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What is the role of consensus and creation of common sense in determining who rules? In contemporary political discourse, common sense is a term frequently (some would say excessively) used to position politicians and policies in a positive light; Barack Obama set out a list of common sense policies to improve the US economyi whilst David Cameron describes himself as a common sense Conservativeii. The logic of employing common sense in such a manner would appear to be based on the conception that if one analyses the facts of a situation, they would arrive deductively at a simple standard conclusion. An example of this is the currently visible crisis in sovereign debt; many would argue that if a state pays out far more than it takes in, it is a simple and uncontroversial conclusion to cut state spending. If a political action can be seen as the logical result of a given set of premises, this would presumably foster a social consensus regarding the approach to political issues. Therefore I would argue that common-sense is deployed as a rhetorical device in attempt to de-politicize issues and present solutions, quite simplistically, as right or wrong, in order to legitimize certain forms of political action. This is a key tenet of much work in the neo-Marxist tradition, using Gramscis concept of Hegemony to analyse how common-sense can be produced and used in order to justify and maintain the many exploitative facets of the Capitalist mode of production. It is the intention of this essay to denaturalise (and thusly delegitimise) common sense approaches to politics and to demonstrate how the ideology of common sense is strategically deployed to maintain the hierarchical power structures of our society. In order to do this I will firstly endeavour to give an account of the nature of common sense and how it came to be such a powerful tool. Etymologically the term emerged in the 14th century, referring to the power of uniting mentally the impressions conveyed by the five physical senses, thus ordinary
understanding without which one is foolish or insane with the inflection of common sense meaning
iii

good sense emerging firstly in 1726iv. I would argue that the shift in meaning at this time was no mere accident but the direct result of broader social changes, specifically the shift into modernity and the advent of democratic systems. The concept of good or natural sense (sense here meaning 1

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knowledge/beliefs) is doubtless a very old one; to many peasants in medieval times it seemed the natural law that they be ruled by an Aristocracy and Monarchy, fundamentally justified by Church doctrines. However, from the 16th century onwards there began an epistemological shift, with a new emphasis on gathering knowledge by empirical means (as can be seen from the work of Hobbes and Bacon), rather than metaphysical ones. Empiricism is of course the theory that all knowledge is derived
from experience and observation , fundamentally replacing scriptural truths with sensory ones as the
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basis for intellectual inquiry. This would seem to explain how sense came to acquire its inflection of knowledge, as empiricism became the new dominant episteme. Concordant with this was the development of the enlightenment principle that human beings are fundamentally moral equals (All men are created equal as the American Declaration of Independence phrased it). If one combines this notion with the empiricist belief in the primacy of experience, then it lead to the conclusion that all humans have the potential to uncover knowledge and use this to make good decisions (a principle that sadly took centuries to include blacks, women and the working class within its schema). One can see this as the basis for the American and French revolutions; indeed, one of the most famous propaganda pamphlets for the American Revolution was Thomas Paines Common Sensevi, in which he argued a number of empirically-rooted points against the divine right of the British monarchy to rule over the colonies and for the American people to exercise their right to govern themselves. The naming of this pamphlet seems to be a clear indication that, under the new episteme, the common sense of ordinary understanding had come to mean good understanding, as embodied by the fact that those who held common understanding were now seen to have a good enough understanding to determine how they were ruled. This in turn, resulted in the situation whereby the legitimacy of a ruler is judged to be based upon the consent of the ruled through the democratic process. This returns us well to the focus of the essay; how common sense can be used to produce consent to a certain form of rule. Burawoy summarises Gramscis position on rule by consent under capitalism thusly: 2

