Impersonal power: history and theory of the bourgeois state

816 Pages·2007·3.822 MB·English

by  Gerstenberger, Heide

Impersonal Power
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd i 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
Historical
Materialism
Book Series
Editorial Board
Paul Blackledge, Leeds – Sébastien Budgen, Paris
Michael Krätke, Amsterdam – Stathis Kouvelakis,
London – Marcel van der Linden, Amsterdam
China Miéville, London – Paul Reynolds, Lancashire
Peter Thomas, Amsterdam
VOLUME 15
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd ii 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
Impersonal Power
History and Theory
of the Bourgeois State
By
Heide Gerstenberger
Translated by
David Fernbach
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2007
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd iii 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
This book is an English translation of Heide Gerstenberger, Die subjektlose Gewalt.
© Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster.
The publication of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISSN 1570-1522
ISBN 978 90 04 13027 2
Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission
from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by
Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd iv 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
Contents
Preface to the English Edition ................................................................... ix
Part One
The Rise of Bourgeois States: Preconditions for an Explanation
1. Miracles, for example .............................................................................. 3
2. States in general, ‘bourgeois’ states in particular ................................ 5
3. Examples of explanatory approaches ................................................... 7
4. False conclusions from structural analysis ........................................... 28
5. Pitfalls in historical comparison ............................................................. 31
6. Advice on reading .................................................................................... 36
Part Two
From Ancien Régime to Bourgeois State: England
‘How then did they do it?’ ........................................................................... 39
Chapter One English Feudalism: Appropriation by Land Lordship
and Force of Arms under Feudally Generalised Royal Power ........ 41
a. Preconditions of feudal rule ............................................................... 41
b. Establishment of feudal power structures ....................................... 44
Chapter Two The Ancien Régime in England ...................................... 63
a. Establishment of the ancien régime ..................................................... 63
b. Contradictory development of the ancien régime ............................. 112
c. The partial revolutionising of the ancien régime ............................... 184
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd v 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
vi • Contents
Chapter Three The Estate Constitution of Public Power .................. 247
a. Dissolution of the personal power of the English monarchs ........ 248
b. Objecti(cid:2) cation of local generalised power ....................................... 253
c. The ‘Establishment’: transformation of church rule ....................... 263
Chapter Four The Revolutionising of the Forms of Rule of the
Ancien Régime into Bourgeois State Power ......................................... 269
a. Opening up of centralised power of of(cid:2) ce ....................................... 274
b. Separation of local power of of(cid:2) ce from the privileges of the
landed nobility ..................................................................................... 288
c. Dissolution of the ancien régime of appropriation ........................... 301
d. From the ‘political nation’ to a national political public ................ 308
e. ‘Pomp and circumstance’: the English form of bourgeois state
power ..................................................................................................... 317
Part Three
From Ancien Régime to Bourgeois Society: France
Chapter One The Development of ‘Feudal’ Power Relations .......... 325
a. The rule of the aristocracy .................................................................. 325
b. Hierarchy and immunity .................................................................... 334
Chapter Two Plague, War and Difference ........................................... 351
Chapter Three The French Ancien Régime ........................................... 359
a. Emergence of the ancien régime ........................................................ 359
b. Contradictory development of the ancien régime ............................ 405
Chapter Four The French Revolution as Event and Structural
Change ........................................................................................................ 517
a. The rise of a revolutionary public ..................................................... 522
b. The struggle for a new order .............................................................. 536
c. The revolutionising of ancien-régime forms of rule into
bourgeois state power ......................................................................... 562
d. Emperor, king and notables: the French constitution of the
bourgeois state ..................................................................................... 585
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd vi 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
Contents • vii
Part Four
Results of the Historical Comparison
1. The conditions of personal rule in England and France .................... 592
2. Conditions for the emergence of the ancien régime .............................. 600
3. Contradictory development of the ancien régime ................................. 604
4. From ancien régime to bourgeois state power: reasons for the
‘special roads’ ........................................................................................... 617
Part Five
The Organisation of Generalised Power:
A Conceptual Framework for Historical Epochs
1. Feudalism .................................................................................................. 632
2. Ancien régime ............................................................................................. 645
3. Bourgeois state .......................................................................................... 662
Annotated Bibliography ............................................................................. 689
Index ............................................................................................................... 791
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd vii 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd viii 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM
Preface to the English Edition
The ‘bourgeois state’ as a political form is a particular development of the struc-
tural type of the modern nation-state. This particular form can be explained
in terms of its speci(cid:2) c prehistory, and such is the central thesis of the present
work. Since this prehistory was peculiar to Europe – and in a derivative form
to the colonies of European settlement – it was only here that the ‘bourgeois
state’ in this sense arose.
In the course of the nineteenth century, and still more in the twentieth,
key elements of this political form were exported across the world. Wher-
ever people successfully emancipated themselves from foreign rule, wher-
ever they agreed to live together in a sizeable political unity, they could only
hope to (cid:2) nd acceptance on the world stage if they established themselves as a
politically constituted ‘nation’. ‘International law’ was and is the law of states.
Today there is scarcely a remaining corner of the globe that does not belong to
a nation-state. And not only has the political form of ‘nation-state’ extended
worldwide, in many of the more recently and even very recently established
nation-states political institutions and legal systems have been introduced
that were developed in the bourgeois states. Even so, however, statehood
takes very different forms, and there is no sign that these differences will dis-
appear in a historically foreseeable time.
Just like the development of statehood, so the development of capitalism
was long assumed to always follow a previously established pattern, as soon
as the temporary ‘obstacles’ that still existed, such as underdevelopment or
state socialism, were (cid:2) nally removed. In the meantime, this economic order
has established itself almost throughout the world, and it has become appar-
ent that capitalism too has many guises. This gives new actuality to the ques-
tion of the causes of the speci(cid:2) c forms of modern statehood, and along with
it the speci(cid:2) c processes of capitalist development. The present study, how-
ever, does not focus on the comparison between bourgeois and other modern
GERSTENBERGER_f1_i-xii.indd ix 7/12/2007 9:18:42 PM