Ideology
Ideology
→ Ideology From a social-scientific viewpoint, an ideology is a more or less coherent set of ideas that provides a basis for organised political action, whether this is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power relationships.
→ All ideologies therefore
offer an account of the existing order, usually in the form of a ‘worldview’
provide a model of a desired future, a vision of the Good Society
outline how political change can and should be brought about.
→ Ideologies are not, however, hermetically sealed systems of thought; rather, they are fluid sets of ideas that overlap with one another at a number of points. to refer to a developed social philosophy or world-view, it has in the past had heavily negative or pejorative connotations. During its sometimes tortuous career, the concept of ideology has commonly been used as a political weapon to condemn or criticise rival creeds or doctrines.
→ The term ‘ideology’ was coined in 1796 by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836). He used it to refer to a new ‘science of ideas’ (literally, an idea-ology) that set out to uncover the origins of conscious thought and ideas.
→ However, a more enduring meaning was assigned to the term in the nineteenth century in the writings of Karl Marx . For Marx, ideology amounted to the ideas of the ‘ruling class’, ideas that therefore uphold the class system and perpetuate exploitation. In their early work The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote the following:
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force in society, is at the same time the ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of mental production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production.
→ The defining feature of ideology in the Marxist sense is that it is false: it mystifies and confuses subordinate classes by concealing from them the contradictions on which all class societies are based. As far as capitalism is concerned, the ideology of the property-owning bourgeoisie (bourgeois ideology) fosters delusion or ‘false consciousness’ amongst the exploited proletariat, preventing them from recognizing the fact of their own exploitation
→ This view reflects a characteristically conservative scepticism about the value of rationalism, born out of the belief that the world is largely beyond the capacity of the human mind to fathom. As Oakeshott put it, in political activity ‘men sail a boundless and bottomless sea’. From this perspective, ideologies are seen as abstract ‘systems of thought’; that is, as sets of ideas that distort political reality because they claim to explain what is, frankly, incomprehensible. This is why conservatives have traditionally dismissed the notion that they subscribe to an ideology, preferring instead to describe conservatism as a disposition, or an ‘attitude of mind’, and placing their faith in pragmatism, tradition and history.
l Rationalism: The belief that the world can be understood and explained through the exercise of human reason, based on assumptions about its rational structure.
l Pragmatism: A theory or practice that places primary emphasis on practical circumstances and goals; pragmatism implies a distrust of abstract ideas.
→ The End of Ideology (1960), the US sociologist Daniel Bell (1919–2011) declared that the stock of political ideas had been exhausted. In his view, ethical and ideological questions had become irrelevant because in most western societies parties competed for power simply by promising higher levels of economic growth and material affluence. This debate was revived in the aftermath of the collapse of communism by ‘end of history’ theorists, such as Fukuyama, who suggested that a single ideology, liberal democracy, had triumphed over all its rivals, and that this triumph was final (see p. 44). At the heart of such debates lies questions about the relationship between politics and ideology, and specifically about whether politics can exist without ideology
→ The battle lines between capitalism and socialism were significantly sharpened by the 1917 Russian Revolution, which created the world’s first socialist state. Indeed, throughout what is sometimes called the ‘short’ twentieth century (from the outbreak of World War I to the fall of communism, 1989–91), and particularly during the Cold War period (1945–90), international politics was structured along ideological lines, as the capitalist West confronted the communist East.
l Meta-ideology: A higher or second-order ideology that lays down the grounds on which ideological debate can take place.
LIBERALISATION
→ In its earliest form, liberalism was a political doctrine. As reflected in the ideas of thinkers such as John Locke, it attacked absolutism (see p. 268) and feudal privilege, instead advocating constitutional and, later, representative government. By the early nineteenth century, a distinctively liberal economic creed had developed that extolled the virtues of laissez-faire (see p. 132) and condemned all forms of government intervention. This became the centrepiece of classical, or nineteenth-century, liberalism. From the late nineteenth century onwards, however, a form of social liberalism emerged that looked more favourably on welfare reform and economic intervention. Such an emphasis became the characteristic theme of modern, or twentieth-century, liberalism.
