State, Class Struggle, and the Reproduction of Capital

Abstract

In the last few years, the Marxist theory of the state has been the focus of continuous debate. The main aim of most of the contributions to the debate has been to steer a middle way between 'vulgar' conceptions of the state as a mere tool of capital and 'reformist' conceptions of the state as a neutral institution standing outside and above the class struggle. The focus of recent discussion has been the attempt to develop an adequate account of the capitalist state as a particular historical form of social relation. The emphasis in most contributions has been on the 'externality' of the state in relation to particular capitals and on its 'particularity' as a political institution, standing apart from the forms of class struggle surrounding the production and appropriation of surplus value. Within this framework various solutions have been put forward, usually seeing the state as a sort of external guarantor of the conditions of capitalist reproduc-tion, whose subordination to capital is effected through the subordination of the material reproduction of the state to the reproduction of capital; through the political and administrative systems that ensure the dominance of the capitalist class; and through the ideological subordination of the working class to capital. Although much progress has been made in the analysis of the capitalist state, the results have been in many ways disappointing, and the political conclusions drawn from the analysis have often been insubstantial. One of the major weak-nesses has been a tendency for contributions to oscillate between the extremely abstract, and often formalistic, analysis of 'state derivation' that too often re-duces to another version of structural-functionalism, and extremely concrete, and often empiricist, attempts at historical analysis. The failure adequately to integrate form and content perhaps indicates that something has gone wrong, both methodologically, in failing to locate correctly the levels of abstraction appropriate to particular concepts, and substantively, in the way in which the problem of the state has been posed in the first place. The political weaknesses of our analysis are closely related to these theo-retical failings, and have become especially apparent with the challenge thrown down to both social democratic and Marxist orthodoxy by the New Right. One of the most fundamental questions we have to resolve is whether the New Right is a fleeting phenomenon that will soon come up against the realities of capital-ist state power, or whether it rather represents a major shift in the character of state power, and so the terms of political struggle. Should we be sitting back, waiting to resume the same old battles, or has the whole battlefield moved on? 1 We can, of course, look to history and see in today's developments a re-run of the thirties, with a new 'fascism with a human face' as the greatest threat, im-plying an obligation on socialists to submerge themselves in popular democratic campaigns in defense of trade unionism, of freedom of speech and assembly, against racism and sexism, in defense of welfare rights etc. However, history never simply repeats itself, and capitalism in the 1980s is not capitalism in the 1930s. Only an adequate theory of the capitalist state can help us to decide whether simple comparisons with the 1930s are legitimate or not, for only such a theory can distinguish between those features of the capitalist state that are essential to it as a capitalist state, those features that belong to a particular stage of capitalist development, and those features that are contingently determined by the outcome of particular struggles. The New Right has challenged many of our preconceptions about the essential features of the late capitalist state, and about the historical tendencies of capitalist development, by proposing to roll back the frontiers of the state without any regard for the supposed necessity of this or that aspect of the state, and without any consideration of the supposed contradiction between the 'accumulation' and 'legitimation' functions of the state. In this paper I want to try to take up this challenge, as provocatively as possible, and to have another look at the capitalist state. I do not want to propose yet another theory of the state, not least because part of my argument is that the state cannot be derived conceptually. Rather, I want to raise some questions about the kinds of relationships that we should be focusing on, and particularly those between class struggle, the reproduction of capital, and the state.