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Gramsci Hegemony Separation Powers

This document discusses the separation of powers and its relationship to civil society and the state. It makes three key points: 1) The separation of powers emerged from the struggle between civil society and political society during a period of unstable equilibrium between social classes. It represents an attempt to crystallize a particular development stage. 2) Liberal ideology is encapsulated in the separation of powers, but its weakness is the bureaucracy that exercises coercive power and can become an entrenched caste. 3) While the powers are differentiated, the state remains unified. The legislature most closely represents civil society, while the judiciary upholds continuity of law between the government and parliament. Lapses in justice have a strong negative impact

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Prem Vijayan
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2K views2 pages

Gramsci Hegemony Separation Powers

This document discusses the separation of powers and its relationship to civil society and the state. It makes three key points: 1) The separation of powers emerged from the struggle between civil society and political society during a period of unstable equilibrium between social classes. It represents an attempt to crystallize a particular development stage. 2) Liberal ideology is encapsulated in the separation of powers, but its weakness is the bureaucracy that exercises coercive power and can become an entrenched caste. 3) While the powers are differentiated, the state remains unified. The legislature most closely represents civil society, while the judiciary upholds continuity of law between the government and parliament. Lapses in justice have a strong negative impact

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Prem Vijayan
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Selections from Prison Notebooks: State and Civil Society 506

Hegemony (Civil Society) and Separation of Powers

T
he separation of powers,46 together with all the discussion pro-
voked by its realisation and the legal dogmas which its
appearance brought into being, is a product of the struggle
between civil society and political society in a specific historical period.
This period is characterised by a certain unstable equilibrium between
the classes, which is a result of the fact that certain categories of
intellectuals (in the direct service of the State, especially the civil and
military bureaucracy) are still too closely tied to the old dominant
classes. In other words, there takes place within the society what Croce
calls the “perpetual conflict between Church and State”, in which the
Church is taken as representing the totality of civil society (whereas in
fact it is only an element of diminishing importance within it), and the
State as representing every attempt to crystallise permanently a
particular stage of development, a particular situation. In this sense, the
Church itself may become State, and the conflict may occur between on
the one hand secular (and secularising) civil society, and on the other

1933) should be consulted; it appears from this that the equation “Theory:
practice = pure mathematics: applied mathematics” was formulated by an
Englishman (Wittaker, I think).45
45
Sir Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956), physicist and mathematician.
46
The doctrine developed by Montesquieu in his Esprit des Lois—on the basis of
the contemporary bourgeois political system in England as he saw it—whereby
executive, legislative and judiciary functions are exercised independently of each
other. The principle inspired the American Constitution and others modelled on
it.
Classics in Politics: Antonio GramscI ElecBook
Selections from Prison Notebooks: State and Civil Society 507

State/Church (when the Church has become an integral part of the


State, of political society monopolised by a specific privileged group,
which absorbs the Church in order the better to preserve its monopoly
with the support of that zone of “civil society” which the Church
represents).
Essential importance of the separation of powers for political and
economic liberalism; the entire liberal ideology, with its strengths and its
weaknesses, can be encapsulated in the principle of the separation of
powers, and the source of liberalism’s weakness then becomes
apparent: it is the bureaucracy—i.e. the crystallisation of the leading
personnel—which exercises coercive power, and at a certain point it
becomes a caste. Hence the popular demand for making all posts
elective—a demand which is extreme liberalism, and at the same time
its dissolution (principle of the permanent Constituent Assembly, etc.; in
Republics, the election at fixed intervals of the Head of State gives the
illusion of satisfying this elementary popular demand).
Unity of the State in the differentiation of powers: Parliament more
closely linked to civil society; the judiciary power, between government
and Parliament, represents the continuity of the written law (even
against the government). Naturally all three powers are also organs of
political hegemony, but in different degrees: 1. Legislature; 2, Judiciary;
3. Executive. It is to be noted how lapses in the administration of justice
make an especially disastrous impression on the public: the hegemonic
apparatus is more sensitive in this sector, to which arbitrary actions on
the part of the police and political administration may also be referred.
[1930-32]

Classics in Politics: Antonio GramscI ElecBook

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