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If sociologists contrast social order sustained by value consensus with a social order sustained by fear of
coercion, Gramscis hegemony explicitly connects the two. Thus, consent is not to be understood as the sociologists spontaneous consensus that holds society together but rather as something that is organized through specific institutions and always (and necessarily) backed up by the potential application of force .
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Gramsci conceived of these political, civil and cultural institutions (collectively termed civil society) as key sites for the dissemination of ideology. It is important to note here that Gramscis conception of ideology is not read in the pejorative sense often attributed to Marxist accounts of false consciousness, but in a descriptive sense of sets of beliefs and propositions about the world more akin to Mannheims conception of a total ideologyviii. There are a numerous amount of competing ideologies at work within a modern democratic society, however Gramsci argues that a particular set of beliefs/truths become dominant in the majority of institutions and thus a certain ideology becomes hegemonicix resulting in its truths being received as common sense and subsequently assuring consent to rule by those who subscribe to said ideology. This Hegemony is distinct from the centralisation of power/knowledge (one cannot conceptually reduce civil society into the state), indeed it is for this reason that Gramsci argued that a war of movement (a violent revolution to take control of the state, as occurred in Russia) would be ineffective in a modernised societyx as power/knowledge is diffused throughout civil institutions. Instead he argued that change occurs through a war of position; by which a new hegemony could be sought through civil society, without the violent means necessary in other casesxi. I would argue that this can be seen to have occurred several times throughout the 20th century which, if true, would seem to completely de-legitimize the claim of common sense to be immanent knowledge and instead demonstrate that it is a result of ideological hegemony. Here I will employ Kuhns conception of scientific revolutions by analogy to discuss how political shifts in hegemony occur. According to Kuhn, scientists tend to operate within a specific paradigm (a hegemonic set of propositions) with science being conducted under this referred to as normal science (comparable to political actions based on the common sense of a particular ideology). However, contradictions to

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this paradigm tend to build up until a paradigm is no longer workable and is replaced with a new one, beginning the cycle anewxii. The most fundamental shift of the 20th century occurred following the great depression and the Second World War. Up until this point, economic liberalism had been a dominant force and state intervention in the economy was fairly limited. However, the catastrophic damage of the depression destroyed the credibility of liberalism and the enhanced role of the state as a result of the war effort led to a new paradigm in the form of the Keynesian compromise of the New Deal and the Welfare State. This new hegemonic ideology was founded on the attempt to ensure full employment, high wages, a substantial social security system and ultimately a secure, stable future for capitalism. This can be seen as a compromise with organised labours demands, leading to it becoming common sense that high wages and benefits were justification for the continued private ownership of the means of production, in an attempt to harmonise the interests of labour and capital in order to achieve social consensusxiii. At the time it was pronounced by Daniel Bell that democratic politics had reached the end of ideological conflict in this paradigmxiv and that any developments would be merely technical rather than ideological. This would seem to very strongly reflect the proposition that establishment of common sense through hegemony seeks to depoliticise political issues. However the Keynesian compromise was never universal, being common only to the wealthiest nations who simultaneously pressured less-wealthy ones to keep wages low and economies privatisedxv and often militarily intervened when their demands were not metxvi. Contrary to Bells assertions, the post-war compromise did not endure. Towards the end of the 1970s in Britain and the USA a new economic paradigm was inaugurated following a sustained economic crisisxvii (based on a political-economic philosophy first trialled in Chile following the CIAsponsored coupxviii). This new paradigm, that has been subsequently called Neo-Liberalism, is defined by David Harvey as taking political ideals of human dignity as fundamental, as the central values
of civilization and assuming that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market . In
xix xx

practical terms this has had the effect of upwardly-redistributing wealth to a dramatic extent by 4

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driving down wages to increase profits as well as privatising large sectors of previously public propertyxxi. Harvey argues that these policies were justified through the advancement of a new hegemonic paradigm; central to this was the deployment of individual freedom as the most valuable social good, as well as mobilization of traditional/religious beliefs among the working classes and the promotion of the belief in fundamental individual responsibilityxxii; the latter culminating in the oft-found common sense conclusion today that unemployment is primarily a voluntary rather than involuntary phenomenon. Following the collapse of the USSR we have another author, this time Fukuyama, proclaiming that this new paradigm is the apex of human social evolutionxxiii, again demonstrating the naturalising power of common sense. In this most recent case the fact that this state of affairs is not resisted by large sectors of the population, despite the material justifications of the previous paradigm being replaced by merely moral ones, would seem a very strong indicator of the power of common sense to produce a consensus.

Having demonstrated that common sense is a temporally relative phenomenon, and therefore not merely a natural or immanent form of knowledge, I will now enter into a discussion of how paradigmatic common senses are strategically produced within populations. Strategically in this sense is used to suggest that this is a process actively engaged in, rather than a passive product of organic social development. For instance, a key example of this is Harveys citation of a memo sent in 1971 which stated that: The National Chamber of Commerceshould lead an assault upon the major
institutionsuniversities, schools, the media, publishing, the courtsin order to change how individuals think about the corporation, the law, culture, and the individual
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. This can be seen in Lukes terms as an

exercise of second and third dimensional power; controlling the terms on which public issues are considered as well as seeking to reposition subjects perceptions of where their own interests liexxv. Of course it is possible for anyone to attempt to do this from any ideological standpoint, but those with more wealth (and indeed those who own the means of producing wealth) are able to direct far more resources and therefore accomplish it far more effectivelyxxvi. In fact it is this wealth ownership