→ The central theme of classical liberalism is a commitment to an extreme form of individualism. Human beings are seen as egoistical, self-seeking and largely self reliant creatures. In what C. B. Macpherson (1962) termed ‘possessive individualism’, they are taken to be the proprietors of their own persons and capacities, owing nothing to society or to other individuals. This atomist view of society is underpinned by a belief in ‘negative’ liberty, meaning non-interference, or the absence of external constraints on the individual. This implies a deeply unsympathetic attitude towards the state and all forms of government intervention. In Tom Paine’s (see p. 199) words, the state is a ‘necessary evil’. It is ‘necessary’ in that, at the very least, it establishes order and security, and ensures that contracts are enforced. However, it is ‘evil’ in that it imposes a collective will on society, thus limiting the freedom and responsibilities of the individual. The classical liberal ideal is therefore the establishment of a minimal or ‘night watchman’ state, with a role that is limited to the protection of citizens from the encroachments of fellow citizens. In the form of economic liberalism, this position is underpinned by a deep faith in the mechanisms of the free market and the belief that the economy works best when left alone by government. Laissez-faire capitalism is thus seen as guaranteeing prosperity, upholding individual liberty, and, as this allows individuals to rise and fall according to merit, ensuring social justice.
l Progress: Moving forwards; the belief that history is characterised by human advancement based on the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom.
l Meritocracy: Rule by the talented; the principle that rewards and positions should be distributed on the basis of ability.
l Atomism: The belief that society is made up of a collection of largely self sufficient individuals who owe little or nothing to one another.
l Economic liberalism: A belief in the market as a self regulating mechanism tending naturally to deliver general prosperity and opportunities for all. l Big government: Interventionist government, usually understood to imply economic management and social regulation.
→ Modern liberalism is characterized by a more sympathetic attitude towards state intervention. Indeed, in the USA, the term ‘liberal’ is invariably taken to imply support for ‘big’ government rather than ‘minimal’ government. This shift was born out of the recognition that industrial capitalism had merely generated new forms of injustice and left the mass of the population subject to the vagaries of the market. Influenced by the work of J. S. Mill (see p. 198), the so-called ‘New Liberals’ (figures such as T. H. Green (1836–82), L. T. Hobhouse (1864–1929) and J. A. Hobson (1858–1940)) championed a broader, ‘positive’ view of freedom. From this perspective, freedom does not just mean being left alone, which might imply nothing more than the freedom to starve. Rather, it is linked to personal development and the flourishing of the individual; that is, the ability of the individual to gain fulfilment and achieve self-realisation. This view provided the basis for social or welfare liberalism. This is characterised by the recognition that state intervention, particularly in the form of social welfare, can enlarge liberty by safeguarding individuals from the social evils that blight individual existence.
→ In the same way, modern liberals abandoned their belief in laissez-faire capitalism, largely as a result of J. M. Keynes’ (see p. 137) insight that growth and prosperity could be maintained only through a system of managed or regulated capitalism, with key economic responsibilities being placed in the hands of the state. Nevertheless, modern liberals’ support for collective provision and government intervention has always been conditional. Their concern has been with the plight of the weak and vulnerable, those who are literally not able to help themselves.
→ The most influential modern attempt to reconcile the principles of liberalism with the politics of welfare and redistribution was undertaken by John Rawls (see p. 45). (The liberal approach to international politics is examined in Chapter 18.)
