At 11:05 AM 3/24/98 -0500, Wojtek wrote: >I would add to it [my own
contribution] another simplification [that Marx made], the "classical"
concept of the state as the executive committee and the policeman
protecting private property. Marx did not anticipate the role of the state
as the Keynesian regulator (which might be interpreted as the expression of
bourgeois solidarity to save capitalism from its own excesses, something
that Marx did think would happen) or, for that matter, that the state would
play an independent role regardless of the class interests of the
bourgeoisie.<
I think this is a inaccurate description of Marx's political theory, though
it is hardly an inaccurate description of what might be called "received
Marxian political theory" (RMPT), what has been passed down by generations
of Marxists. If you look at Hal Draper's multi-volume KARL MARX'S THEORY OF
REVOLUTION (Monthly Review Press), you'll see large numbers of quotes from
Marx -- and Engels -- that deal with issues going beyond RMPT.
They talk about Prussian absolutist government which something much more
than a executive committee of the bourgeoisie, since it also represented
the Prussian junkers and was strictly speaking a junker itself. They also
talk about "Bonapartism," the kind of state that Napoleon III created,
which was also much different from the state that shows up in the RMPT.
State "relative autonomy" from the bourgeoisie is clearly recognized, with
the state bureaucrats playing an active role. Draper even quotes one place
where Marx is leaning toward the possibility of the state bureaucracy
becoming a new ruling class (Draper's vol. I: 453ff), though I don't think
that this is representative of Marx's work (or, for that matter, an
accurate description of what was going on at the time). (Not that the state
bureaucracy can never become a new ruling class -- I think it did in the
old USSR -- but Marx got carried away by the politics of the moment.)
Further, in CAPITAL, Marx talks about something similar to Keynesian policy
in class content though obviously not in the details. He points to the
British capitalists as accepting restrictions on the working day (under
pressure from workers' movements) because it's good for capital as a whole.
In his view, the excessive extension of the working day by individual
capitalists hurts the reproduction of labor-power. If that's not "the
expression of bourgeois solidarity to save capitalism from its own
excesses," I don't know what it is.
I think Marx was absolutely right to emphasize the state as a protector of
capitalist property relations (as opposed to mere private property, which
is something different). What discussions of the relative autonomy of the
state indicate is that sometimes the state does much more than that. But
such things as Keynesian economics, the welfare state, and restrictions on
the length of the working day are simply sophisticated substitutes for raw
police power, substitutes that are needed given working-class collective
resistance. With the fading of working-class resistance, we see the US
state moving toward being the classical narrow capitalist state advocated
by classical liberalism.
On the state being an "executive committee," it's important to remember the
original quote: to Marx and Engels in the MANIFESTO, it's only the
"executive of the modern State" which acts as "a committee for managing the
common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." It's not the state as a whole or
non-modern states (where "modern" seems to mean the new wave at Marx &
Engels' time). It's also useful to remember that even when the executive
acts as that sort of committee, there's no reason why (1) the committee
can't get together to express bourgeois solidarity or (2) make mistakes or
policy decisions that hurt fractions of capital that aren't represented.
>The latter issue was emphasized by historians like Barrington Moore or
more recently Theda Skocpol who, although working within the framework of
an essentially Marxist class analysis, nonetheless argued that the
structure of the state, the level of integration of different social
classes or strate, and the power of the agents of the state played a
crucial role in economic development. What i particularly like this kind
of Marxism vis a vis the world-systems variety is that it focuses on real
social actors instead of Hegelian abstractions.<
I think the research by Skocpol and Moore is great, but its originality on
the level of theory is mostly vis-a-vis RMPT (which does tend toward
Hegelian abstractions sometimes) as opposed to Marx. Their originality on
the level of empirical research is striking and excellent.
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They're too damned greedy."
-- Herbert Hoover
