The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn by Vivek Chibber

Author:Vivek Chibber [Chibber, Vivek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Political, Political Science, Public Policy, Cultural Policy, Political Ideologies, Capitalism, Social Science, Sociology, Social Theory, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9780674245136
Google: PflPEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 067424513X
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2022-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Does Stability Depend on Consent Anyway?

A second and more fundamental problem with the Gramscian argument is this: even if a growing economy were enough to elicit consent, it is not clear that this is the fundamental source of capitalist stability anyway. The simplest test of the argument from consent is to ask: what happens when the conditions that sustain it are absent? Gramsci’s argument rests on the proposition that dominant classes can continue to secure the laboring class’s consent as long as they can deliver increases in living standards. But what happens when these increases are not in the offing? What happens if capitalism sinks into a period of stagnation in working-class life chances? Such a situation should have a direct impact on the acquisition of consent, which, in turn, should undermine the political status quo.

This is more or less what Gramsci, and most of his contemporaries, seemed to believe. When capitalism loses its dynamism, and the growth of the social surplus slows down, it was expected to intensify conflict over income distribution. The ruling class would be unable to coordinate its own interests with those of the subordinate classes because it would not be able to show that everyone benefited from its economic domination. What was a positive-sum game between the classes in a healthy economy would take on more of a negative-sum character. This would lead eventually to a breakdown of consent. And that, turn, would destabilize the system. In these conditions, capitalists would have no choice but to rely increasingly on coercion to maintain their rule. Whether in the workplace or in society more generally, force would come to replace persuasion as the basis of class dominance.

Thus, Gramsci describes political rule as “hegemony backed by the armour of coercion.”32 More elaborately, when hegemony breaks down, the ideological hold of the dominant classes over subordinate groups begins to break down. The important point is that in his theory, the political space opened up by the ebbing of consent is filled in by coercion:

If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer “leading” but only “dominant”, exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously.33

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