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with elections,civic freedoms etc. State has also consent function. The ruling class exercises its hegemony incivil society by the
support of coercion to shape masses. In supreme crisis, coercion become more dominant that bourgeois state cant solve problems
with conformation. Thats related with the example that I gave above that state exercised violence and force over Kurdish movement
when its understood that its impossible to conform Kurdish community to state
policies with consent especially after the emergence of PKK movement after 1980s. Every state needs the consent of ruled classes. A
state cant survive only with coercion. That is the assuring of a dominant block. The economically dominant class isinsufficient to
maintain hegemony. Intellectuals in dominant block play an important role Inmaintaining hegemony. To clarify this, I want to give
again a Turkey example. When AKPcame to power, it needed the support of intellectuals to assure masses. Liberal
intellectualssupported AKP in party politics and in this way, AKP gained legitimacy. Intellectuals playeda functionary role in
legitimization of AKP policies. The alliance between intellectuals and AKP is a good example of Gramscis claims. After Gramsci, we
should look at Habermas. For Habermas, the public sphere, to belocated in civil society, is a realm where people can discuss matters of
mutual concern, andlearn about facts, events, and the opinions, interests, and perspectives of others in anenvironment free of coercion
or inequalities. This implies the autonomy of individuals and isa learning process. According to Habermas, these discussions can occur
within various unitsof civil society. But there is also a larger public sphere that mediates among the various mini-publics that emerge
within and across associations, movements, religious organizations, clubs,local organizations of concerned citizens, and informal
social networks in the creationof public opinion. As such one would see civil society as a sphere of interaction betweeneconomy and
state, composed above all of the intimate sphere (especially the family),thesphere of associations (especially voluntary organisations),
social movements, and forms of public communication. For both Gramsci and Habermas, civil society is an autonomoussocial sphere
which contains all cultural institutions. According to Habermas, civil societydoes not include the economy that was constituted under
private law and operated throughlabor, capital and goods. Habermas says that civil society is established throughcommunicative
action, not through force. In his view, civil society is supplier for the statebecause its thought to institutionalize problem-solving
discourses for it; for Gramsci, its notan area of democratic policiy but a battle field between democrats, fascists and monarchists.
The ideal type of a public sphere for Habermas asserts itself as a barricade againstsystematizing effects of the state and ecenomy.Jrgen
Habermas uses a term lifeworld
which means the intuitively present,transparent, vast and incalculable web of presuppositions that have to be satisfied if an
actualutterance is to be all meaningful.
Lifeworld is considered as the domain of freedom that thereis no power in it. System is considered as the terrain of coercion.
Gramscian understanding of civil society is different than Habermas. There emerges a problem when the system,constructed to serve
our technical needs, invades the practical domain of the lifeworld. Thelifeworld is colonized by the functional imperatives of the state
and th economy. Theimperatives of the economic and political-legal system remove the internal communicativeaction that underpins
the formation and reproduction of lifeworlds, providing in its place anexternal framework of ideas, values, meaning and language
based on systems.
According to Habermas, for the public sphere to be achieved, the equality and the richness of freedom of expression are very much
needed, but in addition, the achievement of public sphere will makethis equality continue in a positive and constructive way.As a
result, Habermas draws a sharp distinction between political and public spheres, unlike Gramsci. In Gramscis understanding civil
society is a serious part of the state which isused as an instrument for to continue the hegemony. On the other hand, Habermas thinks
of civil society as the source for criticism against the state where different individuals of thesociety come together for a civil alliance of
deliberation. Gramsci, on the other hand, thinks of