CONSERVATISM
→ Conservatism nevertheless developed in the UK and the USA, characterised by Edmund Burke’s belief in ‘change in order to conserve’. This stance enabled conservatives in the nineteenth century to embrace the cause of social reform under the paternalistic banner of ‘One Nation’. The high point of this tradition in the UK came in the 1950s as the Conservative Party came to accept the postwar settlement and espouse its own version of Keynesian social democracy. However, such ideas increasingly came under pressure from the 1970s onwards as a result of the emergence of the New Right. The New Right’s radically antistatist and anti paternalism brand of conservatism draws heavily on classical liberal themes and values.
l Redistribution: A narrowing of material inequalities brought about through a combination of progressive taxation and welfare provision.
l Ancien régime: (French) Literally, ‘old order’; usually linked with the absolutist structures that predated the French Revolution.
l Paternalism: An attitude or policy that demonstrates care or concern for those unable to help themselves, as in the (supposed) relationship between a father and a child.
l Noblesse oblige: (French) Literally, the ‘obligations of the nobility’; in general terms, the responsibility to guide or protect those less fortunate or less privileged.
l Toryism: An ideological stance within conservatism characterised by a belief in hierarchy, an emphasis on tradition, and support for duty and organicism.
l Natural aristocracy: The idea that talent and leadership are innate or inbred qualities that cannot be acquired through effort or self advancement
→ The paternalistic strand in conservative thought is entirely consistent with principles such as organicism, hierarchy and duty, and it can therefore be seen as an outgrowth of traditional conservatism. Often traced back to the early writings of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), paternalism draws on a combination of prudence and principle. In warning of the danger of the UK being divided into ‘two nations: the Rich and the Poor’, Disraeli articulated a widespread fear of social revolution. This warning amounted to an appeal to the self-interest of the privileged, who needed to recognize that ‘reform from above’ was preferable to ‘revolution from below’. This message was underpinned by an appeal to the principles of duty and social obligation rooted in neo feudal ideas such as noblesse oblige. In effect, in this view, duty is the price of privilege; the powerful and propertied inherit a responsibility to look after the less well-off in the broader interests of social cohesion and unity. The resulting One-Nation principle, the cornerstone of what since the early nineteenth century has been termed a Tory position, reflects not so much the ideal of social equality as a cohesive and stable hierarchy that arises organically.
→ The One-Nation tradition embodies not only a disposition towards social reform, but also an essentially pragmatic attitude towards economic policy. This is clearly seen in the ‘middle way’ approach adopted in the 1950s by UK Conservatives. This approach eschewed the two ideological models of economic organisation: laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand, and state socialism and central planning on the other. The former was rejected on the grounds that it results in a free for all, which makes social cohesion impossible, and penalises the weak and vulner able. The latter was dismissed because it produces a state monolith and crushes all forms of independence and enterprise. The solution therefore lies in a blend of market competition and government regulation – ‘private enterprise without selfishness’ (H. Macmillan).
→ Very similar conclusions were drawn after 1945 by continental European conservatives, who embraced the principles of Christian democracy, most rigorously developed in the ‘social market’ philosophy (see p. 133) of the German Christian Democrats (CDU). This philosophy embraces a market strategy, insofar as it highlights the virtues of private enterprise and competition; but it is social, in that it believes that the prosperity so gained should be employed for the broader benefit of society. Such a position draws from Catholic social theory, which advances an organic view of society that stresses social harmony. Christian democracy thus highlights the importance of intermediate institutions, such as churches, unions and business groups, bound together by the notion of ‘social partnership’. The paternalistic strand of modern conservatism thought is often linked to the idea of ‘compassionate conservatism’
→ The New Right represents a departure in conservative thought that amounted to a kind of counter-revolution against both the post-1945 drift towards state inter - vention and the spread of liberal or progressive social values. New Right ideas can be traced back to the 1970s and the conjunction between the apparent failure of Keynesian social democracy, signalled by the end of the postwar boom, and growing concern about social breakdown and the decline of authority.
→ Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian economist and political philosopher. An academic who taught at the London School of Economics and the Universities of Chicago, Freiburg and Salzburg, Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974. As an exponent of the so-called ‘Austrian School’, he was a firm believer in individualism and market order, and an implacable critic of socialism. The Road to Serfdom (1948) was a pioneering work that attacked economic interventionism. In later works such as The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (1979) Hayek developed themes in political philosophy. Hayek’s writings fused liberal and conservative elements, and had a considerable impact on the emergent New Right.
