Gramsci theorized the modern state as comprising two overlapping spheres: political society and civil society. Political society encompasses the apparatus of state coercion—government bureaucracy, military, police, courts—where force predominates. Civil society includes institutions like schools, churches, unions, media, and cultural organizations where consent is organized. This distinction refined classical Marxist state theory, which tended to focus primarily on coercive institutions.
The Dialectic of Force and Consent
While analytically distinct, these spheres function together in maintaining class domination. Political society provides the ultimate guarantee of existing arrangements through its monopoly on legitimate violence, but stable rule depends primarily on hegemony established through civil society. Force alone proves expensive and unstable; genuine domination requires that subordinate groups accept their position as natural or inevitable. When hegemony weakens, regimes increasingly rely on political society's coercive apparatus.
Historical Development
Gramsci recognized that civil society's size and complexity vary historically and geographically. In Western democracies, civil society developed extensively, creating what he called "trenches and fortifications" protecting state power. Revolutionary movements couldn't simply seize state apparatus as in Russia's "war of maneuver"; they required prolonged "war of position" through civil society institutions. In less developed societies with weak civil society, different strategic approaches might succeed.
Strategic Implications
Understanding this distinction transforms political strategy. Progressive movements must not only challenge state power directly but build alternative institutions and cultural practices. This involves creating counter-hegemonic organizations—independent media, popular education, worker cooperatives—that prefigure different social relations. The distinction also explains why merely capturing government office often proves insufficient for fundamental change without transformation of civil society's hegemonic structures.
See also:
