conservatism means
outright opposition to all and every change; at others, it means an attempt to
74
reconstruct a form of society which existed in an earlier period. Still at other times, it
appears to be primarily a political reaction and secondarily, a body of ideas.
Conservatism, as Clinton Rossiter says, "is a word whose usefulness is matched only
by its capacity to confuse, distort and irritate." He adds: "Since the patterns of thought
and action it denotes are real and enduring, and since no substitute seems likely to be
generally accepted, conservatism will doubtless have a long life ..." Since World
War-II, the word 'conservatism' is being used in numerous ways.

4.16.1 Temperamental Conservatism

Conservatism, by one definition, denotes a 'natural' and culture-determined

disposition to resist dislocating changes in a customary pattern of living and working.
According to Rossiter, "It effectively is, a temperament or psychological stance, a
cluster of traits that are on daily display by most men in all societies;' He lists the
important elements of conservative temperament as (a) habit (the enormous fly-wheel
of society and its most precious conservative agent), (b) inertia (a force that often
seems to be as powerful in the social world as in the physical), (c) fear (especially
fear of the unexpected, the irregular and the uncomfortable), and (d) emulation (a
product of both fear of alienation from the group and a craving for its approval). So
understood, one may speak, with propriety, of the conservatism of the poor, of the
aged and of the ignorant. "At the same time", Rossitter writes, "one must assign a
high value to the conservative temperament in the pattern of social survival and even
of social progress".

4.16.2 Situational Conservatism

Conservatism, by a second definition, related to the first, is an attitude of opposition

to disruptive changes in the social, economic, legal, religious, political or cultural
order. "It describes", Rossiter clarifies, "somewhat less crudely and somewhat more
effectively, a pattern of social behaviour, a cluster of principles and prejudices that
are on daily display by many men in all developed societies." The distiniguishing
feature of this conservatism is the fear of change, which becomes transformed in the
political arena, as Rossiter tells, "into the fear of radicalism,‖ In this instance, "the
radicalism of men who propose to make the world order ... at the expense of old
values, institutions and patterns of living".

Situational conservatism is not confined only to the well-to-do; it extends to all levels
of people who lament change in the status quo.

It is unfortunate that both temperamental conservatism and situational conservatism-

tend to be equated to authoritarianism, obscurantism, racism, fascism, alienation,
maladjustment, and 'the closed mind' studies are needed before these elements are
linked to either of conservatism.

75
4.16.3 Political Conservatism

Conservatism, by still another definition, is the aspirations and activities, most of

them defensive rather than creative, of parties and movements that celebrate inherited
patterns of morality and tested institutions that oppose the reforming plans of the
moderate left and the schemes of the extreme left.

Political conservatism is a phenomenon which is universal of organised society, and

essentially, the defense of a going society. Reaction is not conservatism. It is the
position of men who sigh for past more intensively than they celebrate the present and
who feel that a retreat back into it is worth trying. The conservative is a man
essentially at rest: generally, well adjusted psychologically as well as
programmatically to "a world he never made." The reactionary is a man always in
motion, "refuses to", Rossiter points out, "acknowledge that whatever has been settled
must henceforth be considered good or at least tolerable, and he seems willing to
erase same paws, scrap some institutions, even amend his nation's constitution, so that
he call roll back the social process to the time which his countrymen first went
foolishly astray".

This should not mean that a restorationist is a conservative always, though there
seems a relationship between a restorationist in the sense of conservative and a
revolution. In the sense of a rcstorationist, a conservative is delusionist and like a
revolutionist, he may have outbursts. But it is going too far. A conservative, which a
revolutionary is not, is a man of order in whose scheme of things, a shattered society
has no place.

Conservatism is restorationism in so far as it comes to holding a brief for traditions,

customs, morals, history and the older institutions. It is radical in so far as these all, as
mentioned above, are to be protected from attacks of either liberal or socialist-Marxist
measures. It is liberal is so far as its values are not challenged. It is reactionary in so
far as the trace of history remains within the control of tested moral gospels. Rossiter
writes: "He (conservative), like the liberal, must reason and discriminate; he, like the
radical, may have to plan and gamble. The conservative as reformer, the right-wrong
politician who tries to outpromise liberals in the area of welfare legislation, is an
uncomfortable man. The conservative as revolutionary, the traditionalist who acts
'radically' to preserve the crumbling values and institutions of his community, is no
conservative at all".

4.17 CONSERVATISM: ITS CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES

"The desire to conserve", the words which Edmund Burke used, is the underlying
theme of conservative ideology, though it is not the sole objective which
conservatives of all shades seek to attain. Authoritarian conservatism has often been
reactionary; it either refuses to yield to change or attempts to turn the clock back.
Revolutionary conservatism may use the term radical conservatism and tends to

76
regain or reestablish or argue for a conservative fabric of revolutionary character. The
characteristic features of conservatism, as evolved in different forms and conveying
the fundamentals of conservatism can be identified.

4.18 HISTORY AND TRADITION

The role of history and tradition is basic to any type of conservatism. History,
reduced to its essentials, is nothing but experience. It is deductive thought in matters
of human relationship; Legitimacy is the work of history. "To see things authentically
as a conservative", Mannheim writes, "is to experience events ill the past. True
history is expressed not in linear and chronological fashion: but in the persistence of
structures, communities, habits and prejudices generation after generation. The
correctness of history or of experience for that matter is a persisting conservative‘s
emphasis. 'This has been shown by Burke, Rourke, Oakeshott and Voegelin, to
mention la few. Social reality can be understood through a historical approach: "We
cannot know where we are, mud1 less where we are going, until we know where we
have been. That is the bedrock position of the conservative philosophy of history".
('Conservatism: Dream and Reality')

History is represented in traditions, and traditions constitute an important component

of history. As such a central theme of conservatism is, with regard to history, its
defence of traditions, its desire to maintain established customs and institutions.
Burke was talking about tradition when he conceived of society as a partnership
between "those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born".
Tradition is, Chesterton says, ''a democracy of the dead." In this sense, tradition
reflects the accumulated wisdom of the past. The institutions and practices of the past
have been tested by time, and should the conservatives demand, be preserved for the
benefit of the living and for generations to come.

4.19 HUMAN IMPERFECTION, PREJUDICE AND REASON

Conservatism is a philosophy of human imperfection; the roots of man's basis lay

more in prejudice than in reason. As against the liberals, who think of human beings
as moral, rational and social, the conservatives regards men, both imperfect and
unperfectable Human beings, the conservatives believe, are dependent creatures,
always fearing isolation and instability, and therefore, always seek safety, security
and what is familiar, ready always to sacrifice liberty for social order. By their very
nature, the people, the conservatives would say, are suspicious of abstract ideas and
prefer to ground their ideas in experience and reality: they have usually an already
framed view evolved from the past, a prejudice-mad? Framework "Prejudice", Nisbet
argues for the conservative, "has its own intrinsic wisdom, one that is anterior to
intellect. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the
mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in
the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved". Reason stems from

77
knowledge that is learnt than imparted. The conservatives are of the opinion that
imparted knowledge leads to abstractions, abstract knowledge, and for human beings,
it is too centuplicated to be fully grasped. Learnt knowledge is rooted in experience
and is limited to the doing of something, to the learning of something through
committing mistakes. Such knowledge is not the knowledge of rules and
generalisations, but is one that comes from one man's experience and goes down in
the blood of the other. Reason as knowledge of this time is not a cure worse than the
disease, but is one that eliminates the disease.