→ However, the New Right does not so much constitute a coherent and systematic philosophy as attempt to marry two distinct traditions, usually termed ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘neoconservatism’. Although there is political and ideological tension between these two, they can be combined in support of the goal of a strong but minimal state: in Andrew Gamble’s (1981) words, ‘the free economy and the strong state’.
→ The central pillars of neoliberalism are the market and the individual. The principal neo liberal goal is to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state’, in the belief that unregulated market capitalism will deliver efficiency, growth and widespread prosperity. In this view, the ‘dead hand’ of the state saps initiative and discourages enterprise; government, however well-intentioned, invariably has a damaging effect on human affairs. This is reflected in the liberal New Right’s concern with the politics of ownership, and its preference for private enterprise over state enterprise or nationalization: in short, ‘private, good; public, bad’
→ Such ideas are associated with a form of rugged individualism, expressed in Margaret Thatcher’s famous assertion that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families’. The ‘nanny state’ is seen to breed a culture of dependence and to undermine freedom, which is understood as freedom of choice in the marketplace. Instead, faith is placed in self-help, individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism. Such ideas are widely seen to be advanced through the process of globalisation (see p. 142), viewed by some as neoliberal globalization.
→ The enemies of neoconservatism are therefore permissiveness, the cult of the self and ‘doing one’s own thing’, thought of as the values of the 1960s. Indeed, many of those who style themselves neoconservatives in the USA are former liberals who grew disillusioned with the progressive reforms of the Kennedy–Johnson era. Another aspect of neoconservatism is the tendency to view the emergence of multicultural and multireligious societies with concern, on the basis that they are conflict-ridden and inherently unstable. This position also tends to be linked to an insular form of nationalism that is sceptical about both multiculturalism (see p. 167) and the growing influence of supranational bodies such as the UN and the EU. Neoconservatism also developed into a distinctive approach to foreign policy, particularly in the USA under George Bush Jr, linked to attempts to consolidate US global domination, in part through militarily imposed ‘regime change’.
l Permissiveness: The willingness to allow people to make their own moral choices; permissiveness suggests that there are no authoritative values.
l Revisionism: The modification of original or established beliefs; revisionism can imply the abandonment of principle or a loss of conviction.
SOCIALISM
→ It developed as a reaction against the emergence of industrial capitalism. Socialism first articulated the interests of artisans and craftsmen threatened by the spread of factory production, but it was soon being linked to the growing industrial working class, the ‘factory fodder’ of early industrialization. In its earliest forms, socialism tended to have a fundamentalist (see p. 53), utopian and revolutionary character. Its goal was to abolish a capitalist economy based on market exchange, and replace it with a qualitatively different socialist society, usually to be constructed on the principle of common ownership. The most influential representative of this brand of socialism was Karl Marx, whose ideas provided the foundations for twentieth-century communism (see p. 275).
→ Reformist socialism drew on two sources. The first was a humanist tradition of ethical socialism, linked to thinkers such as Robert Owen (1771–1858), Charles Fourier (1772–1837) and William Morris (1834–96). The second was a form of revisionist Marxism developed primarily by Eduard Bernstein (see p. 43). During much of the twentieth century, the socialist movement was thus divided into two rival camps. Revolutionary socialists, following the example of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, called themselves ‘communists’, while reformist socialists, who practised a form of constitutional politics, embraced what increasingly came to be called ‘social democracy’.
COMMUNISM
→ As a political force, in the form of the international communist movement, Marxism has also been seen as the major enemy of western capitalism, at least in the period 1917–91. This highlights a central difficulty in dealing with Marxism: the difference between Marxism as a social philosophy derived from the classic writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1820–95), and the phenomenon of twentieth-century communism, which in many ways departed from and revised classical principles. Thus, the collapse of communism at the end of the twentieth century need not behead the death of Marxism as a political ideology; indeed, it may give Marxism, now divorced from the vestiges of Leninism and Stalinism, a fresh lease of life.
l Leninism: Lenin’s theoretical contributions to Marxism, notably his belief in the need for a ‘vanguard’ party to raise the proletariat to class consciousness.
l Stalinism: The structures of Stalin’s USSR, especially a centrally placed economy linked to systematic and brutal political oppression.
l Dialectical materialism: The crude and deterministic form of Marxism that dominated intellectual life in orthodox communist states.
l Historical materialism: The Marxist theory that holds that economic conditions ultimately structure law, politics, culture and other aspects of social existence.
