The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (166 page)

A key section in Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit
which illustrates the movement of the dialectic in terms of the search for a ‘mutually recognizing’ true self-consciousness. Although the master controls the slave the latter gains a degree of self-realization through his work. However, the fact that neither ‘recognizes’ the other as a free being means that true self-consciousness is not achieved. Hence, the division between them becomes concentrated in one individual, the ‘Unhappy Consciousness’.
IF 

 
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Generally: belief that all that matters is material welfare, as opposed to spiritual or other ideals. Specifically:
Marx
and
Engels
developed what they called ‘ historical materialism’ and ‘
dialectical materialism
’ in reaction to the idealism of earlier nineteenth-century thinkers especially
Hegel
. Since the seventeenth century, thinkers had been divided between those who insisted that, put crudely, physical matter is all there is, and those who gave an independent role to mind. A clear example of the first is
Hobbes
, whose mechanical conception of nature (so labelled in an important study by F. Brandt , 1928) led him to claim, for instance, that our sensations of colour derived wholly from the coloured object we saw and not from anything in our minds. A clear example of the second was Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753), famous for his scepticism that we could prove that anything existed outside our mental images of it. Hegel sided with Berkeley, and Marx and Engels with Hobbes.
Marx summarizes his disagreement with Hegel as follows: 'My investigation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of human life….It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness' (Preface to
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
, 1859). This is Marx's historical materialism. It states that ideology, aesthetics, ideas about ethics and religion, and so on, are all parts of the superstructure, while economic relations are the base ( see also
base/superstructure
). This idea has been widely criticized as self-refuting—if ideas are superstructural, how could the middle-class intellectual Marx and the capitalist Engels have developed Marxism?—but has been ably defended in G. Cohen ,
Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence
(1979).
Dialectical materialism is more associated with Engels. Briefly, this is historical materialism made dynamic. It includes the idea that each stage of society except the last contains the seeds of its own destruction, so that capitalism emerged out of feudalism and socialism will emerge out of capitalism.

 
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Generally, rule by women; more specifically, a society or kinship group in which authority descends down the female line. Matriarchy has been common in countries of Africa and Asia. The definition of matriarchy is as disputed as the definition of
patriarchy
. Matriarchy suggests some power negotiations between the sexes as opposed to the patriarchal tradition, where the male makes all the important decisions. Matriarchy takes cultural forms, especially in family and religious matters. A woman could often have the choice of a couple of husbands and the children from one particular union took the mother's name and the inheritance passed through her line. Children belonged to the mother's family and the mother could claim maintenance by the family. However, the eldest male of the family acted as the head of the house and this can be seen as an area of power negotiation. In certain parts of South India like Kerala, Cochin, and Travancore, the heir to the throne was not the son of the king, but of his eldest sister. In some places of South India the Marumakkathayam system prevailed, where there was common ownership of family property and it was indissoluble without the consent of all the members of the family.
STh 

 
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In game theory, the strategy of maximizing one's own pay-off on the minimum (i.e. worst) assumption about the other player(s)' strategy. Thus for example in two-person Chicken (see the pay-off matrix in that entry), my maximin strategy is ‘Swerve’. If I ‘Swerve’ I cannot get less than
c
, whereas if I ‘Keep going’ I may get
d
.
The idea has also been used in political philosophy. John Rawls , in
A Theory of Justice
(1971), argues that if people were placed behind a
veil of ignorance
, so that they were asked to make rules of justice for a world in which they did not know what their views, wealth, or status would be, they would agree on a maximin conception of justice. The Rawlsian maximin is expressed in the first part of his
difference principle
: ‘Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are … to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.’

 
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Where separate direct election gives a mayor his or her own electoral mandate, as commonly in the United States, the mayor is the political head of an urban authority. By contrast, in the United Kingdom a mayor is the ceremonial head of a borough/district council, elected by councillors from among their own number. Political power lies rather with the majority party group and its leader.
JBr 

 
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