4.20 ORGANIC SOCIETY, LIBERTY AND EQUALITY

The conservative view of society is an organic view of society: the individuals do not
and cannot exist outside society, but they are 'rooted' in society, and 'belong' to it;
they are parts of social groups and these groups‘ provide 'the individuals' lives with
security and meaning. The conservative's view of liberty is not 'leaving the individual
alone', but is one where there is willing acceptance of social obligation and ties. For
the conservatives, liberty is primarily 'doing one's duty. When the parents, for
example, advise their children to behave in a particular way, they do not constrain
their liberty, but they are providing a basis for the liberty the children would enjoy
when they grow up. The conservative view of liberty is neither atomistic nor rootless:
it is the enjoyment of rights together with the performance of duties, either before or
after or both.

The conservative view of society is one that is a living thing, an organism whose parts
is neither equal nor the same, work together and make the human body function
properly; each part of the organic society (i.e., family, government, a factory) plays a
particular role in sustaining and maintaining the health of society. Heywood explains,
"If society is organic, its structure and institutions have been shaped by natural forces
and its fabric should therefore be preserved and respected by the individuals who live
within it."

The conservative view of organic society is a unity composed of diversities: such a

society is always in a hierarchical fort11 where alone liberty works effectively and
with a meaning. In such a socially differentiated society, organic as it is, equality has
no place. "... Most forms of equality ... seem to the conservative to threaten the
liberties of both individuaI and group. Liberties which are inseparable from the built-
in differentiation, variety, and variable opportunity ..." (Nisbet). Burkeis dictum, in
this context, is: '"Those who attempt to level never equalise."

4.21 AUTHORITY AND POWER

Authority and power, in the sense they are used, have much in common for a
conservative. Power is used by one who is authorised to exercise it and it is the
legitimate act to get what one wills. In an organic society, order has to be maintained:
so power is an essential component of an organic society; in a hierarchical system,
78
there are different levels; so authority became necessary. Power and authority are the
important concepts in conservative philosophy. These, in no sense, constitute an
obstacle to what the conservatives think about liberty. "The only liberty", Burke said,
''I mean is a liberty connected with order; that exists not only along with order and
virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them". The conservatives believe that
authority, 1ike society. Develops naturally; power emerges from functions. Authority
and power, the conservatives strongly feel, develop from natural society. These are
natural because they are rooted in tile nature of society and all social institutions.
Within school, authority or power is, and in fact, should be exercised by the teacher;
in the work place, by the employer; and in the society, by the government. The
conservatives say that authority is necessary because it is beneficial, as everyone
needs the guidance, support and security of knowing where the people stand and what
is expected of them. That is why all the conservatives emphasise leadership and
discipline. "Leadership", Heywood says, "is a vital ingredient in any society because
it has the capacity to give direction and provide inspiration for others. Discipline is ...
a willing and healthy respect for authority."

No conservative believes in equality, in social equality at that. They think that people
are born unequally in the sense that: talents and skills are distributed unequally:
unequally should not be treated equally. The conservatives believe that inequality is
more deep-rooted. Genuine social equality, for the conservatives is therefore, a myth.

Conservatism adores power in so far as it helps establish order in society. It admires

authority because it is authority through which order is established in society.
Conservatives favour an authoritarian and all powerful state. Public order- and the
moral fabric of society can be maintained through the power and authority of the
state. Heywood writes: "Furthermore, within conservatism there is a strong
paternalistic tradition which portrays government as a father-figure within society."

4.22 PROPERTY AND LIFE

Property, for conservatives, possesses a deep and mystical significance. The

conservatives hold the view that property has a range of psychological and social
advantages: it provides security; gives people a sense of confidence; promotes social
values. As such, the conservatives want that property must be safeguarded from
disorder and lawlessness. They say that the property owners have a stalce in society.
They have an interest in maintaining law and order. Property ownership promotes the
conservative values of respecting the law, authority and social order. "A deeper and
more personal reason", Heywood writes, "Why Conservatives may support property
is that it can be thought of almost an extension of an individual's personality. People
'realise' themselves, even see themselves, in what they own".

"It is the contempt", Burke wrote, "for property ... that has led to all the other evils
which have received France (the French Revolution, 1789) and brought all Europe
into the most imminent danger".
79
Conservatism advocates the sanctity of property. In the heart of every true
conservative there is, as Russell Kirk Writes, "persuasion that property and freedom
are inseparably connected and that economic leveling is not economic progress.
Separate property from private possession and liberty is erased". Irving Babbitt
added: "Every form of social justice .... Tends toward confiscation, and confiscation,
when practiced on large scale, undermines moral standards, and in so far, substitutes
for real justice the law of cunning and the law of force."

4.23 RELIGION AND MORALITY

Conservatism is, indeed, unique among major ideologies in its emphasis on religion
and morality. Irrespective of denomination, all the conservatives including Hegel,
Haller and Coleridge made religion, and therefore morality, a keynote of state and
society.

The conservative support for religion and morality rests on the well-founded belief
that human beings, once they get aclrift from major orthodoxy, are likely to suffer
some measure of derangement, of loss of equilibrium. "Religion", Burke wrote to his
son, "is man's fastness in an otherwise incomprehensible and thereby hostile world".
Tocqueville, before his death bed confession, described the value of religion and
morality to government and society, and to freedom: "When there is no longer any
principle of authority in religion anymore than in politics, men are speedily frightened
at the prospect of unbounded independence. ... For my part, I doubt whether man can
ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire political
freedom. And I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him, he must be
subject; and if he be free, he must believe".

Religion is a spiritual phenomenon. But at the same time, it is essential social cement
as well. For the conservatives, these exists a close relationship between religion and
conservatism, for religion provides society a moral fabric.

4.24 SOME REPRESENTATIVE CONSERVATIVES

It is only by way of completing an argument for conservatism that an attempt is

being made to mention a few, and among them, two major representative
conservatives; Burke and Oalceshott.

i. Burkc's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' has been taken as

definitive and fortnative of modern conservatism, with its opposition to
radical reform based on abstract principles and its plea for the virtues of
established and evolved institutions. Burke's faith in the past, his
admiration' of the preset it, his opposition to innovations, his small view of
human nature, lies belief in the traditional outlook of society and his
sympathies with man of property all these go on to make him a
conservative thinker. Cobban ('Edmund Burke') remarks: "Disciple of

80
 Loclte and Whig politicians, though Burke was, the real man stands quite
apart from the eighteenth century and the philosopher. A believer in
antiquity in an age when the mod err^ had definitely conquered in their
struggle with the Ancients, an adherent of the past in an age that was
beginning to look to the future, he was also a philosopher of unreason in
the great age of Reason."

Burke's conservatism is the basis of all his writings. Conservatism, as a

theory, usually has three varieties: (a) Status Quo: It is one in which things
are kept as they are. In every society, one finds people who are interested
to keep things as they stand and who would not like to bring changes, for
in a status quo, they have nothing to lose; (b) organizational conseravatism
:such interests of men as favour status quo would find ways and means to
protect them, promote them and defend them . Thus, comes organization
which serves those who want to keep the status quo. What is
organizational is conservative in nature. Yesterday's idea becomes today‘s
movement and today's movement becomes tomorrow's organization; (c)
philosophical conservatism: Once there is interest in the status quo and an
organization to protect it, there is built an ideology, a philosophy around
the interest to be protected. Conservatism, as a. philosophy, is the building
of a case for the protection and promotion of such interests.

