Political Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The distinction between political society and civil society was drawn by Gramsci.

Antonio Gramsci, in his Prison Notebooks, divided the superstructure into political society (the state and its coercive apparatus) and civil society (churches, schools, media, associations). The ruling class keeps power not only by force through political society but by hegemony, winning consent through civil society.

Engels, Lenin and Mao worked within classical Marxism's emphasis on the economic base and the state as an instrument of class rule, and did not develop this two-level theory of the superstructure.

Answer: D

'Authority is federal' was said by Laski.

Harold Laski, the leading English pluralist, rejected the monistic theory of sovereignty. Since society is made up of many associations (churches, trade unions, professional bodies), each with its own claim on the individual, he argued that authority in society must also be federal, divided among groups rather than concentrated in the state.

Ernest Barker shared pluralist sympathies but is not the author of the phrase, and Léon Duguit and Hugo Krabbe attacked state sovereignty from the side of law, holding law rather than the state to be supreme.

Answer: B

The correct code is a-1, b-2, c-3, d-4.

• Hobbes: the sovereign is the source of law; law is the command of the sovereign.
• Locke: the legislative is the supreme power in the commonwealth, and laws are made by it with the consent of the people.
• Rousseau: the general will is sovereign.
• T. H. Green: 'will, not force, is the basis of the state', the title of a lecture in his Principles of Political Obligation.

The other codes swap Hobbes and Locke or attach Green's famous phrase to Hobbes.

Answer: A

For the Fascists, the truest democracy is government by the elite.

Fascism rejected liberal democracy based on counting votes. Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism (1932) called it an organised, centralised and authoritative democracy, in which the nation's will is expressed by a superior few, the elite led by the leader, rather than by the majority.

Glorification of war is a feature of fascism, but 'war-mongers' is not its account of democracy. 'Democrats' and 'anarchists' are what fascism opposed.

Answer: D

The Subjection of Women was written by John Stuart Mill.

Published in 1869, and written with the influence of Harriet Taylor Mill, the essay argued that the legal subordination of women to men is wrong and a hindrance to human improvement, and that women should have equal rights, including the vote.

James Mill, his father, wrote the Essay on Government, which excluded women from the franchise. Jeremy Bentham founded utilitarianism, and Karl Marx did not write this work.

Answer: A

The key gives generous and a humane one.

George Sabine's A History of Political Theory treats Marxism as a doctrine with a strong moral appeal, and the keyed wording matches that sympathetic tone. The other options describe features (anti-imperialist, pro-authoritarian, restrictive) that Sabine's account does not give as the character of Marx's utopia.

I could not find the original passage to confirm the exact words, so the answer rests on the key and on that reading; the question is a recall of Sabine's own phrasing.

Answer: A

The correct pair is Rousseau : civil society.

Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) traces the passage from the state of nature to civil society, beginning famously with the first man who enclosed a plot of land and said 'this is mine', the true founder of civil society.

The others are mismatched. The 'original position' and the 'veil of ignorance' are both John Rawls's devices in A Theory of Justice, not Locke's or Plato's, and 'hegemony' is Antonio Gramsci's concept, not Machiavelli's.

Answer: B

Both (A) and (R) are correct, and (R) is the reason of (A).

In Leviathan (chapter 13), Hobbes describes the state of nature, a war of all against all, in which there is no place for industry, arts or society, and the notions of right and wrong and of justice have no place. The 'life of man' in that condition is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'; the paper's assertion paraphrases this famous line.

The misery of life in the state of nature follows from the absence of morality, justice, industry and civilisation, so the reason explains the assertion, which rules out option D. A and C are wrong because both statements are Hobbes's.

Answer: C

The statement comes from the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Section I of the Manifesto (1848), written by Marx and Engels, opens with the line that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, and goes on to trace freeman and slave, lord and serf, and finally bourgeois and proletarian.

The other works are by Marx but do not contain this line. On the Jewish Question (1843) criticises political emancipation, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) is famous for its Preface on base and superstructure, and The Civil War in France (1871) analyses the Paris Commune.

Answer: B

Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

The Assertion is true: the Philosophical Radicals, following Adam Smith and Ricardo, built their economics around laissez-faire, aiming from the start to free trade and industry from mercantilist and other restrictions. The Reason is also true: Bentham's first published work, A Fragment on Government (1776), already set out the principle of utility as the test of law and government.

But the date and contents of Bentham's early book do not explain why the radicals' economic theory was aimed at freeing commerce. That aim came from classical political economy, so R is a separate true statement rather than the reason for A.