WE live in a class-divided society.

No serious analysis of Britain’s politics can fail to consider the fact the there is a deep and obvious division between the producers in our society, those who work for a living and produce the value on which our economy and society is based, and those who live off the value created by others, using their wealth, crystallised value created by workers, and setting it into motion as capital, whether by directly employing labour in production or investing in financial markets based on the material root of this production, to provide a seemingly limitless source of profit for its “owner.”

This basic fact of exploitation, first fully elaborated by Marx in developing the labour theory of value, is undeniable and forms the very basis of our society. 

Similarly, it would be hard to argue, particularly in light of the experience of the last four decades, that the state does not play a key role in both reinforcing the domination of those who live off the labour of others (the exploiters) over those who sell their labour-power for a living (the exploited), and in economically supporting that very fact of exploitation.

Examples of the former include the systematic introduction and maintenance of anti-union legislation by Tories and New Labour alike, while the latter includes the continued public subsidy of privatised utilities — effectively direct subsidy of profits through taxation — and the imperialist wars fought over recent decades to secure access to raw materials and open up new markets for British-based transnational corporations. 

Yet these facts — however obvious they may be to even the casual observer of history — can seem hard to square with the fact that we apparently live in a democracy.

If we truly have a democratic system, based on majority rule, and the exploited form the overwhelming majority of the population, how is it that the state acts consistently in the interests of the minority, the exploiters? 

The simple answer to this is that, in a class-divided society, under conditions of exploitation, there can be no equality between exploiters and exploited.

As Lenin argued, how can democratic rights such as freedom of assembly, freedom of the press or universal suffrage be real when the “capitalists, exploiters, landowners and profiteers” own the meeting halls and the printing presses, and the workers are excluded from Parliament “by thousands of obstacles”? 

“In fact, it is freedom for the rich, to buy and bribe the press, freedom for the rich, to befuddle the people with the venomous lies of the capitalist press, freedom for the rich to keep as their ‘property’ the landowners’ mansions, the best buildings, etc.”

In this way, democracy is historically limited, distorted and precarious under capitalism. 

Within the capitalist domination of, and use of, the state we can distinguish mechanisms based on both the use of coercion (through physical or economic force — the police, army, judiciary, unemployment as a tool to “discipline” labour markets, etc) and on the manufacturing of consent (through the education system, the media, political parties, etc.) 

This complex interplay of coercion and consent — which John Hoffman once referred to as “coercion which commands consent” — is the basis of the operation of the state as “a machine for the suppression of one class by another” (Lenin). 

However, even this is not all of the story. Because capitalist denomination extends far beyond the state proper, into every aspect of our lives, every social relation between classes — what Gramsci calls civil society.

In earlier revolutions, Gramsci argues, “the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous,” whereas, in the developed West, there is “a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state tremble[s] a sturdy structure of civil society [is] at once revealed.” These are the “fortresses and earthworks” which support the developed capitalist state. 

Capitalist domination of this dispersed power throughout society also functions through a dynamic of coercion and consent but rests particularly on the ideological by establishing hegemony — essentially determining the boundaries of what can and cannot be thought within “the mainstream.”

This “common sense” comes to dominate society’s understanding of itself, whether on questions of education or economy, arts or culture, proscribe “good sense” which challenges the system on any level.

Taken together, the state proper and civil society form what Gramsci terms “the integral state” and it is hegemony over this, which is at the root of capitalist domination of society. 

Challenging this hegemony, which is in a constant process of being remade and reconfigured, is an essential part of any project to transform society. It is not enough to propose alternatives, or even to fight to win people to them. We must change the very “common sense” of society, enabling people to envision a future beyond capitalism.