Burke, in his writings, has passed through the above varieties of

conservatism. Having stood for the admiration of the status quo, Ile builds
the organization (parliamentary system, the political parties with national
interests, etc., etc.) to support the status quo. But within the frame-work
0.f conservatism, Burke demonstrates reformism. Until Burke's arrival, the
Whig party was on the offensive. With Burke, there developed the
beginning of a shift which carried the prevailing social philosophy from
attack to defence.

ii. Oakeshott‘s plea for traditionalism, as an aspect of his conservatism in

politics, morals and life, in general, proceeds logically from his critique of
rationalism. ~according to Oakeshott, the ideological style of politics (i.e.,
the rationalist style) is a confused style, for ideology in the rationalist
scheme as he thinks, is merely an abridgement, an index. So, Oakesliott's
answer is that the only style, one should adopt and pursue, is the
traditional one. Political activity, Oakeshott affirms, cannot spring but
from the existing traditions of behavior and the form that it takes is the
amendment of' existing arrangements by exploring and pursuing what is
implied in them. All activity, for him, therefore, is traditional in nature.
Every idea, every ideal, every ideology, even the most revolutionary, as
described by Oakeshott, is traditional, always an index, an abridgement of
traditional manner of attending to the arrangements of society.
81
 Political activity, for Oakeshott, is, as Minogue says, "not succumbing to
an impulse, nor is it drawing an implication: it is the pursuit of
intimation…..intimations appear as a kind of via media between the
extremes of logical implication and inexplicable accident." Oakeshott's
solution, Minogue holds, "is to take politics as a traditional activity, the
point of the word traditional being to emphasize that it can only be
understood in historical terms."

Tradition, Oakeshott feels, is not a fixed manner of dong thing, but is flow
of sympathy. Every political activity, therefore, is a consequential activity
for him, the pursuit of intimation as he fondly calls it...This means that
political activity is what political activity actually is and not what it can be
or it ought to be. It is what it succeeds actually in doing. All those who
indulge; Oakeshott says, in revolutionary or idealistic actions indulge only
in self-deception. Oakeshott writes: "in political activity, then, men sail a
boundless and bottomless sea: there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor
for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The
enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and
enemy: and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional
manner of behaviour in order to make a Friend of every hostile occasion."

Oakeshott regards the traditional style of politics as the only legitimate style. In this
essay on "Being Consevative", he emphasizes that being conservative is to prefer the
familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the
possible, near to the distant, the convenient to the prefect, present laughter to the
utopian bliss. To be conservative is to be equal to one's own fortune, to live at the
level of one's means. Stability, Oakeshott says, is any day more profitable than
improvement. Oakeshott is suspicious of both change and innovation and, therefore,
would like people to look twice at the claims promised by a change. If the change is
unavoidable, Oakeshott would then favour only small and slow changes. Only that
reform, he insists, be accepted that remedies a defect or that helps disequilibrium to
be redressed

Like Burke, Oakeshott regards society as a conversation rather than an argument.

"Oakeshott does not believe', Minogue says, "That the point of the conversation is to
elicit truth, thought at titnes it will doubtless do so. Indeed, the whole point of the
conversation is that it doesn't have a point, and therefore 1iia11y things may find a
place in it which would be expelled as irrelevant .in a seminar or a debate in a
legislative assembly." As Oakeshott himself says, "It is with conversation as with
gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering."

Tradition, according to Oakeshott, is described as anything under the sun. It is, he

says, continuity; it is steady; though it moves, it never is wholly in motion; though it

82
is never holly at rest. To know, Oakeshott says, only the gist of traditionalism is to
know nothing; knowledge of it is unavoidably knowledge of its detail. Oakeshott's
definition is too broad to mean anything or mean nothing.

4.25 SUMMARY

Conservatism is an ideology of conservation. It developed essentially as a reaction

against the growing pace of political and economic changes especially in the West.
This is one reason that any use of the word 'conservatism' resists change. As a
philosophy, it defends the values of hierarchy, tradition and order against pressures
generated by industrialization and represented by the political challenges of liberalism
and socialism. That is why there is a basic distinction among the leftists and
socialists, libertarians and conservatives. The leftists and the socialists are the party of
bureaucracy (i.e., hardcore communists); libestarians, of markets; and conservatives,
of tradition.

Conservative ideology has its peculiar features: tradition and history, human
imperfections with a love for prejudice and against reason, organic society with
liberty and inequality, admiration of authority and power, strong plea for property and
life rights, and belief in ethical, moral and religious values.

The future of conservatism is inarred by its own limitations. Its opposition to equality
and more than this, its defense of inequality make it unpopular in societies which
have a strong democratic tendency. Consequently, conservatism has not succeeded in
developing into an ideology of worldwide importance. In itself, conservatism is too
broad and has become, to that extent, too vague an ideology: what is radical today
may not be so tomorrow.

From this above discussion we are able to know that anarchy refers to the state of a
society being without authorities or a governing body, and the general confusion and
chaos resulting from that condition. It may also refer to a society or a group of people
that totally rejects hierarchy. In practical terms, anarchy can refers to the curtailment
or abolition of traditional forms of government and institutions. It can also designate a
nation or any inhabited place that has no system of government or central rule.
Anarchy is primarily advocated by individual anarchists who propose replacing
government with voluntary institutions.

4.26 EXERCISES

1. Explain the meaning of conservatism. In how many major senses the word
'conservatism' is used?
2. What are, in your view, principles and canons of conservatism?
3. Describe briefly the characteristic features of conservatism.

83
 4. Write a note on Edmund Burke as a conservative thinker.
5. How does Michael Oakeshott defend traditionalism? Explain in detail.
6. What is Anarchism?
7. Why anarchism is a cluster of political philosophies?
8. Explain Individualist Anarchism Vs. Social Anarchism.
9. Explain anarchist views on Democracy.
10. What is Pacifism?
11. Explain Individualism Vs. Collectivism.

4.27 REFERECES

1. Benjamin Franks; Nathan jun; Leonard Williams (2018). Anarchism: A

conceptual Approach.
2. O.P Gauba ; An introduction to political theory, 7th edition, 2017
3. K.K Ghai ; understanding political theory; kalyani publisher
4. Benjamin Franks; Nathan jun; Leonard Williams (2018). Anarchism: A
conceptual Approach.
5. O.P Gauba ; An introduction to political theory, 7th edition, 2017
6. K.K Ghai ; understanding political theory; kalyani publisher

84
UNIT-5 APPROACHES TO POLITICAL THEORY-I:
NORMATIVE & HISTORICAL

Structure
5.1 Objective
5.2 Introduction
5.3 Western Classical Tradition
5.4 The Normative Conception in Political Theory
5.5 Empirical Vs Normative Theory
5.6 Positivist Critique of Normative Theory
5.7 The Historical Approach
5.8 Historical Approach in the Indian Context
5.9 Limitations of the Historical Approach
5.10 Summary
5.11 Exercises
5.12 References

5.1 OBJECTIVE

After going through this unit, you should be able to:

 Explain what is Normative tradition;

 Explain western classical tradition;
 Describe and explain the meaning of the normative conception in political
theory and
 The criticism of normative tradition
 explain the traditional approaches to political analysis
 discuss the historical approach to political analysis
 Explain the limitations of the historical approaches.

5.2 INTRODUCTION

Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the

phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or
desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible. A norm in
this normative sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about
behavior or outcomes. Normative is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to
mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most
85
others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for
judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or
outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in this field try to restrict the use of
the term normative to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and
outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical.