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that allows the ideology of business (effectively the Bourgeoisie) to be largely dominant, both through direct ownership of civil institutions as well as donations and pressures placed upon the state to promote Bourgeois (specifically neoliberal) ideology. According to Herman and Chomsky one of the key avenues for this in contemporary society is through the mass mediaxxvii, a set of institutions whose influence has expanded massively since the time in which the two were writing. As the majority of media in the developed world are privately owned and ownership is heavily concentrated in the hands of the very wealthyxxviii this gives those owners the power to filter out the
news fit to print, marginalise dissent and allow the government and private interests to get their messages across to the public
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, with this building a general homogeneity in media messages that contributes

to the inculcation and production of a certain ideology as common sensexxx. In addition I would argue that recently we have seen a great deal of media promoting the inherent value of common sense, that it is commonsensical to follow common sense. This has frequently taken the form of critiquing the liberal elite (using liberal in the American sense to mean left of centre) which, according to Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich: supposedly favours reckless government spending that requires oppressive levels of taxes, supports
"redistributive" social policies and programmes that reduce opportunity for the white middle class, creates ever more regulations (to, for instance, protect the environment) that reduce jobs for the working class, and promotes kinky countercultural innovations like gay marriage .
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This tactical alignment of liberal ideals with elitism is counterpoised to a supposedly egalitarian common sense, with the result that many viewpoints based upon empirical and theoretical study are discredited in the minds of much of the working and lower-middle classes and instead common sense is often advocated as the primary justification for political decisions. The inherently contradictory nature of this has been illustrated by Jost et.al who found that poor and ethnically marginalised groups are more likely to believe that great wealth inequalities are legitimate and necessaryxxxii.

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In our contemporary political situation then, it can be seen to have become common sense that state spending should be cut (often based on analogies to family budgetsxxxiii) with mainstream politics only differing on the extent and speed of cutsxxxiv. Other examples of this include the notion that immigration is detrimental to a national economy or that health and safety and political correctness have gone too far (indeed in the latter case one really hears political correctness without the epithet gone mad). These examples can be conceived of as serving private interests by lowering taxes, privatising public services and cutting regulation that adds costs that ultimately detract from the goal of maximising profit for those who are already wealthy.

In conclusion therefore, I have demonstrated that common sense emerged concordant to modern democratic society and is often privileged as a natural and non-elitist form of knowledge. This is despite the fact that common sense is a temporally relative phenomenon (both in terms of what is considered common sense and the value accorded to it) and is in fact actively constructed in the interests of justifying, maintaining and expanding the continued process of capital accumulation. Therefore, common sense plays a vital role in democratic politics under capitalism to produce a broad consensus of support for a system, despite said system privileging the interests of the extreme few over the many. Returning to Gramsci this furnishes those on the left with two strategic possibilities; either attempt to build an anti-capitalist hegemony under which progressive policies would be considered common sense or attempt to cause a shift towards a new episteme under which common sense would be replaced with what Gramsci termed good sense. Either of these courses is likely to be very difficult; faced against the colossal power drawn from ownership of the means of production. However the contemporary economic crisis can be seen to provide a standpoint to inaugurate a new paradigm, as Naomi Klein observed a considerable shock is necessary to provide any meaningful changexxxv.

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References

President Obama on Common Sense Steps to Grow the Economy, Whitehouse.gov (08/08/2011): http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/08/president-obama-common-sense-steps-grow-economy (accessed 06/03/2012)
i ii

Blackburn, D, Cameron: Im a common sense Conservative, The Spectator (02/09/2011) Online Edition: http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7209803/cameron-im-a-common-sense-conservative.thtml (accessed 06/03/2012)
iii

