ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that T. H. Marshall's conception of citizenship can be elaborates and combines with Barrington Moore's historical analysis of democracy to develop an historical and global framework for conceptualizing the development of universalistic citizenship. Further, it is claimed that this framework avoids the pitfalls of functionalism and evolutionary theories of social change, by emphasizing the contingent features of social struggle. The chapter explains the struggle for citizenship; it can be seen as a universalistic criterion of social development which is not ethnocentric, teleological or idealist. Radical citizenship is the outcome of class struggles, war, migration and egalitarian ideologies. In classical Marxism, class struggle was obviously central in determining the nature of political and social life. The industrialization of the economy under capitalist conditions can take place without a modernization of the social structure, since modernization is an effect of collective struggles, which are themselves shaped by class structure, warfare, migration and ideologies of equality.