Normative has specialised meanings in different academic disciplines such as

philosophy, social sciences, and law. In most contexts, normative means 'relating to
an evaluation or value judgment.' Normative propositions tend to evaluate some
object or some course of action. Normative content differs from descriptive content.

One of the major developments in analytic philosophy has seen the reach of
normativity spread to virtually all corners of the field, from ethics and the philosophy
of action, to epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. Saul Kripke
famously showed that rules (including mathematical rules, such as the repetition of a
decimal pattern) are normative in an important respect.

5.3 WESTERN CLASSICAL TRADITION

From Plato to Marx, there are several philosophers, whose writings have been broadly
accepted to constitute what is called as the Western Classical Tradition. Political
arguments, in this tradition, have generally been of a normative nature due to the fact
that the subjects of concern and reflection have been matters such as: what is justice?
Are there human rights and if so, what are they? What is the role of the state? Do
individuals have definable needs and if so, who has an obligation to satisfy them?
Should the government seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number and, if it
should, what is the place of the minorities within this rubric? What gives government
legitimacy and a state sovereignty? What sorts of claims on resources does the
recognition of merit or desert embody? How far is the majority justified in imposing
its moral outlook on the rest of society? Can we give an adequate account of the
social and political institutions? What is the best form of government?

By and large, the classical tradition has been concerned with the nature of good life,
with the institutional arrangements that would be necessary for human beings to
flourish, for their needs to be met or their rational capacities realised. At the same
time, there has been a preoccupation with what is politically right with the nature of
law, justice, the best form of government, the rights and duties of the individuals, and
with the distributive organisation of society. Political theories were about the right
and the good and so were the political arguments. Seen in this way, the subject matter
of political philosophy was very much a part and parcel of moral philosophy. Political
arguments assumed the form of moral reasoning with a clear purpose of settling
moral issues or claims of moral and political truth on a rational basis.

86
Political arguments purported to convey some truths about the fundamental nature of
politics, to make claims which could be regarded as objective and inter subjectively
valid. This truth and objectivity was based upon different assumptions: sometimes
about reason, sometimes about empirical experience, sometimes about intuition, and
occasionally, revelation. At the same time, some epistemological authority was also
invoked such as reason or experience so that ultimately claims about fundamental
human needs, goals, purposes, relationships and the forms of rule appropriate to these
which entered in the political philosophy were supposed to be true. For example,
Plato, Hobbes, Hegel and Mill, worked out, at least in part, the cognitive basis on
which the claims in political philosophy were advanced.

Political arguments in this tradition, thus, proceeded from certain self-evident truth,
axioms, or assumptions about the nature of truth or knowledge, towards conclusions
about political truths or claim to truths. Since the philosophers themselves set up the
standards of cognitive truth, the validity of their political arguments could only be
judged internally. Appeal to some theory or independent criterion was out of
question. If you accepted the premise of the philosophy or the theory, there was no
way to escape from the validity of the conclusion. It would, however, be a different
matter if the disputes were over the premises if its cognitive claims were
challengeable.

Indeed, the history of the classical tradition shows that there were major differences
in the conclusions reached by political philosophers, on account of the fact that their
premises or epistemology were different. Such being the case, a point emerged with
regard to the significance of such philosophies. It began to be asked what is the
relevance of all such rival theories of politics, each of which claimed to embody the
truth about political morality, when there was no criterion to decide the adequacy of
the cognitive basis of these political and moral theories. Positivists were in the
forefront to pose such a question.

5.4 THE NORMATIVE CONCEPTION IN POLITICAL THEORY

The normative conception in political theory is known by different names. Some

people prefer to call it philosophical theory, while others refer to it as ethical theory.
The normative conception is based on the belief that the world and its events can be
interpreted in terms of logic, purpose and ends with the help of the theorist‘s intuition,
reasoning, insights and experiences. In other words, it is a project of philosophical
speculation about values.

The questions, which are asked by the normativists, would be: what should be the end
of political institutions? What should inform the relationship between the individual
and other social organisations? What arrangements in society can become model or
ideal and what rules and principles should govern it?
87
One may say that their concerns are moral and the purpose is to build an ideal type.
Hence, it is these theorists who have always conceived ‗utopia‘ in the realm of
political ideas through their powerful imagination.

Normative political theory leans heavily towards political philosophy, because it

derives its knowledge of the good life from it and also uses it as a framework in its
endeavour to create absolute norms. Infact, their tools of theorisation are borrowed
from political philosophy and therefore, they always seek to established inter-
relationships among concepts and look for coherence in the phenomena as well as in
their theories, which are typical examples of a philosophical outlook.

Leo Strauss has strongly advocated the case for normative theory and has argued that
political things by nature are subject to approval or disapproval and it is difficult to
judge them in any other terms, except as good or bad and justice or injustice.

But the problem with the normativists is that while professing values which they
cherish, they portray them as universal and absolute. They do not realise that their
urge to create absolute standard for goodness is not without pitfalls. And those ethical
values are relative to time and space with a heavy subjective content in them, which
precludes the possibility of any creation of absolute standard. We will do well to
remember that even a political theorist is a subjective instrument in the assessment of
the world and these insights are conditioned by many factors, which may be
ideological in nature.

The exponents of empirical theory take normativists to task for

1. Relativity of values
2. Cultural basis of ethics and norms
3. Ideological content in the enterprise and
4. Abstract and utopian nature of the project

It is true that the proponents of the normative conception get preoccupied with the
inquiry in to the internal consistency of theory and that pertains, mostly to the nature
of ideas and rigour in the method, while remaining unmindful and sometimes, even
negligent about the empirical understanding of the existing social and political reality.
It is more agonising and distressing, when one finds that this proclivity among them
is accompanied by another syndrome, under which they prefer to respond to a theorist
and undertake only a review of his work by turning away their eyes from the
empirical reality which stares at them. Thus, it turns out to be an illusory and
deceptive exercise in theory-building in the name of high and noble normative
concerns.

88
But in the distant past those who championed normative theory always tried to
connect their principles with the understanding of the reality of their times. Therefore,
all normative enterprises in the past had direct or indirect empirical referents and
Plato‘s theory of justice could be a good example to illustrate it.

In recent times, again the old sensibility within the normative theory has reemerged
and the passion for good life and good society has been matched by methodological
and empirical astuteness. John Rawls‘ A Theory of Justice is a case in point which
attempts to anchor logical and moral political theory in empirical findings. Rawls,
with his imagination, creates ‗original position‘ to connect normative philosophical
arguments with real world concerns about distributive justice and the welfare state.
Some other theorists are also attending to the tasks of developing moral theories
about equality, freedom and democracy by rooting them to every day concerns and
marrying them to specific situations.

Some normative theorists of the new generation have also started discarding the well
known inclination of theory, more a characteristic of the older days, under which
either exuberant justification for the existing arrangements was offered or they
hesitated to critique them and thus, carried the level of status – quoism in their
thought. Now, a new crop of theory has surfaced known as critical theory, which as a
part of the normative project, is engaged with political events and tries to combine
ideas with practice, and also makes effective interventions to facilitate changes for the
better in society and politics.

