Employing Gramsci in Support of Laskion the Problems of British Idealism
Peter Lamb
In the early to mid-20th century Laski was a prominent critic of British Idealist political philosophy.Laski’s political thought helps reveal weaknesses in the Idealism of Green and Bosanquet, who didnot pay sufficient attention to divisions within society. Social unity, state sovereignty and the generalwill are among the concepts upon which Laski focused. The strength of Laski’s criticism can beenhanced by drawing upon Gramsci’s influential political thought. Laski and Gramsci wereconcerned with similar processes in the politics of capitalist countries. A Gramscian method justifiesdrawing the concept of hegemony from Gramsci’s work and using that concept in support of Laski’sarguments.
Keywords: sovereignty; hegemony; Green; Bosanquet
In recent years there has been renewed interest in the Idealist tradition in Britishpolitical thought. Having begun in the 1870s and 1880s with the work of T. H.Green (Tyler 2010), the tradition remained prominent in English-language politicalphilosophy in the 1930s (Boucher and Vincent 2000, 1–22). By that decade HaroldLaski had become a renowned adversary of the tradition, particularly the work ofT. H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet. David Boucher and Andrew Vincent suggestthat, contrary to the views of Laski and other critics, ‘the state for the Idealists wasonly a moral absolute when acting in conformity with its purpose of promoting andsustaining the common good’ (Boucher and Vincent 2000, 12). While this sum-marises the British Idealist position, it misses an important point of Laski’s criticism:that of who should judge whether the common good is actually being promotedand sustained. Indeed, even if, following Bosanquet, one distinguishes betweenactual and real, and concedes that the state is real in the sense of realisation of itsnature (Panagakou 2005a, p. 41), there may be fundamental disagreement aboutthe common good. The most influential views are likely to support the maintenanceof the existing conditions of society. The present article draws attention to Laski’swritings that help illustrate this problem. The work of his contemporary AntonioGramsci, while concerned with the Italian state and society, can be drawn upon toadd force to Laski’s criticism.
The approach to be taken reflects that of Laski, for whom in A Grammar of Politics of1925, ‘a working theory of the State must, in fact, be conceived in administrativeterms’ (Laski 1925, 35). For him, the will of the state was ‘the decision arrived at bya small number of men [sic] to whom is confided the legal power of makingdecisions’ (Laski 1925, 35). Although in the 1938 edition of that book the originaltext remained unchanged, he insisted in a new introductory chapter that, if its legal
postulates defend a system of class relations regarded unjust by those who do notbenefit from it, the state cannot achieve its end ‘of satisfying demand on the largestpossible scale’ (Laski 1938, iv). The demand actually satisfied was effective demand,the nature of which depended upon the system of property. State sovereignty wasa powerful institution that helped disguise and sustain this problem.
The approach differs, furthermore, from that which Adam Morton (1999 and2003), in his work on Gramsci, has criticised as austere historicism, according towhich the ideas of thinkers are of relevance exclusively to their particular concernsand circumstances. Gramsci described his own Marxist position as ‘absolutehistoricism’—which meant ‘the absolute secularisation and earthliness of thought,an absolute humanism of history’ (Gramsci 1971, 465). Criticising the ItalianIdealist Bendetto Croce (Boggs 1976, 23; Joll 1977, 21–24; Jones 2006, 124–125;Santucci 2010, 29, 145–146), Gramsci insisted that the relevant distinction was not‘between the moments of the absolute Spirit, but between the levels of the super-structure’ (Gramsci 1971, 137). Although he considered himself a product ofhistorical forces and insisted that to grasp the point of their writings the work ofauthors must be seen in the context of their time (Jones 2006, 13–14), he stressedthat although historical facts ‘are always unique and changeable in the flux ofmovement of history, the concepts can be theorised’. ‘Otherwise’, he went on, ‘onewould not even be able to tell what movement is ... and one would fall back intoa new form of nominalism’ (Gramsci 1971, 427).
By theorising Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Laski’s assessment of British Idealismmay be substantiated. The next section will discuss Laski’s criticism of Green andBosanquet. Thereafter the article turns to Laski’s view of sovereignty as a veneer forclass dominance and to Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony.
Criticism of IdealismInfluenced by the English pluralism of J. N. Figgis and F. W. Maitland, Laski began topublish his criticism of Idealism during the First World War (Newman 1993, 37–56).His viewpoint combined pluralism with socialism (Hirst 1989; Nicholls 1994; Run-ciman 1997; Laborde 2000, 177–194). In the late 1920s and early 1930s he graduallyaccepted the value of Marxism (Newman 1993, 148–160; Lamb 1999a and 2004,27–38). Declaring that ‘the pluralist attitude to the state and law was a stage on theroad to an acceptance of the Marxian attitude to them’ (Laski 1938, xii) heamalgamated liberal and Marxist ideas (Lamb and Morrice 2002; Newman 2006).