→ Marx held that the economic ‘base’, consisting essentially of the ‘mode of production', or economic system, conditions or determines the ideological and political ‘superstructure’. Following Hegel (see p. 59), Marx believed that the driving force of historical change was the dialectic, a process of interaction between competing forces that results in a higher stage of development. In its materialist version, this model implies that historical change is a consequence of internal contradictions within a ‘mode of production’, reflected in class conflict. Like all earlier class societies, capitalism is therefore doomed to collapse; in this case, as a result of conflict between the bourgeoisie or capitalist class, the owners of productive wealth, and the proletariat, who are, in effect, ‘wage slaves’
→ The proletarian revolution would usher in a transitory ‘socialist’ period of development, characterised by the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. However, as class antagonisms fade and a fully communist society comes into existence, this proletarian state will ‘wither away’, meaning that a communist society will be both classlessness and statelessness. As a system of ‘commodity production’ gives rise to one based on ‘production for use’ and geared to the satisfaction of genuine human needs, ‘the free development of each would become the precondition for the free development of all’ (Marx).
→ Lenin’s central contribution to Marxism was his theory of the revolutionary or vanguard party. This reflected Lenin’s fear that the proletariat, deluded by bourgeois ideas and beliefs, would not realise its revolutionary potential because it could not develop beyond ‘trade union consciousness’: a desire to improve working and living conditions rather than to overthrow capitalism. A revolutionary party, armed with Marxism, was therefore needed to serve as the ‘vanguard of the working class’. In due course, this ‘vanguard’ or ‘Leninist’ party, composed of professional and dedicated revolutionaries, became the model for communist parties across the globe.
→ In 1928 of the first Five Year Plan, which brought about the swift and total eradication of private enterprise. This was followed in 1929 by the collectivization of agriculture. All resources were brought under the control of the state, and a system of central planning dominated by the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) was established. Stalin’s political changes were no less dramatic. During the 1930s, Stalin transformed the USSR into a personal dictatorship through a series of purges that eradicated all vestiges of opposition and debate from the Communist Party, the state bureaucracy and the military. In effect, Stalin turned the USSR into a totalitarian dictatorship, operating through systematic intimidation, repression and terror. Although the more brutal features of orthodox communism did not survive Stalin’s death in 1953, the core principles of the Leninist party (hierarchical organisation and discipline) and of economic Stalinism (state collectivization and central planning) stubbornly resisted pressure for reform. This was highlighted by Gorbachev’s perestroika reform process (1985–91), which merely succeeded in exposing the failings of the planning system, and in releasing long suppressed political forces.
l Perestroika: (Russian) Literally, ‘restructuring’; a slogan that refers to the attempt to liberalise and democratise the Soviet system within a communist framework.
→ Neo-Marxism A more complex and subtle form of Marxism developed in western Europe. By contrast with the mechanistic and avowedly scientific notions of Soviet Marxism, western Marxism or neo-Marxism (see p. 64) tended to be influenced by Hegelian ideas and by the stress on ‘Man the creator’ found in Marx’s early writings. In other words, human beings were seen as makers of history, and not simply as puppets controlled by impersonal material forces. By insisting that there was an interplay between economics and politics, between the material circumstances of life and the capacity of human beings to shape their own destinies, neo-Marxists were able to break free from the rigid ‘base– superstructure’ straitjacket. This indicated an unwillingness to treat the class struggle as the beginning and end of social analysis.