5.5 EMPIRICAL VS NORMATIVE THEORY

While several approaches to political science have been advocated from time to time,
and many of them have often co-existed simultaneously, they might be broadly
divided into two categories – the empirical-analytical or the scientific-behavioural
approach on one side and the legal-historical or the normative-philosophical approach
on the other, and each of these two approaches has been mainly demarcated from the
other by the emphasis it lays on facts as against values or on values as against facts.
Two opposing positions are taken up in this respect by those who have been described
by Robert Dahl as Empirical Theorists and Trans-empirical Theorists. The empirical
theorists believe that an empirical science of politics based on facts alone is possible,
whereas the others, the trans-empirical theorists, are of the opinion that the study of
politics neither can nor should be purely scientific. The controversy mainly revolves
around two major issues: i) Can political analysis be neutral? ii) Should political
analysis be neutral? Regarding the first, the empirical theorists are certain that it is
possible to isolate and to test the empirical aspect of our beliefs about politics without
the necessity of going into the value-laden question of whether the empirical
propositions are true or false. A ‗correct‘ decision on what is empirically true is not
the same as a ‗correct‘ decision on what ought to be. Whether values are derived from
89
God‘s will, or natural laws, or are purely subjective in nature, as the existentialists
believe. Facts are there for all to see and can be subjected to empirical tests, whereas
values cannot be tested this way. Whether the stability of popular governments in
general or in a particular country is in any way dependent on literacy, multi-party
systems, proportional representation, a two-party system, whether it can best function
under single-member constituencies, are questions which can be tested empirically,
irrespective of the fact whether they are concerning the right or the wrong political
systems. The transempiricists, on the other hand, believe that whatever is the situation
in the natural sciences, facts and values are so closely inter-twined with each other
that, in the study of politics, one cannot separate them except in the most trivial
instances. Whatever one might pretend, they would say, one is making value
judgements all the time. Any comprehensive theory about politics, they argue, must
inevitably contain what are Political Theory and Why Do We Need It? evaluations
not merely of the empirical validity of the factual statements in the theory, but also of
the moral quality of the political events, processes or systems described in the theory.
It is, therefore, an illusion to think, according to the trans-empiricists, that there can
be a completely objective theory of politics.

5.6 POSITIVIST CRITIQUE OF NORMATIVE THEORY

Positivism, especially logical positivism that was influenced by linguistic philosophy,

rejected much of the normative political theory as irredeemably subjective, lacking in
cognitive basis and even meaningless or outright nonsense. Wittgenstein, who
inspired logical positivist theories, had advanced three theses, which are of interest to
us here, in explicating the case against normative theory. The first was that logic and
mathematics consist of tautologies; second, that language has truth-functional
structure and that its basic elements are names, and third, no ethical or moral
statements can convey definite cognitive information. Elaborating the first, he said
that the basic structure of mathematics could be derived from logic and in that sense,
the truths of mathematics are conventional rather than revealing ‗facts‘ about
numbers and their relationships. That is to say, given certain definitions of the basic
terms, and a particular understanding of the rules of inference, the whole structure of
mathematical truth could be generated. But these forms of truth depend upon their
definitions of basic terms and the rules of inference. In a sense, they are true by
definition. It may appear that we make new discoveries in mathematics, but this is
only because the remote consequences of definition are difficult to foresee and have
to be teased out with great complication and elaboration. The second thesis is that
language has a structure that can be laid bare by logical analysis. This analysis will
reveal language as being truth-functional. That is to say that, complex propositions in
language, which we use to convey information, can be shown to be analysable into
component propositions. Obviously, this process has to stop and we are left with the
basic building blocks of language, that he calls ‗Elementary Propositions‘. These
elementary propositions consist of names. Names are important, because they give
90
meaning to elementary propositions for (a) they give meaning directly rather than
being mediated by other propositions, and (b) they relate directly to the world.
Consequently, if meaningful uses of language have to turn upon the fact that names
refer directly to objects, then this has clear consequences for moral and political
thinking. If the propositions contained in the normative political writings are not
susceptible to this analysis, then they are not meaningful. Objects are either material
objects or direct sense experiences. Political language, thus, gets in deep trouble, for
in what sense terms like good, justice, right could be analysed so as to refer to
objects? The final thesis draws this above conclusion. Moral and evaluative
languages generally do not admit of this truth-functional analysis and moral ‗objects‘
cannot be spoken about in a cognitively meaningful manner. Thus, there can be no
theory of values. Only those propositions describing basic experiences of material
objects could be meaningful. It followed from this that, a proposition to be valid must
be verifiable empirically, for which the proposition must refer to direct sense
experience or the nature of that experience could, in principle, be specified if directly
available sense experience was not involved. It may be argued that some political
theories of the classical tradition were based upon factual premises, such as those of
Hobbes, Aristotle and Mill. Their theories were based on facts of human nature .To
the extent the factual premises were empirical, they could in principle be verified and
then be meaningful. Positivists would accept these premises as meaningful, but would
rather concentrate on the nature of the support which these empirical propositions are
supposed to give to normative and evaluative conclusions. And in this context, they
invoked Hume who had argued that factual premises in an argument cannot yield
normative, moral or evaluative conclusions to dismiss such theories.

5.7 THE HISTORICAL APPROACH

Introduction
The traditional or the historical approach to political science is best represented by
George H. Sabine. Sabine proceeds with his definition of political science in a very
practical manner. He suggests that we include in political science all those subjects
which have been the major themes of discussion in the writings of well-known
political philosophers – Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill,
Green, Hegel, Marx, and others. In the writings of these philosophers, we may try to
search out those questions which they have raised about the truth or the validity of
political theories. Questions concerning goods or ideals to be realised in or through
the state, meaning of freedom, why men obey the government, the sphere of
government activities, meaning of equality – these are some of the questions which
have agitated the minds of political philosophers throughout the ages. In addition, we
may also make an inventory of questions regarding the state, the relationship between
state and society and between the individual and the state, and discuss them at length
if they have not been fully discussed by these political philosophers. These form the
bases of political theory, according to the traditionalist thinkers. Sabine and other
91
traditional writers have attached a great deal of importance to the historical approach.
A political theory, according to Sabine, is always advanced in ―reference to a pretty
specific situation‖ and, therefore, reconstruction of ―the time, place and the
circumstances in which it was produced‖ is essential to understand it. The fact, that a
political theory is always rooted in a ―pretty specific situation‖ does not mean that it
does not have significance for the future. Great political theory excels both in the
―analysis of a present situation and in suggestiveness for other situations‖. As such, a
good political theory, even though it is the outcome of a peculiar set of historical
circumstances, has significance for all times to come. It is exactly this universal
character of political theory which makes it respectable.

A typical political theory includes, according to Sabine, (a) ―factual statements about
the postures of affairs that gave rise to it‖, (b) statements of ―what may be roughly
called a causal nature‖, and (c) statements that ―something ought to happen or is the
right and desirable thing to have happened‖. Political theories, thus, constitute,
according to Sabine, three elements – the factual, the causal and the valuationary.
Political theories of great significance have generally been evolved during periods of
stress and strain. In the known history of more than twenty-five hundred years, there
have been two periods of about fifty years each in two places of quite restricted areas
where political philosophy has thrived most – (1) in Athens, in the second and the
third quarters of the fourth century B.C., when Plato and Aristotle wrote their great
works, and (2) in England, between 1640 and 1690, when Hobbes, Locke and others
evolved their political theories. Both these periods have been periods of great changes
in the social and intellectual history of Europe. Great political theories are, thus,
―secreted‖, as Sabine would put it, ―in the interstices of political and social crises‖.
They are produced, not by the crises as such, but by the reaction they leave on the
minds of the thinkers. In order, therefore, to understand political theory, it is
necessary to understand clearly, the time, the place and the circumstances in which it
has evolved. The political philosopher may not actually take part in the politics of his
times, but he is affected by it and, in his own turn, he tries vigorously to affect it.
Political theories, according to Sabine, ―play a double role‖, in the sense that while
they belong to the abstract world of thought, they also influence beliefs which
become causes and serve as causal events in historical situations. It is also necessary
to understand whether a political theory is true or false, sound or silly, valid or
unreliable. This involves the question of values. It is, therefore, necessary that in the
understanding of political theory we should try to bring in the factual, the causal as
well as the valuational factors.