Even in his pluralist period Laski was concerned that class divisions in societyrendered Idealism unrealistic. Inspired by Athenian and German Idealism, theBritish Idealists considered that attempts to resolve social and political issues shouldhave recourse to philosophical reflection; they emphasised the logical interdepen-dence between human individuals and socio-political organisation; and they arguedthat self-realisation was related to a common good (Panagakou 2005b, 1–2; Sweet2009, 17–25). Recognising Green and Bosanquet as leading British Idealists, Laskisuggested in 1921 that the problem was that they did not ‘dissect the state in termseither of the functions it performs or of the way in which its task is in practiceachieved’. ‘The adherents of the sovereign state were’, he suggested, ‘too occupied
with the splendour of what the state was trying to be to attempt the more mundanetask of measuring its achievement’ (Laski 1921a, 87).
In Green’s (1890, 189–202) view individuals, while being morally autonomous,could best achieve self-realisation in the eternal consciousness which reflecteddivine unity. All humans had the potential to achieve self-realisation by realisingtheir higher capacities, thereby manifesting God—the eternal consciousness (Tyler2010, 571–572). They could do this by combining for the common good (Morrow1984, 93–97; Simhony 1989, esp. 482–485; Nicholson 1990, 54–82). This emphasisupon the common good was, indeed, the key feature of his moral and politicalthought (Simhony 2005 and 2009).
Green (1890, 189–202) considered that a divine principle realised itself in humanityto varying degrees. Social achievements, he believed (Green 1890, 180), indicatedthat moral capability had surpassed the wholly undeveloped condition. Moral goodwas the realisation of the moral capability, which could only be fully known uponits ultimate realisation (Green 1890, 179). Conceptions of moral duty and legalright were based on the idea of ‘an absolute and a common good; a good commonto the person conceiving it with others, and good for him and them, whether at anymoment it answers their likings or not’ (Green 1890, 213). To conceive of a moralgood presupposed the belief that good was common to all. The moral good in asociety could, he insisted (Green 1941 [1882], 121–126), only originate throughpolitical subjection to institutions that regulated a common life. This required therecognition, expression and observance by its members of a common interest. ‘Toask why I am to submit to the power of the state’ was ‘to ask why I am to allow mylife to be regulated by that complex of institutions without which I literally shouldnot have a life to call my own, nor should be able to ask for a justification of whatI am called on to do’ (Green 1941, 122). The recognised rules of the state secured‘a corresponding freedom of action for the attainment of wellbeing’ (Green 1941,125). Only the state could provide the complex of institutions with which to secure‘the liberation of the powers of all men equally for contributions to a common good’(Green 1888, 372). He insisted (Green 1941, 123–130) that the state’s claim to thejustifiable exercise of certain powers over individuals must rest on the fact thatthose powers are necessary in order for people to fulfil their vocation as moralbeings. Unless they gave it willingly, however, citizens would not feel any sponta-neous interest in obedience. Individuals would need to be devoted to the develop-ment of the perfect character in themselves and others. Stimulation of suchdevotion required the state to maintain the rights that each citizen recognised everyother to have.
Green had participated in the 19th-century campaign to extend the franchise inBritain (Tyler 2006, 59–100). In 1919 Laski briefly acknowledged, in Authority in theModern State, Green’s confidence that constitutional processes would enhance therights of every citizen without distinction (Laski 1919, 44). Sympathetic to Green’smotives, Laski nevertheless complained that ‘the inherent defect of Idealism’ wasthat it never enabled one to ‘come to grips with facts’ (Laski 1919, 67). Green paidinsufficient attention to social divisions. Idealism, Laski stressed, ‘thinks so largely interms of a beneficent teleology as to soften the distinction between political oppo-sites. It beatifies the status quo by regarding each element as an integral part of a
process which it insists on viewing as a totality’ (Laski 1919, 67). Green, Laskisuggested in his article ‘The Pluralistic State’ of 1919 (Laski 1921b, 232), withdrewfrom the arena of hard facts in order to dissect the pure instance of the state.