→ The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács (1885–1971) was one of the first to present Marxism as a humanistic philosophy. He emphasized the process of ‘reification’, through which capitalism dehumanizes workers by reducing them to passive objects or marketable commodities. In his Prison Notebooks, written in 1929–35, Antonio Gramsci emphasized the degree to which capitalism was maintained not merely by economic domination, but also by political and cultural factors. He called this ideological ‘hegemony’ (see p. 174). A more overtly Hegelian brand of Marxism was developed by the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’, the leading members of which were Theodor Adorno (1903–69), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Herbert Marcuse (see p. 42). Frankfurt theorists developed what was called ‘critical theory’, a blend of Marxist political economy, Hegelian philosophy and Freudian psychology, which had a considerable impact on the New Left in the 1960s. A later generation of Frankfurt members included Jürgen Habermas (see p. 84).
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
→ In the form of Keynesian social democracy, which was widely accepted in the early period after World War II, it was associated with a clear desire to ‘humanise’ capitalism through state intervention. It was believed that Keynesian economic policies would secure full employment, a mixed economy would help the government to regulate economic activity, and comprehensive welfare provision funded via progressive taxation would narrow the gap between rich and poor. Since the 1980s, a further process of revisionism has taken place within social democracy. This occurred for a variety of reasons. In the first place, changes in the class structure, and particularly the growth of professional and clerical occupations, meant that social-democratic policies orientated around the interests of the traditional working class were no longer electorally viable. Second, globalisation appeared to render all specifically national forms of economic management, such as Keynesianism, redundant. Third, nationalised industries and economic planning proved to be inefficient, at least in developed states. Fourth, the collapse of communism undermined the intellectual and ideological credibility not just of state collectivization, but of all ‘top-down’ socialist models. In this context, it became increasingly fashionable for politicians and political parties to rethink or revise ‘traditional’ social democracy.
→ ‘New’ social democracy (sometimes called ‘neo-revisionism’ or the ‘third way’) is a term that refers to a variety of attempts by social-democratic parties, in countries ranging from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to the UK and New Zealand, to reconcile old-style social democracy with, at least, the electoral attractive aspects of neoliberalism. Although ‘new’ social democracy is imprecise and subject to a number of interpretations, certain characteristic themes can nevertheless be identified. The first of these is the belief that socialism, at least in the form of ‘top-down’ state intervention, is dead: there is no alternative to what Clause 4 of the UK Labour Party’s constitution, rewritten in 1995, refers to as ‘a dynamic market economy’. With this goes a general acceptance of globalisation and the belief that capitalism has mutated into a ‘knowledge economy’, which places a premium on information technology, individual skills, and both labour and business flexibility. In this light, the state came to be seen not as a vehicle for wholesale social restructuring, but as a means of promoting inter
→ A further feature of ‘new’ social-democratic politics is that it has broken with socialist egalitarianism (which is seen as a form of ‘levelling’) and embraced, instead, the liberal ideas of equality of opportunity and meritocracy. Neorevisionist politicians typically endorse welfare reform. They reject both the neoliberal emphasis on ‘standing on your own two feet’ and the ‘traditional’ social-democratic commitment to ‘cradle to grave’ welfare in favour of an essentially modern liberal belief in ‘helping people to help themselves’, or, as the former US president Bill Clinton put it, giving people ‘a hand up, not a hand out’. This has led to support for what has been called a ‘workfare state’, in which government provision in terms of benefits or education is conditional on individuals seeking work and becoming self-reliant. Critics of ‘new’ social democracy, on the other hand, argue either that it is contradictory, in that it simultaneously endorses the dynamism of the market and warns against its tendency to social disintegration, or that, far from being a centre-left project, it amounts to a shift to the right.
FASCISM
→ The two principal manifestations of fascism were Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship in Italy in 1922–43, and Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship in Germany in 1933–45. Forms of neo fascism and neo-Nazism have also resurfaced in recent decades, taking advantage of the combination of economic crisis and political instability that often followed the collapse of communism or, more widely, of increased anxieties over immigration and multiculturalism (see p. 167). In many respects, fascism constituted a revolt against the ideas and values that had dominated western political thought since the French Revolution: in the words of the Italian Fascist slogan, ‘1789 is dead’. Values such as rationalism, progress, freedom and equality were thus overturned in the name of struggle, leadership, power, heroism and war. In this sense, fascism has an ‘anticharacter’. It is defined largely by what it opposes: it is a form of anticapitalism, antiliberalism, anti-individualism, anticommunism, and so on. A core theme that, nevertheless, runs throughout fascism is the image of an organically unified national community. This is reflected in a belief in ‘strength through unity’. The individual, in a literal sense, is nothing; individual identity must be absorbed entirely into that of the community or social group.
