Marxism and the State: An Analytical Approach

261 Pages·2005·0.739 MB·English

by  Paul Wetherly (auth.)

Marxism and the State
Also by Paul Wetherly
Marx’s Theory of History: The Contemporary Debate (editor, 1992)
Marxism and the State
An Analytical Approach
Paul Wetherly
Principal Lecturer in Politics
Leeds Metropolitan University
© Paul Wetherly 2005
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-0-333-72478-1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wetherly, Paul.
Marxism and the state : an analytical approach / Paul Wetherly.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. State, The. 2. Historical materialism. 3. Capitalism. 4. Communism.
I. Title.
JC131.W47 2005
335.4′119–dc22 2005042517
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
For Barbara, Rebecca and Laura
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Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction: The Theory of History and the State 1
2 Marx, the State and Functional Explanation 10
Introduction 10
The state of The Communist Manifesto 13
Primary and secondary themes? 15
A theoretical synthesis? 25
3 The Instrumentalist Thesis – A Restatement 27
Introduction 27
The instrumentalist thesis 28
The state as a ‘power container’ 30
Social forces and interests 38
Class structure and class interests 41
The possibility of a general theory 47
The interests of capital in general 49
State power 63
4 Structure and Agency in State Theory 72
Introduction 72
Agency and structure aren’t all there is 72
The strategic-relational approach 78
The structural constraint thesis 83
Block and ‘business confidence’ 90
The ‘structural power’ of capital 94
Structure, agency and the state 102
5 Base and Superstructure 109
Introduction 109
The nature of the economic structure 110
The circuit of capital 116
‘Class interests’ and ‘needs of capital’ 122
Classification of the interests of the capitalist class 128
6 A Theory of the ‘Needs of Capital’ 130
Introduction 130
vii
viii Contents
The concept of need 130
Needs of social systems 133
Capitalism, the market and competition 135
Accumulation and legitimisation 138
Summary 151
7 State Autonomy – A Conceptual Framework 156
Introduction – the relative autonomy of the state 156
The potential for state autonomy 158
Functionalism and determinism 163
State autonomy – a conceptual framework 169
Possible constraint types 172
8 Constraints on the State – Mechanisms of Economic 174
Determination
Introduction 174
Mechanism 1 – internal/personal 175
Mechanism 2 – internal/impersonal 180
Mechanism 3 – external/personal 185
Mechanism 4 – external/impersonal 189
Summary 194
9 Globalisation, History and the State 196
Introduction – the challenge of globalisation 196
What is globalisation? 197
Globalisation and the theory of history 201
Globalisation and the state 210
Notes 219
Works cited 235
Index 242
Preface
This book offers a restatement of an ‘old-fashioned’ Marxist theory of the
state. According to that theory the character of the state, in so far as it is
part of the ‘legal and political superstructure’ of a society, is determined
or explained by the nature of the prevailing economic structure.
More specifically, it is claimed that the state is functionally explained
by the needs or functional requirements of the economy – for example,
that the state in capitalist society is functionally explained by the extra-
economic conditions that must be secured if capitalist relations of pro-
duction are to be maintained and reproduced, or stabilised. What this
means is that certain state actions (laws, policies) are explained by their
having a functional (stabilising) effect on the economy. Or it can be
said that such actions are explained by the disposition of the economy
to be stabilised by them. It is this functionality that the concept of ‘the
capitalist state’ is intended to capture.
The characterisation of Marxism as a functional theory is not new,
but has for long figured in discussions of Marx’s writings on the state.
But by far the most rigorous and convincing statement of this view is
found in the contemporary stream of ‘analytical’ Marxism and, more
specifically, the book that was one of the primary sources of that
stream: G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History:A Defence. Cohen’s
functional interpretation of the theory of history provides the theoret-
ical framework for this book, whose purpose can be summarised as to
elaborate the relatively neglected ‘second stage’ of the theory – the
functional connection between the economic structure and the legal
and political superstructure.1
This book is concerned with the capitalist state and does not deal
with the base-superstructure connection or the theory of history in
more general terms. Thus it does not deal with pre-capitalist societies,
the origins of capitalist relations of production and the capitalist state,
or the possibility of a post-capitalist society and the implications for
the state. It should be noted that the plausibility of the functional
explanation of the capitalist state does not depend on the plausibility
of the theory of history in total. It could be true in capitalist society
that the nature of the economic structure functionally explains the
character of the legal and political superstructure even if this is not
true for any other kind of society.
ix