In The State in Theory and Practice of 1935 Laski acknowledged Green’s insistence thata state which failed to recognise rights would not be a state at all, ‘since it would bevoid of the moral quality which gives it its title to the loyalty of its citizens’ (Laski1935, 63). Green (1941, 129) argued that a true state must fulfil its function ofmaintaining law equally in the interest of all, and should not be administered in theinterest of classes. While Green was thus careful to specify the features of a realstate, even his concern for constitutional reform and the extension of the franchisedid not get to the heart of the problem that in a society with class divisions the statewill reflect class dominance. As Laski (1935, 67) suggested, Idealism rested on aproblematic assumption about social organisation. Those who controlled the sov-ereignty of the state did so because they were responsible for maintaining thesuperior interest of the nation state to which all citizens belonged. For Laski, theproblem was that in a state that failed to mirror society the interests of the nationwould not be identical with the interests of the state.
Laski was still more critical of Bosanquet, who on the basis of religious immanent-ism sought to affirm the divine element in humanity that seeks perfection andself-realisation (Panagakou 2009). Bosanquet believed that by pursuing thecommon good through the state individuals could achieve self-realisation, whichrequired their self-transcendence through development as members of the socialwhole (Panagakou 2005a). People would have to recognise that they were inex-tricable components of the organic state (Morrow 1984, 97–99; Emmet 1989,114–124). He expressed this view as follows in one of his Gifford lectures: ‘The self,which makes the environment, is itself all soaked in the environment’ (Bosanquet1912, 360). One could not say where self ends and environment begins. ‘Nature,conceived of as an environment’, he went on, ‘can hardly be reckoned as less thanthe whole detail of thing and fact, which enters into the world of the self’ (Bosan-quet 1912, 360). He outlined the Idealist thinking associated with this view in hislater essay ‘True and False Idealism’. Idealism was not ‘an escape from reality; but,first, a faith in the reality beneath appearances, which, secondly, works by “com-prehension”, and not by opposition, and confers, thirdly, a power of transformingthe appearance in the direction of the real reality’ (Bosanquet 1917, 88). From thisperspective in The Philosophical Theory of the State (Bosanquet 1923 [1899]) headopted and adapted Rousseau’s theory of the general will.
Rousseau opposed representative government, believing that the general will couldonly be expressed in small communities wherein citizens would participate directlyin legislation (Rousseau 1993 [1762], 262–268). According to Bosanquet, this ledRousseau to contradict himself regarding the general will. Even if unanimity wereto be reached by such direct expression of opinions, suggested Bosanquet (1923,108–109), this would be the decision of the aggregate of interests or, in other words,the will of all. This was because the habits and institutions of a community were‘the standing interpretation of all the private wills that compose it’ (Bosanquet1923, 114–115). This being an incomplete embodiment of life, he claimed, itsrepresentation of the real will was imperfect. Nevertheless, just as the system of
sciences did not express truth completely, the complex of social institutions was‘very much more complete than the explicit ideas which at any given instant moveany individual mind in volition’ (Bosanquet 1923, 115). Hence, while diluting theclaim that the sovereign embodies the general will perfectly, he was applying thenotion of such a will to the conditions of modern nation states which were morecomplex than the societies envisaged by Rousseau.
Believing that his criticism of Rousseau had vital implications for the issue offreedom, Bosanquet claimed that his own interpretation of the general will helpedshow that the ordinary individual, who thought only of his private and trivialinterest, was not the real individual self. Instead, the self possessed its individualityin its contribution to the whole. As liberty was the condition of being ourselves itwas possible to speak, ‘without a contradiction, of being forced to be free’ (Bosan-quet 1923, 118–119). People were rational beings who could thus acquiesce in alaw and order that allowed them to assert their true or universal selves, ‘at the verymoment when this law and order is constraining our particular private wills in away which we resent, or even condemn’ (Bosanquet 1923, 119).
For clarification of Bosanquet’s view of the state and the general will, and also toidentify a problem with that view, it is useful to turn to his responses to G. D. H.Cole’s criticism of Idealism. Cole (Delisle Burns et al. 1915–16, 311) suggested that,in regarding the state as an individual, philosophical theories of the state wereintrospective, vitiating the study of the individual consciousness and fatal to politi-cal theory because they shut the state within the circle of its own ideas. In responseBosanquet (1916–17, 38) stressed that ‘the individual only has his individualitythrough the social consciousness. The nearer he approaches to being himself themore he approaches identification with the communal mind’. Cole (1914–15, 151)also argued that rather than existing in unity the general will could be found indifferent associations, depending on the issue. He insisted that the general willcould be found throughout the organisations in society rather than in any particularmachinery such as that of the state. Bosanquet actually held a far broader concep-tion of the state than Cole seems to have recognised. For Bosanquet (1923, 238–274) the state included not only government but also the family and bourgeoissociety. He claimed that Cole’s view that each association in society performed asocial function, implying a greater unity, resembled his own Hegelian view of therelationship between a constitution and a society as a unit. For Bosanquet (1914–15, 162) the constitution acted as a state ‘in so far as it solves conflicts by authority,though in a civilised society this is never by bare authority, but always by reasonspeaking with authority’. A problem with the views of both Bosanquet and Cole inthis respect is that they neglected the implications of representation by humanagents who could express intentions (Lamb 2005, 290–291). Unity is representedby particular individuals or groups within society. Certain groups in society may besufficiently influential as to present an interpretation of unity that underpins theirown power. This was a problem that Laski recognised.