→ Italian Fascism was essentially an extreme form of statism (see p. 71) that was based on unquestioning respect for Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) German Nazi dictator. Hitler was the son of an Austrian customs official. He joined the German Workers Party (later the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazi Party) in 1919, becoming its leader in 1921. He was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and declared himself Führer (Leader) the following year, by which time he had established a one-party dictatorship. The central feature of Hitler’s world-view, outlined in Mein Kampf ([1925] 1969), was his attempt to fuse expansionist German nationalism and virulent anti-Semitism into a theory of history in which there was an endless battle between the Germans and the Jews, who represented, respectively, the forces of good and evil. Hitler’s policies contributed decisively to both the outbreak of World War II and the Holocaust. and absolute loyalty towards a ‘totalitarian’ state. As the Fascist philosopher Gentile (1875–1944) put it, ‘everything for the state; nothing against the state; nothing outside the state’. German National Socialism (or Nazism), on the other hand, was constructed largely on the basis of racialism (see p. 120). Its two core theories were Aryanism (the belief that the German people constitute a ‘master race’ and are destined for world domination), and a virulent form of anti-Semitism (see p. 121) that portrayed the Jews as inherently evil, and aimed at their eradication. This latter belief found expression in the ‘Final Solution’.
ANARCHISM
→ The central theme within anarchism is the belief that political authority in all its forms, and especially in the form of the state, is both evil and unnecessary (anarchy literally means ‘without rule’). Nevertheless, the anarchist preference for a stateless society in which free individuals manage their own affairs through voluntary agreement and cooperation has been developed on the basis of two rival traditions: liberal individualism, and socialist communitarianism. Anarchism can thus be thought of as a point of intersection between liberalism and socialism: a form of both ‘ultra liberalism’ and ‘ultra socialism’
→ Unlike liberals, individualist anarchists such as William Godwin (1756–1836) believed that free and rational human beings would be able to manage their affairs peacefully and spontaneously, government being merely a form of unwanted coercion. Modern individualists have usually looked to the market to explain how society would be regulated in the absence of state authority, developing a form of anarcho-capitalism, an extreme version of free-market economics. The more widely-recognized anarchist tradition, however, draws on socialist ideas such as community, cooperation, equality and common ownership. Collectivist anarchists (sometimes called social anarchists) stress the capacity for social solidarity that arises from our sociable, gregarious and essentially cooperative natures. On this basis, the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (see p. 381), for instance, developed what he called ‘mutualism’. Other anarchists, such as the Russian Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), advanced a form of anarcho-communism, the central principles of which were common ownership, decentralisation and workers’ self-management. Modern thinkers influenced by anarchism include Noam Chomsky (see p. 181) and the US libertarian and social ecology Murray Bookchin (1921–2006).
l Anarcho-capitalism: An anarchist tradition which holds that unregulated market competition can and should be applied to all social arrangements, making the state unnecessary.
l Mutualism: A system of fair and equitable exchange, in which individuals or groups trade goods and services with one another without profiteering or exploitation.
l Anarcho-communism: An anarchist tradition which takes common ownership to be the sole reliable basis for social solidarity, thereby linking statelessness to classlessness.
FEMINISM
→ Indeed, it was not until the emergence of the women’s suffrage movement in the 1840s and 1850s that feminist ideas reached a wider audience, in the form of so-called ‘first-wave feminism’. The achievement of female suffrage in most western countries in the early twentieth century deprived the women’s movement of its central goal and organising principle. ‘Second-wave feminism’, however, emerged in the 1960s. This expressed the more radical, and sometimes revolutionary, demands of the growing Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). Feminist theories and doctrines are diverse, but their unifying feature is a common desire to enhance, through whatever means, the social role of women. The underlying themes of feminism are therefore, first, that society is characterised by sexual or gender inequality and, second, that this structure of male power can, and should be, overturned.