Historical Approach
The various approaches to political analysis have been playing an important role in
the field of study of politics and political events. The approaches to political analysis
can be broadly classified as traditional approaches and modern approaches. While the
Traditional Approaches to political analysis include the philosophical, historical,

92
institutional and legal approaches, the Modern Approaches to political analysis
include the behavioural approach, the post-behavioural approach, the systems
approach, the structural-functional approach, the communications theory approach
and the decision-making approach. In this unit we shall be focusing on traditional
approaches namely, the Historical approach.

According to the advocates of this approach, political theory can be only understood
when the historical factors like the age, place and the situation in which it is evolved
are taken into consideration. As the name of this approach is related to history, it
emphasizes the study of the history of every political event to analyze any situation.
Political thinkers like Machiavelli, Sabine and Dunning believe that politics and
history are intricately related and the study of politics should always have a historical
perspective. Sabine is of the view that Political Science should include all those
subjects which have been discussed in the writings of different political thinkers from
the time of Plato. Moreover, history not only speaks about the past but also links it
with the present events. History provides the chronological order of every political
event and thereby helps in future estimation of events also. Hence, without studying
the past political events, institutions and political environment it would be wrong to
analyze the present political scenario or events. The historical approach aims at
understanding politics through a historical account of the past. Apart from the fact
that the study of the old political institutions is important from the standpoint of their
role in a particular period of history, their study is also important from the point of
view of assessing their contribution to the political behavior of society as a whole
throughout different stages of human history. Some important works where one can
find the impact of the historical approach include ―Ancient Law‖ (1861) and ―Early
History of Institutions‖ (1874) by Sir Henry Maine; ―Introduction to Political
Science‖ (1896) by Sir John Seeley; ―The State and the Nation‖ (1919), etc.

5.8 HISTORICAL APPROACH IN THE INDIAN CONTEXT

Applying the historical approach in the Indian context, one finds that the basic
document of governance in India, i.e., the Constitution of India has its roots in the
freedom movement of India. The ideas of liberty, equality, elimination of
discrimination, social justice, secularism, fundamental rights, popular sovereignty,
parliamentary democracy, federalism, national unity as reflected in the Indian
Constitution were the dominant themes during the freedom movement inspiring the
people to confront oppression and exploitation. Today a modern polity has been
established in India. However, the foundation of the modern Republic of India can be
traced back to the freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and other national
figures.

93
5.9 LIMITATIONS OF THE HISTORICAL APPROACH

 The Historical approach suffers from some limitations. Lord Bryce has said
that though historical comparisons may be illuminating, yet sometimes they
may be misleading too. Historical facts may be influenced by socio-cultural
orientations of those who document historical facts.

 Critics also point out ancient ideas may not be suitable in the contemporary
times and historical events cannot help us in the contemporary times as the
realities of political life have undergone vast changes.

5.10 SUMMARY

According to the advocates of the historical approach, political theory can be only
understood when the historical factors like the age, place and the situation in which it
is evolved are taken into consideration. Political thinkers like Machiavelli, Sabine and
Dunning believe that politics and history are intricately related and the study of
politics always should have a historical perspective. Sabine is of the view that
Political Science should include all those subjects which have been discussed in the
writings of different political thinkers from the time of Plato.

This approach strongly upholds the belief that the thinking or the ideology of every
political thinker is shaped by the surrounding environment. Moreover, history not
only speaks about the past but also links it with the present events. History provides
the chronological order of every political event and thereby helps in future estimation
of events also. Hence, without studying the past political events, institutions and
political environment it would be wrong to analyze the present political scenario or
events. The historical approach aims at understanding politics through a historical
account of the past. Apart from the fact that the study of the old political institutions
is important from the standpoint of their role in a particular period of history, their
study is also important from the point of view of assessing their contribution to the
political behavior of society as a whole throughout different stages of human history.

While empirical political theory is concerned with 'what is,' normative political
theory is concerned with 'what ought to be.' In other words, normative political
theory is concerned about how the world should be and focuses on the exploration of
values and what should be done based upon those values. Normative statements
and norms, as well as their meanings, are an integral part of human life. They are
fundamental for prioritizing goals and organizing and
planning. Thought, belief, emotion, and action are the basis of much ethical and
political discourse; indeed, normativity is arguably the key feature distinguishing
ethical and political discourse from other discourses (such as natural science).
94
5.11 EXERCISES

1. Who was the exponent of historical approach?

2. How Sabine define political theory?
3. Explain historical approach.
4. Explain Historical Approach In The Indian Context.
5. What are the different Limitations of The Historical Approach?
6. What is Normativity?
7. Explain western classical tradition.
8. Describe the normative conception in political theory.
9. Explain Empirical Theory
10. Explain Normative Theory.
11. Explain the Positivist Critique Of Normative Theory.

5.17 REFERENCES

1. Agarwal, R.C. (2006). Political Theory-Principles of Political Science. New

Delhi: S. Chand and Company.
2. Asirvatham, Eddy & Misra, K.K.(2006): Political Theory. New Delhi: S.
Chand and Company.
3. Kapur,A.C.(2006). Principles of Political Science. New Delhi: S. Chand and
Company.
4. Mahajan V.D. (2006). Political Theory. New Delhi: S. Chand and Company.
5. Bicchieri, Cristina (2005). The Grammar of Society:The Nature and
Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-
0521574907.
6. Bicchieri, Cristina (2017). Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure,
and Change Social Norms. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190622053.
7. Jarvis. Thomson, Judith (2008). Normativity. Chicago, Ill.: Open Court.
ISBN 9780812696585. OCLC 227918828.
8. Thomas, Scanlon, Being realistic about reasons (First ed.). Oxford. ISBN
9780199678488. OCLC 862091562.
9. 1940-, Kripke, Saul A., (1982). Wittgenstein on rules and private language :
an elementary exposition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN
0674954009. OCLC 7998796

95
UNIT-6 APPROACHES TO POLITICAL THEORY-II
(BEHAVIOURALISM AND POST BEHAVIOURALISM)

Structure
6.1 Objectives
6.2 Introduction
6.3 Meaning of Modern Approaches
6.4 Characteristics of Modern Approaches
6.5 The Behavioural Approach or Behaviouralism
6.5.1 Origin and Meaning of Behaviouralism
6.5.2 Salient Features of Behaviouralism
6.6 Merits of Behavioralism and Criticisms against Behaviouralism
6.6.1 Merits of Behavioralism
6.6.2 Criticisms against Behavioralism
6.7 The Post-Behavioural Approach or Post-Behaviouralism: Origin and
Meaning
6.7.1 Origin and Meaning
6.8 Post-Behaviouralism as the Reform Movement
6.9 Summary
6.10 Exercises
6.11 References

6.1 OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to

 explain the modern approaches to political analysis
 explain the characteristics of the modern approaches
 discuss the behavioural approach to the study of Political Science
 discuss the post-behavioural approach to the study of Political Science

6.2 INTRODUCTION

In the previous units, we learnt about the traditional approaches to political analysis.
In this unit we shall learn about the modern approaches to political analysis. As
opposed to the traditional approaches, the modern approaches are based on the study
and analysis of facts .The modern approaches include behavioural approach, post-
behavioural approach, systems approach, structural-functional approach,
96
communication theory approach, etc. In this unit we shall focus on two major modern
approaches, namely, Behaviouralism and Post-behaviouralism.