In A Grammar of Politics Laski (1925, 30, 34) responded to Bosanquet, arguing thatthe state should provide channels for individual self-realisation wide enough toallow individuals to determine both their own path through them, and their ownpoint of destination. Liberty, which meant ‘the eager maintenance of that atmo-
sphere in which men have the opportunity to be their best selves’ (Laski 1925, 142),consisted in ‘nothing so much as the encouragement of the will based on theinstructed conscience of humble men’ (Laski 1925, 143–144). This necessitatedcitizens to have active minds, and be given both ‘the habit of thought’ and ‘theavenues through which thought can act’ (Laski 1925, 143). The most effective wayto achieve this would be collectively, with restraints on actions that impeded whatwere considered to be the essential requisites of modern society. It was, he argued,
essential to freedom that the prohibitions issued should be built upon thewills of those whom they affect. I must be able to feel that my will hasaccess to avenues through which it can impress itself upon the holders ofpower. If I have the sense that the orders issued are beyond my scrutinyor criticism, I shall be, in a vital sense, unfree (Laski 1925, 143).
While the Idealists would have agreed thus far, Laski’s distance from them becomesevident in his analysis of the general will.
Laski denied the existence of a general will, claiming that it would actually involve‘the paralysis of will’ (Laski 1925, 30–31). ‘If the citizen’, he argued, ‘is not to findthe source of his judgements in the contact between the outer world and himself,in the experience, that is, which is the one unique thing that separates him from therest of the herd, he ceases to have meaning in a creative sense’ (Laski 1925, 31). Thecitizen’s true self was ‘the self that is isolated from his fellows, and contributes thefruit of isolated meditation to the common good which, collectively, they seek tobring into being’ (Laski 1925, 31). The will of the real self was not identical in allmembers of society. While wills may converge to a common purpose they were‘separate in everything save the substance of the thing willed’ (Laski 1925, 32). Theautonomy of the will and judgement were crucial to his political philosophy and hestressed that the individual should use that judgement for the common good. Forhim (Laski 1925, 31–34), the notion that a single and common will was embodiedin the state was, thus, entirely unacceptable. An ‘amazing welter of wills’ pressedupon each other and the state was ‘simply a source of ultimate reference whichmakes a decision upon grounds that it deems adequate’ (Laski 1925, 34). The willof the state was ‘adopted out of the conflict of myriad wills which contend witheach other for the mastery of social forces’ (Laski 1925, 35). That will was neitherdeliberate in the sense of being always determined by rational considerations, norsingle in the sense that all those to whom it applied gave their unanimous agree-ment. Not only did he consider the existing order to be one in which the state, notalways consciously, served the particular interests of the privileged, he also stressedthat any ‘true theory of political action must be a theory which visualises the men[sic] who operate the daily administration of its machinery’. ‘A theory of the State’was ‘essentially a theory of the governmental act’ (Laski 1925, 28). He added thata person is a part of the state, but not one with it. ‘An adequate theory of socialorganisation must’, then, ‘always begin by recognising that the individual is finite’(Laski 1925, 29).
Laski was thus preparing the ground for his argument that the existing state, overwhich certain interests had an overwhelming influence, should be replaced by onein which the plurality of functional and territorial interests could have access tosuch influence. He countered Bosanquet’s theory that all state action was, in fact,
the exercise of the real will of society. ‘If’, Laski argued, ‘this means that social lifeis ultimately the product of a single and rational mind organising its activities interms of a logical process, it is contrary to every fact we encounter in dailyexperience’ (Laski 1925, 34). He interpreted Bosanquet’s theory concisely in apaper of 1928 in the form of the following syllogism:
We ought to obey that which expresses the best of ourselves.That which expresses the best of ourselves is the state.Therefore, we ought to obey the state (Laski 1928, 48).