→ Liberal feminists, such as Wollstonecraft and Betty Friedan (see p. 263), have tended to understand female subordination in terms of the unequal distribution of rights and oppor - tun i ties in society. This ‘equal-rights feminism’ is essentially reformist. It is concerned more with the reform of the ‘public’ sphere; that is, with enhancing the legal and political status of women, and improving their educational and career prospects, than with reordering ‘private’ or domestic life.
→ Socialist feminists typically highlight the links between female subordination and the capitalist mode of production, drawing attention to the economic significance of women being confined to a family or domestic life where they, for example, relieve male workers of the burden of domestic labour, rear and help to educate the next generation of capitalist workers, and act as a reserve army of labour
→ Radical feminists believe that gender divisions are the most fundamental and politically significant cleavages in society. In their view, all societies, historical and contemporary, are characterised by patriarchy (see p. 65), the institution whereby, as Kate Millett (1969) put it, ‘that half of the population which is female is controlled by that half which is male’. Radical feminists therefore proclaim the need for a sexual revolution, a revolution that will, in particular, restructure personal, domestic and family life. The characteristic slogan of radical feminism is thus ‘the personal is the political’. Only in its extreme form, however, does radical feminism portray men as ‘the enemy’, and proclaim the need for women to withdraw from male society, a stance sometimes expressed in the form of political lesbianism. However, since the 1970s feminism has, in many ways, moved beyond the threefold division into liberal, socialist and radical traditions. Although ‘new feminism’ or ‘third-wave feminism’ are disparate, they tend to be characterised by doubts about the conventional goal of gender equality, placing an emphasis instead on differences, both between women and men and between women themselves.
GREEN POLITICS
→ Green politics therefore reflects concern about the damage done to the natural world by the increasing pace of economic development (exacerbated since the second half of the twentieth century by the advent of nuclear technology, acid rain, ozone depletion, global warming and so on), and anxiety about the declining quality of human existence and, ultimately, the survival of the human species.
→ However, what gives green politics its radical edge is the fact that it offers an alternative to the anthropocentric, or human-centred, stance adopted by all other ideologies; it does not see the natural world simply as a resource available to satisfy human needs. By highlighting the importance of ecology, green politics develops an ecocentric world-view that portrays the human species as merely part of nature. One of the most influential theories in this field is the Gaia hypothesis, advanced by James Lovelock (1979, 2006). This portrays the planet Earth as a living organism that is primarily concerned with its own survival. Others have expressed sympathy for such radical holism by drawing on the ideas of Eastern religions that emphasise the oneness of life, such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism (Capra, 1983). ‘Shallow’ or humanist ecologists, such as those in some environmental pressure groups, believe that an appeal to self-interest and common sense will persuade humankind to adopt ecologically sound policies and lifestyles, usually in line with the principle of sustainable development.
COSMOPOLITANISM
→ In that sense, cosmopolitanism can be viewed as the ideological expression of globalisation (although the relationship between the two is complex, cosmopolitans often call for radical changes in the currently dominant forms of globalisation). In a literal sense, cosmopolitanism means a belief in a cosmopolis or ‘world state’. However, such ‘political’ cosmopolitanism, which is reflected in the quest to establish global political institutions, has limited relevance to modern cosmopolitan thinking, due to its association with the unfashionable idea of world government. Modern cosmopolitanism therefore tends to have a moral or cultural character
→ ‘Moral’ cosmopolitanism, the notion that underpins much anti-globalization activism, is the belief that the world constitutes a single moral community. This implies that people have obligations (potentially) towards all other people in the world, regardless of nationality, religion, ethnicity and so forth. Such ethical thinking is based on the core idea that the individual, rather than any political community, is the principal focus of moral concern.