6.3 MEANING OF MODERN APPROACHES

After studying politics with the help of traditional approaches, the political thinkers of
the later period felt the necessity to study politics from a new perspective. Thus, to
minimize the deficiencies of the traditional approaches, various new approaches have
been advocated by the new political thinkers. These new approaches are regarded as
the "modern approaches" political analysis. Many thinkers regard was these
approaches as a reaction against the traditional approaches. These approaches are
mainly concerned with the scientific study of politics. The first breakthrough in this
regard comes with the emergence of the behavioural revolution in Political Science.
The modern approaches include: the Behavioural approach, the Post- Behavioural
approach, the Systems approach, the Structural- Functional approach, the
Communication Theory approach and the Decision-Making approach.

6.4 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN APPROACHES

 Modern Approaches try to draw conclusion from empirical data.

 These approaches go beyond the study of political structures and its historical
analysis and concentrate on the study of political behavior based on factual
understanding of political phenomena.

 Modern Approaches believe in inter-disciplinary study

 They emphasize scientific methods of study and attempt to draw scientific
conclusions in Political Science

6.5 THE BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH OR BEHAVIOURALISM

6.5.1 Origin and Meaning of Behaviouralism

The origin of behavioural movement can be traced back to the period of intellectual
developments in the twentieth century. The main thrust of this approach has been on
the day to day behaviour of the individuals as the members a political society. After
the First World War a movement emerged towards the use of empirical and
quantitative methods. Thus the emphasis on political behaviour in the first stage of
the twentieth century later led to the emergence of the behavioural movement in
Political Science. Significant landmark of this revolution is the publication of the
book, Political Behaviour written by an American thinker Frank Kent in 1928. This
approach takes into account the behaviour of persons and groups in society and not

97
institutions, structures or ideologies. Hence, the emphasis of this approach is on the
study of the individual as a member of the group. After the Second World War this
movement became very popular among the political thinkers of America as well as
some European countries. Charles. E. Merriam who was a professor of Political
Science at the Chicago University is regarded the father of the behavioural
movement. The behaviouralists emphasize the use of quantitative data and statistical
tables in political analysis. Several American political scientists like Gabriel Almond,
Robert Dahl, David Easton, Harold Lasswell and Karl Deutsch have evolved some
theoretical frameworks and research designs to do scientific and systematic research
in Political Science. All these works have contributed towards the strengthening of
behavioural movement.

Behaviouralism has been defined in different ways. Robert Dahl regards

behaviouralism as "a protest movement within Political Science associated with a
number of political scientists, mainly Americans who shared a strong sense of
dissatisfaction with the achievements of conventional Political Science, particularly
through historical, philosophical and the descriptive institutional approaches." He
further opines that by linking politics with the empirical components of the society,
the behavioural approach makes an attempt to make Political Science more scientific,
objective and value free. David Easton is of the view that the behavioural approach
should look at the participants in the political system as individuals with their
emotions, prejudices and predispositions of human beings. Scholars like Charles E
Merriam and Harold Lasswell also believed that political investigations would be
incomplete if psychological and social aspects are not taken into consideration.
Therefore, the behavioural movement tried to shift the focus of study from the
structure and origin of the government and various other institutions of the state to the
individuals who constitute the political system. For studying the day to day problems
of the individuals, behaviouralism put emphasis on the development of new methods
and techniques of research. The behaviouralists mainly used the techniques of
observation, interview, survey, research, case studies, data collection, statistical
analysis, quantification etc.

An important consideration of Behaviouralism has been the study of political

behavior, as an area of study within Political Science. Its focus is on the individual as
voter, leader, revolutionary, party member, etc., and the influences of the group or the
political system on the individual's political behavior.

6.5.2 Salient Features of Behaviouralism

David Easton has pointed out certain salient features of behaviouralism which are
regarded as its intellectual foundations. These are:

 Regularities: This approach believes that there are certain uniformities in

political behaviour which can be expressed in generalizations or theories in

98
 order to explain and predict political phenomena. In a particular situation the
political behaviour of individuals may be more or less similar. Such
regularities of behaviour may help the researcher to analyze a political
situation as well as to predict the future political phenomena. Study of such
regularities makes Political Science more scientific with some predictive
value.

 Verification: The behaviouralists do not want to accept everything as granted.

Therefore, they emphasize testing and verifying everything. According to
them, what cannot be verified is not scientific.

 Techniques: The behaviouralists put emphasis on the use of those research

tools and methods which generate valid, reliable and comparative data. A
researcher must make use of sophisticated tools like sample surveys,
mathematical models, simulation etc.

 Quantification: After collecting data, the researcher should measure and

quantify those data.

 Values: The behaviouralists have put heavy emphasis on separation of facts

from values. They believe that to do objective research one has to be value
free. It means that the researcher should not have any pre-conceived notion or
a biased view.

 Systematization: According to the behaviouralists research in Political

Science must be systematic. Theory and research should go together.

 Pure Science: Another characteristic of behaviouralism has been its aim to

make Political Science a "pure science". It believes that the study of Political
Science should be verified by evidence.

 Integration: According to the behaviouralists, Political Science should not be

separated from various other social sciences like history, sociology and
economics etc. This approach believes that political events are shaped by
various other factors in the society and therefore, it would be wrong to
separate Political Science from other disciplines.Thus, with the emergence of
behaviouralism a new thinking and new method of study were evolved in the
field of Political Science.

99
6.6 MERITS OF BEHAVIORALISM AND CRITICISMS AGAINST
BEHAVIOURALISM

6.6.1 Merits of Behavioralism

We can list the merits of behavioural approach as follows:

 It attempts to make Political Science scientific and brings it closer to

the day to day life of the individuals.

 Behaviouralism has first talked about bringing human behavior into

the arena of Political Science and thereby makes the study more relevant to
the society.

 This approach helps in predicting future political events.

6.6.2 Criticisms against Behavioralism

The behavioural approach has been appreciated by different political thinkers for its
merits as mentioned above. However, the Behavioural approach has also faced
criticism for its 'mad craze' for scienticism also. The main criticisms leveled against
the Behavioural approach are mentioned below:

 The Behavioural approach has been criticized for its dependence on

techniques and methods ignoring the subject matter.
 The advocates of the Behavioural approach were wrong when they said
that human beings behave in similar ways in similar circumstances.
 Besides, it is a difficult task to study human behaviour and to get a
definite result.
 Most of the political phenomena are unquantifiable. Therefore it is
always difficult to use scientific method in the study of Political Science.
 Moreover, the researcher being a human being is not always value
neutral as believed by the behaviouralists.

After studying politics with the help of traditional approaches, the political thinkers of
the later period felt the necessity to study politics from a new perspective. Thus, to
minimize the deficiencies of the traditional approaches, various new approaches have
been advocated by the new political thinkers. These new approaches are regarded as
the "modern approaches" political analysis. Many thinkers regard these approaches as
a reaction against the traditional approaches. These approaches are mainly concerned
with the scientific study of politics. The first breakthrough in this regard comes with
the emergence of the behavioural revolution in Political Science. The origin of
behavioural movement can be traced back to the period of intellectual developments
100
in the twentieth century. The main thrust of this approach has been on the day to day
behaviour of the individuals as the members a political society. After the First World
War a movement emerged towards the use of empirical and quantitative methods.