If this were so, he complained, the best of ourselves would need to be ‘identical ineach of us and becomes unified at the moment when it is embodied into the will ofthe state’ (Laski 1928, 48). But, he argued, Bosanquet could not have understoodthe implication that, in an analysis of the state as co-ordinator in action, that stateappears as a government issuing orders. ‘If’, Laski stressed, ‘the will of the state isthe general will, then actions of government which go into operation are actions ofthe general will’ (Laski 1928, 49). He questioned the second premise of the syllo-gism. A common good could only be made as conflicting desires were removed; andhe claimed that this would not necessarily be accomplished by the state. Thatdepended upon ‘whether the policy of the state increases or decreases the realm ofconflicting desires; and this is known only by actual scrutiny of the event’ (Laski1928, 50).
The Idealist political philosopher, Laski acknowledged, was ‘dealing not with thestates of history, but with the state as such; he is concerned with the “pure” instanceand not with deviations from the ideal’ (Laski 1930, 30). It was, though, heretorted, actual states with policies directed by human beings that required scrutiny.The government acted in the name of the state. The state could not be measuredagainst some ideal or real state independent of human judgement. The commongood could be reached if the state, represented by a government, were itselfsomehow to reduce conflict in society.
In 1935 Laski acknowledged in The State in Theory and Practice that Idealism continuedto be the most widely accepted theory of the state. Recognising Bosanquet to be oneof its most influential theorists, he argued that the Idealist tradition defined the stateas the organisation of the community, the function of which was to maintain theexternal conditions necessary to the best life. This function provided the grounds forour allegiance to the state. The jurist’s theory of the state had thus been given ajustification outside legal discourse and applicable to existing states. The Idealists had,though, insisted that they were concerned with the ideal state rather than any actualstate. ‘The philosophic theory’, Laski (1935, 45) commented, then became a meansof justifying the states we know because the title to obedience those states could claimwas ‘groundedontheir relationship to the ideal stateandthepurposes thephilosopherhas attributed to it’. This, he stressed, had unwelcome implications. ‘Are we to say ofthe Hitlerite state’, he asked (Laski 1935, 46), that it ‘has the function of maintainingthe external conditions necessary to the best life?’Should we say this, Laski inquired,because the Hitlerite state so represents itself? If so, he asked (Laski 1935, 46), ‘are weto take announcement of function by those formally competent to make theannouncement as a valid test of their purposes?’ If alternatively we accept the claimbecause it is accepted as valid by those to whom it is addressed, we need, he argued
(Laski 1935, 46), to determine what ‘acceptance’ means. He expressed this view asfollows: ‘Does it mean absence of active resistance to the announcement? More,surely, it cannot claim. For Jews and socialists, communists and liberals, all insist thatthe Hitlerite state denies to them the “external conditions” they deem essential to the“good life” ’ (Laski 1935, 46).
Colin Tyler (2006, 155) cites Bosanquet’s acknowledgement that the value of a stateof consciousness may not be known to the subject or any judge. Tyler (2006,157–158) argues, not unlike Laski, that this has the dangerous authoritarian impli-cation that the state may claim a better awareness of the required course of action.In his introduction to the second edition of The Philosophical Theory of the StateBosanquet acknowledged that he placed sovereignty in the working of the entiresystem of institutions, rather than in any determinate person or group. There wasthus ‘no technical difficulty in the modification of the Nation-state towards largerforms of authoritative co-operation, so long as it is made clear to what system ofauthorities every human being is subject in respect of the ultimate adjustment ofclaims upon him’ (Bosanquet 1923, xxix). The problem with Bosanquet’s argumentis that the working of the entire system of institutions may be permeated by thepostulates of the powerful in society.
In The State in Theory and Practice Laski acknowledged that the Idealists, includingBosanquet, accepted that people who believe they represent the permanent inter-ests of the communal mind better than its legal representatives have a duty to rebelagainst the commands of the state. Recognising that the Idealists believed such adecision to require careful consideration of the likelihood that it is mistaken andwill sacrifice the personal values of social organisation, Laski nevertheless arguedthat the admission that there may occasionally be a right and even a duty to rebelis ‘fatal to the whole idealist theory’ (Laski 1935, 55). This is because it follows thatone’s allegiance is not to an institution but rather to the purposes that the institu-tion exists to promote. Idealists, he continued, must present one of two arguments,the first being that all states automatically act as the guardian of moral values, inwhich case there could never be a case for rebellion. Alternatively, institutions inpossession of the sovereign power that do not act as such a guardian do not qualifyas the state, so the rebellion would not be against the state. Hence, rather than solvethe problem of political obligation, this still left ‘the problem of whether the statein the real world fulfils the conditions upon which its title depends’ (Laski 1935,56). The problem is whether action proposed by the state is in fact in the interestsof all its members. Although actions are proposed by the government acting in thename of the state, and the purpose may have the highest intentions of good, this didnot make it right. ‘Some of the worst mistakes in history’, Laski stressed, ‘have beencommitted by men with no other motive than the achievement of right’ (Laski1935, 69). As will be discussed in the next section, Laski’s views on the way inwhich such partial governance is accepted and maintained can be substantiatedwith reference to Gramsci.