Common sense, Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=common+sense&searchmode=none (accessed 06/03/2011) iv Ibid v rd Compact Oxford English Dictionary (3 Edition, Revised), Soanes, C and Hawker, S (eds.), Oxford University Press (2008) pp326 vi Paine, T, Common Sense (1776), Found Online: http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/sense.pdf (accessed 06/03/2012) vii Burawoy, M, For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, Politics and Society Vol.31 No.2 (2003) pp214-215 viii Mannheim, K, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, Routledge (1991) ix Burawoy, M, For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, Politics and Society Vol.31 No.2 (2003) pp215 x Ibid xi Ibid xii Kuhn, T, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press (1970) xiii Wright, E.O, Working-Class Power, Capitalist Class-Interests and Class Compromise, American Journal of Sociology Vol.105 No.4 (2000) pp957-1002 xiv Bell, D, The End of Ideology: The Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 50s, Free Press (1961) xv Nkrumah, K, Neo-Colonialism; The Last Stage of Imperialism, Thomas Nelson and Sons (1965) xvi Blum, W, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII, Zed Books (2004) xvii Klein, N, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane (2007) xviii Blum, W, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII, Zed Books (2004) pp206-214 xix Harvey, D, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press (2005) pp5 xx Ibid pp7 xxi Ibid pp16-19 xxii Ibid pp39-64 xxiii Fukuyama, F, The end of history?, The National Inquirer (Summer 1989) pp3-18 xxiv Harvey, D, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press (2005) pp43 xxv nd Lukes, S, Power: A Radical View (2 Edition), Palgrave-Macmillan (2005) pp16-29 xxvi Harvey, D, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press (2005) pp43 xxvii Herman, E.S and Chomsky, N, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon (1988) pp4 xxviii Ibid pp4-6 xxix Ibid pp2 xxx Ibid xxxi Ehrenreich, B and Ehrenreich, J, The Making of the American 99%, Al Jazeera (23/12/2011) Online Edition: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011121811554582366.html (accessed 07/03/2012) xxxii Jost, J.T, Pelham B.W, Sheldon, O. and Sullivan, B.N, Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: evidence of enhance system justification among the disadvantaged, European Journal of Social Psychology Vol.33 Issue 1 (2003) pp13-36 xxxiii Mencimer, S, Memo to Tea Party: The US Government's Budget is Not Like a Family's, Mother Jones (28/07/2011) Online Edition: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/07/government-budget-vs-family-budget (accessed 07/03/2011)

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xxxiv

General election 2010: What would the parties cut? The IFS analysis, The Guardian Datablog (28/04/2010) Online Edition: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/28/general-election-2010spending-cuts-ifs (accessed 07/03/2012) xxxv Klein, N, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane (2007)

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Bibliography
Bell, D, The End of Ideology: The Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 50s, Free Press (1961) Blackburn, D, Cameron: Im a common sense Conservative, The Spectator (02/09/2011) Online Edition: http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7209803/cameron-im-a-common-sense-conservative.thtml (accessed 06/03/2012) Blum, W, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII, Zed Books (2004) Burawoy, M, For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, Politics and Society Vol.31 No.2 (2003) Ehrenreich, B and Ehrenreich, J, The Making of the American 99%, Al Jazeera (23/12/2011) Online Edition: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011121811554582366.html (accessed 07/03/2012) Fukuyama, F, The end of history?, The National Inquirer (Summer 1989) Harvey, D, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press (2005) Jost, J.T, Pelham B.W, Sheldon, O. and Sullivan, B.N, Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: evidence of enhance system justification among the disadvantaged, European Journal of Social Psychology Vol.33 Issue 1 (2003) Kuhn, T, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press (1970) nd Lukes, S, Power: A Radical View (2 Edition), Palgrave-Macmillan (2005) Herman, E.S and Chomsky, N, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon (1988) Mannheim, K, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, Routledge (1991) Mencimer, S, Memo to Tea Party: The US Government's Budget is Not Like a Family's, Mother Jones (28/07/2011) Online Edition: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/07/government-budget-vs-family-budget (accessed 07/03/2011) Nkrumah, K, Neo-Colonialism; The Last Stage of Imperialism, Thomas Nelson and Sons (1965) Klein, N, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane (2007) Paine, T, Common Sense (1776), Online Edition: http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/sense.pdf (accessed 06/03/2012) rd Soanes, C and Hawker, S (eds.), Compact Oxford English Dictionary (3 Edition, Revised), Oxford University Press (2008) Wright, E.O, Working-Class Power, Capitalist Class-Interests and Class Compromise, American Journal of Sociology Vol.105 No.4 (2000) Author Unknown Common sense, Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=common+sense&searchmode=none (accessed 06/03/2011) General election 2010: What would the parties cut? The IFS analysis, The Guardian Datablog (28/04/2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/28/general-election-2010-spending-cuts-ifs (accessed 07/03/2012)

President Obama on Common Sense Steps to Grow the Economy, Whitehouse.gov (08/08/2011):
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/08/president-obama-common-sense-steps-grow-economy (accessed 06/03/2012)

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