The emphasis on political behaviour in the first stage of the twentieth century later led
to the emergence of the behavioural movement in Political Science. Significant
landmark of this revolution is the publication of the book, Political Behaviour written
by an American thinker Frank Kent in 1928. The behavioural approach takes into
account the behaviour of persons and groups in society and not institutions, structures
or ideologies. Hence, the emphasis of this approach is on the study of the individual
as a member of the group. After the Second World War this movement became very
popular among the political thinkers of America as well as some European countries.
Charles. E. Merriam of the Chicago University is regarded the father of the
behavioural movement. The behaviouralists emphasize the use of quantitative data
and statistical tables in political analysis. Several writers like Gabriel Almond, Robert
Dahl, David Easton, Harold Lasswell and Karl Deutsch have evolved some
theoretical frameworks and research designs to do scientific and systematic research
in Political Science. All these works have contributed towards the strengthening of
behavioural movement.

David Easton has pointed out certain salient features of behaviouralism which are
regarded as its intellectual foundations. These are: Regularities, Verification,
Techniques, Quantification, Values, Systematization, Pure Science and Integration.
The growth of behavioural movement in Political Science is one of the important
landmarks in the history of Political Science. The rise of behaviouralism clearly
introduced a scientific vigour in the study of political phenomena. However, after
sometime, it began to be realized that unlike natural sciences, generalizations could
not be made in the field of social sciences, as the study of man in the societal context
was a far more complex pursuit than the study of objects in the natural sciences.
Therefore, a new thinking emerged among the behaviouralists for modifying
behaviouralism.

David Easton who was a staunch supporter of behaviouralism later became a strong
critic of behaviouralism. In his presidential address to the Annual Convention of the
American Political Science Association held in 1969, David Easton declared that he
felt dissatisfied with the political research and teaching made under the impact of
behaviouralism.

101
6.7 THE POST-BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH OR POSTBEHAVIOURALISM

6.7.1 Origin and Meaning

The growth of behavioural movement in Political Science is one of the important

landmarks in the history of Political Science. The rise of behaviouralism clearly
introduced a scientific vigour in the study of political phenomena. However, after
sometime, it began to be realized that unlike natural sciences, generalizations could
not be made in the field of social sciences, as the study of man in the societal context
was a far more complex pursuit than the study of objects in the natural sciences.
Therefore, a new thinking emerged among the behaviouralists for modifying
behaviouralism. This led to the emergence of post-behaviouralism. David Easton who
was a staunch supporter of behaviouralism later became a strong critic of
behaviouralism. In his presidential address to the Annual Convention of the American
Political Science Association held in 1969, David Easton declared that he felt
dissatisfied with the political research and teaching made under the impact of
behaviouralism. He further said that because of too much use of mathematics,
Political Science looked more of mathematics than of social science and that it had
lost touch with the current and contemporary world. Behaviouralism also dissatisfied
people as it failed to offer solutions to many social and political problems. Such
dissatisfaction has led to the emergence of post- behaviouralism. This new approach
believed that mere use of sophisticated techniques and research tools would not solve
the social and political problems of the world. Therefore post behaviouralists opposed
the idea of behaviouralists to make Political Science a value-free science like other
natural sciences. Therefore, postbehaviouralists made an effort to make Political
Science relevant to the society by reintroducing the emphasis on values. However, it
must be remembered that post-behaviouralism cannot be separated from
behaviouralism as it has emerged out of behaviouralism. Through using different
techniques and methods post-behaviouralists try to overcome the drawbacks of
behaviouralism and make the study of Political Science more relevant to the society
by laying equal emphasis on facts and values.

6.8 POST-BEHAVIOURALISM AS THE REFORM MOVEMENT

David Easton first pointed out the intellectual foundations of behaviouralism. Later he
charted out certain salient features of post behaviouralism which are termed as 'Credo
of Relevance'. Post-behaviouralism believed that the use of scientific tools is
beneficial if it can solve the various problems of the society. Behaviouralists gave too
much emphasis on methods and techniques and believed that it was better to be
wrong than vague. Post-behaviouralists on the other hand, believe that it is better to
be vague than non-relevantly precise. The postbehaviouralists criticized
behaviouralism on the ground that the latter had lost touch with the realities of the
society because of over emphasis on techniques. Thus, post-behaviouralists may be
102
regarded as the reform movement within behaviouralism. This new approach
emphasizes identifying and solving the major issues of political and social life.
According to postbehavioralism, the political scientists should find out different
alternatives and means to solve the social problems. Thus, the main thrust of
postbehaviouralism has been to make Political Science relevant to the society.

However, it must be remembered that it is only a continuation of behaviouralism. It

does not altogether reject the ideas of behaviouralism. It acknowledges the
achievement of behavioralism and appreciates its effort to do objective research in
Political Science. It only tries to bring research in Political Science closer to reality to
make the subject more relevant to the society. Accordingly, the post-behaviouralists
opposed the efforts of the behaviouralists to make Political Science a value-free
science. It was argued by the post-behaviouralists that Political Science in order to be
relevant to the society must consider basic issues of society such as justice, liberty,
equality, democracy, etc., The post-behaviouralists have described behaviouralism as
a 'mad craze for scienticism'. Thus, post-behavioralismis a reformation of
behavioralism as it shifts its focus strictly from empirical research to resolving
problems confronting the society.

6.9 SUMMARY

The Post-behavioural approach believed that mere use of sophisticated techniques and
research tools would not solve the social and political problems of the world.
Therefore post behaviouralists opposed the idea of behaviouralists to make Political
Science a value-free science like other natural sciences. Therefore, post-
behaviouralists made an effort to make Political Science relevant to the society. It
must be remembered that post-behaviouralism cannot be separated from
behaviouralism as it has emerged out of behaviouralism. Through using different
techniques and methods post-behaviouralists try to overcome the drawbacks of
behaviouralism and make the study of Political Science more relevant to the society.

Post-behaviouralism believed that the use of scientific tools is beneficial if it can

solve the various problems of the society. Thus, postbehavioralism is a reformation of
behaviouralism as it shifts its focus strictly from empirical research to resolving
problems confronting the society. The post-behaviouralists opposed the efforts of the
behaviouralists to make Political Science a value-free science. It was argued by the
post-behaviouralists that Political Science in order to be relevant to the society must
consider basic issues of society such as justice, liberty, equality, democracy, etc.

103
6.10 EXERCISES

1. What is modern approach?‘

2. What are the different characteristics of modern approaches?
3. What is behaviouralism?
4. Explain the features of Behaviouralism.
5. Explain the merits and demerits of behaviouralism.
6. Explain post behaviouralism.

6.11 REFRENCES

1. Easton, David (1959) The New Revolution in Political Science, The American
Political Science, 63/4: 1051-1061
2. Chaurasia, Radhey (2003) History of Political Thought, New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, p. 135
3. Sanford Schram, Brian Caterino, (2006) Making political science matter:
debating knowledge, research, and method, New York: New York University
Press, p. 167
4. Chaurasia, Radhey (2003) History of Political Thought, New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, p. 137
5. Jay M. Shafritz (2004) Dictionary of public policy and administration,
Oxford: Westview Press, p. 20
6. Chaurasia, Radhey (2003) History of Political Thought, New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, p. 137
7. Chaurasia, Radhey (2003) History of Political Thought, New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers, p. 138

104