Hegemony, Sovereignty and the Problems of TransitionLaski knew that the existing ethos, and the state built upon it, would need tochange for real and substantive equality and freedom to be attained. As will be
discussed shortly, he was aware of the difficulty of achieving such change. Theproblems stemmed, in his view and that of Gramsci, from the way in which powerwas entrenched with legitimacy in the existing society.
As has been discussed in this article, for Laski the will of the state was not the willof society but, rather, the decision of those members of society who were ingovernment. The actual making of the decision was not, however, the most sig-nificant point. As he suggested in A Grammar of Politics (Laski 1925, 35–36), thesources from which the government’s will derived became, in effect, the will of thestate. The body that made the law was thus incomparably less important for politics‘than the force which made that organ act in the particular way’ (Laski 1925, 55).This raised a serious problem with sovereignty theory, which served to legitimatepower in society.
Green (1941, 93–120) and Bosanquet (1923, lv–lvii, 96, 216–217) had each asso-ciated the sovereign state with the general will, but Laski would not accept such anassociation. Although it was, in theory, the ultimate decision-maker the sovereignbody was, he stressed, ‘compelled to will things desired by bodies in law inferior toitself’ (Laski 1925, 51). Furthermore, because the state acted on behalf of suchbodies, sovereignty theory had dangerous moral consequences (Laski 1925, 44).Legally, he suggested, the sovereign state ‘may act unwisely, or dishonestly or, in anethical sense, unjustly’ (Laski 1925, 50). As he saw it, the theory of state sover-eignty, based as it was on the assumption of unity, masked this problem(Lamb 1997).
To help grasp the problems of the Idealist assumption of unity it is useful to observewhat Gerald Gaus calls Green’s moral internalism, which involves the latter’s viewthat rights are made by recognition of them by members of society. Bosanquet’spolitical philosophy was, as Peter Nicholson (1990, 199) stresses, fundamentallyakin to that of Green. Bosanquet’s (1923, 187–201) similar recognition thesisregarding rights indeed fits the internalist description. As Gaus (2005) acknowl-edges, this sort of view is voiced in contemporary meta-ethics—a point discussed inmore detail by Maria Dimova-Cookson (2005). As she acknowledges, internalism isa feature of contemporary communitarianism, which Green’s ideas may beemployed to support. Indeed, as Boucher (1997, ix) notes, as a philosophy thatemphasises the spiritual cohesiveness of the social organism, Idealism was a fore-runner of communitarianism. This identification of the affinities of Idealism andcommunitarianism helps clarify Laski’s criticism of the former.
For this purpose it is useful to distinguish Laski’s political philosophy from com-munitarianism, the central features of which Simon Caney has identified in termsof the following claims: (i) descriptive claims that people are social beings; (ii)normative claims stressing that community and solidarity should be celebrated; and(iii) meta-ethical claims that say political principles mirror shared understandings(Caney 1992). These three sets of claims can be considered together to correspondwith Idealist internalism, because if rights depend on their recognition by citizensthis in turn depends upon the sociality, solidarity and shared understandings thatwould enable them to agree on such rights. Laski celebrated the values of commu-nity, solidarity and public participation, but would not have accepted claims thatpeople are social beings with identities shaped essentially by their communities. He
would have agreed with communitarian descriptions if they portrayed people aspartially embedded in, but able to distance themselves from, the values and normsof their communities. He would not have accepted that political principles shouldnecessarily mirror shared understandings—understandings that may reflect thenorms and values propagated on behalf of powerful interests.
Laski (1925, 31) insisted that only through isolated meditation could the true selfcontribute, in society with others, to the common good. For him, neither individu-alistic nor social thinking was foundational to the human psyche. The individual isreal to himself, he argued in Liberty in the Modern State in 1930, paraphrasing a pointhe had made earlier in Grammar of Politics, ‘not by reason of the contacts he shareswith others, but because he reaches those contacts through a channel which healone can know’ (Laski 1925, 31 and 1930, 25). Unity, he would later suggest in TheState in Theory and Practice, ‘is not there as something given; it is made as mendiscover it by seeking similar ends’ (Laski 1935, 58). This discovery was alwaysmade in isolation. It was, he insisted, ‘private to me in a sense which means that noother person can be aware of its meaning save as I report upon it’ (Laski 1935, 58).The essence of the individual remained constant, notwithstanding outside influ-ences. Laski did, however, perceive human nature as malleable and subject toconditioning. The present acquisitive society, he insisted in one of his later works,Faith, Reason and Civilisation of 1944, ‘becomes merely one of the forms of socialbehaviour through which the impulses of man receive expression’ (Laski 1944,99–100).
