Gramsci’s point that elections and separation of power is “extreme liberalism and at the same time its dissolution” seems like a timely one, perhaps exemplified with who will be on the ballot of the next general election. He argues it is bureaucracy that produces this contradiction and concentrates power. How does this compare to other theorists’ location of bureaucracy in their explanation of power? e.g., How does this compare with Max Weber’s conception of (and fears about) bureaucracy? Can bureaucracy exist in other political forms?
Though Gramsci did not write explicitly about “racism” or “race” as we use those terms today, Hall argues that the problems he was grappling with have “deeper connections” to problems of racism today, especially regarding the connection between the state and civil society. Can you think of an examples where the state/civil society distinction can be applied as Hall suggests, as a “theoretically flexible tool”?
More generally, how should scholars approach these kinds of temporal problems where the past and present use hit on different themes but in different languages? Through what processes do scholars make the past commensurable with the present and what tensions does this produce?
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