Rather than being characterised by fellowship by nature, Laski argued in AGrammar of Politics, humans are driven partly by reason and partly by impulse. Forhumankind to prosper it was necessary to work actively for the social good. Thisrequired scrutiny of situations and attempts to discover ways to satisfy wants in theever-changing world and society. As he put it, ‘the same good never occurs twice’,and thus ‘immobility in a changing world must spell disaster’ (Laski 1925, 24).Reason was valuable to the degree to which it made possible both the present andfuture harmony of impulses. ‘Social good’, as he saw it, ‘is thus such an ordering ofour personality that we are driven to search for things it is worth while to obtainthat, thereby, we may enrich the great fellowship we serve’ (Laski 1925, 25). Thismay involve opposing the views that, under the guise of sovereignty, misrepresentwhat is required for the social good to be achieved. Like the Idealists, Laski saw thesocial good partly in terms of rights. While he too considered rights to reflectrecognition, he insisted that the realm of such rights expands as society has themeans to serve them. Importantly, moreover, he placed considerable emphasisupon the problem that by the nature of capitalism, many such rights will not beserved universally in capitalist democracies (Lamb 1999b).
Two problems with the logic of internalism identified by John Offer (2007, 529) aresignificant in this respect: first, the moral ideal of a community may embodyqualities detrimental to the interests of its most disadvantaged members, andsecond, there may be more than one moral ideal in the society. Of course, asDimova-Cookson (2007, 534) advises, an internalist common good ethics involvesa moral vision of a good that coexists harmoniously with the good envisioned byothers. A problem is nevertheless that hegemony helps promote the consideration
of the good in a way that sustains the dominance of a particular group or class insociety. The notion of internalism helps illustrate a problem that Laski saw withIdealism: the most influential interpretation of what the ostensibly sovereign stateshould do is likely to be that of some powerful and influential person or group.
At the end of the 1920s, in his essay ‘Law and the State’ (later included in his 1932collection Studies in Law and Politics) Laski stressed that sovereignty was merely adisguised form of power. Accepting the historical notion of sovereignty as a qualityheld at a particular time by particular agents, he argued (Laski 2010 [1932],238–240) that sovereignty was a purely descriptive term indicating the position ofthe agents who, at any time, legally issued orders without the need to refer to ahigher authority. He criticised the formally logical theory of sovereignty, whichdefined law, without regard to its content, as the will of the state. As a term offormal jurisprudence, sovereignty was only (and necessarily) justified by its ownaxioms, and thus inadequate as a philosophy of the state. The problem of the juristicphilosopher was the difficult one of validating his purely formal analysis of catego-ries for the actual world about us. Institutions justified themselves, ‘not by theirposition in a logical hierarchy, and the claims that position formally entitles them tomake, but by their power to satisfy effective demand’ (Laski 2010, 243–244). Thestate’s nature was dependent on the results of its operations for every member ofthe community, and the validation of law was not a matter of its source, but ratherof its acceptance by the community. The government should, therefore, be soorganised that ‘a maximum consent to its operations is assured before it embarksupon them’ (Laski 2010, 247). Because of the complexity of communities, therewas no single common good. Hence, he insisted, the decisions made by the stateshould ‘take full account of the interests that will be affected by those decisions.Whether the interest affected is individual association, or territorial unit, it must beadequately and effectively represented in the making of the sovereign will’ (Laski2010, 255).
Laski stressed in ‘Law and the State’ that his view in the essay still correspondedwith his pluralistic theory of the state. His argument was, he elaborated, ‘rooted ina denial that any association of men in the community is inherently entitled toprimacy over any other association’ (Laski 2010, 259). But the influence ofMarxism can be seen in the way he presented his long-held presumption that socialdivisions and the power thus accorded to certain groups presents a problem forattempts to serve the social good. In societal conditions that block the equal claimto the well-being of citizens, the state becomes an instrument of the section of thecommunity that is thereby advantaged. He argued that in modern capitalist soci-eties the ‘unequal distribution of wealth inevitably introduces bias into the char-acter of state-action’ (Laski 2010, 257). This was a problem that Gramsci discussedin terms of hegemony.
Hegemony, Gramsci argued, is achieved when the ruling class gains consensus onvalues and norms even among potential opponents. The dominant morality per-meates the political, social and legal institutions (Gramsci 1971, 12–13, 160–161,245–246, 365–366). Laski’s awareness of this process can be detected in his essay‘Justice and the Law’, first published in 1930 and included two years later in Studiesin Law and Politics. He cited a range of examples of legislation and judicial decision
in Britain as evidence of class bias in the distribution of power. People whodominated the economic system would, broadly, determine the substance of law.He stressed that this did not mean that the courts necessarily acted consciously withbias. The point was that the way in which the economic system operated influencedthe predominant mental climate which was reflected in the character of all thestate’s institutions. He was sure that actors working within the institutions, alongwith members of the class they represented, sometimes genuinely believed thatbiased decisions were just (Laski 2010, 278–281). The norms that helped legitimatethe configuration of power in society may thus be influential without directintention.
As a means of legitimation by securing and maintaining compliance of citizens withthe existing order, sovereignty was in Laski’s view basically a fiction. It was a socialconstruction serving to mask class dominance in society (Lamb 1997 and 2004;Morefield 2005 and 2009). Sovereignty can, indeed, be seen as a means by whichthe condition identified by Gramsci as hegemony is achieved and sustained.
Gramsci (1971, 229–239) argued that counter-hegemony would need to be built toovercome class dominance. He called this gradual process the war of position. Evenif some of the prominent state positions were secured, the dominant hegemonywould still run through civil society, as he illustrated with the following analogy:‘The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system offortresses and earthworks’ (Gramsci 1971, 238). Eventually, the war of movementwould complete the revolutionary transition (Santucci 2010, 152–158). If the war ofposition could be conducted efficiently, gaining a wide consensus among allies, thewar of movement would be less difficult to accomplish. The development of counter-hegemony would thus require mass consciousness of the socialist position (Boggs1976, 71–74; Joll 1977, 79). A danger he saw, however, was that the still-powerfulminority would do all they could to resist change (Morera 1990, 36–37).
Significant in this respect was the situation Gramsci portrayed as passive revolution,where a declining dominant class maintained hegemony by incorporating buttransforming prominent members of other classes, thus avoiding a situation wherea dominated class asserts itself in the state (Jones 2006, 98–99). According toGramsci, the impression of continuity and harmonious working of the state pro-vided ideological justification for fascism, which was making political changewithout challenging the fundamental nature of the economy (Gramsci 1971,119–120).
Laski discussed the problems of transition in terms strikingly similar to those ofGramsci. The privileged in society might, he suggested in Democracy in Crisis, ‘betempted to the surrender of an occasional outwork; they have always defended tothe last the possession of the inner citadel’ (Laski 1933, 50). Parliamentary democ-racy had thus far ‘been successful in the difficult task of enabling the outworks ofthe capitalist system to be surrendered to its opponents; it has at no point solved thecentral problem of the inner citadel’s surrender’ (Laski 1933, 51). As has beendiscussed in this article, this required the nature of the state to be unmasked ratherthan underpinned by notions of an ideal state of the sort offered by the Idealistphilosophers.
ConclusionHaving rejected austere historicism this article invoked Gramsci’s ideas in order tosupport Laski’s criticism of British Idealism. The value of drawing upon Gramsci’sconcept of hegemony becomes most evident when the notion of internalism isconsidered. Laski’s critique of Idealism helps reveal that the most influential inter-nal norms are those not of a monistic people but, rather, of elites. Without funda-mental social, economic and political change this situation would, both Laski andGramsci argued, persist. The ideal state reflecting a general will was thus imaginaryand unrealistic. Laski discussed the ways in which state sovereignty was a tool thatserved to underpin the power of elites by creating the illusion of unity in society.Gramsci used the term ‘hegemony’ to describe the process whereby elite domina-tion is legitimated. This is achieved as the institutions are permeated by norms andvalues that sustain the existing configuration of power in the society. The statesovereignty of which Laski was critical was such an institution.
In Laski’s view the notions of state sovereignty and the general will served todisguise the realities of actual social and political situations. His work helps illustratea significant weakness of British Idealism—and indeed Idealist thought in general.This was the failure to address the problem of entrenched social divisions thatprevent the common good of all citizens in a modern capitalist society from beingrealised. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, and his belief in the need to buildcounter-hegemony, can be utilised to help substantiate Laski’s views on this matterand on the social construct of sovereignty that served to mask class dominance.Taken together, their ideas may be theorised to present a challenge to the recentrevival of British Idealism.
About the Author
Peter Lamb, Staffordshire University, Faculty of Arts, Media and Design, Room L615, FlaxmanBuilding, College Road, Stoke on Trent ST4 2DE, UK, email: [email protected]
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