[AUT] Capitalism and the state (was re: questions)

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

in my previous post read 1789 not 1879
T

>>> "Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx> 03/12/07 11:42 AM >>>
OK Andy, I'll leave it after this one; just a couple of brief replies.
Tahir

>>> "Andy" <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx> 03/10/07 4:22 AM >>>
"Tahir: No, I was drawing attention to the bourgeois character of the
state, which I think was being questioned. What is important here is not
the similarity but the difference to the feudal state. Unlike the latter
the modern state is a nation state; I don't see how this can be divorced
from capitalism."

Andy:  Yes, that's one of the things I question.  I don't think the modern state is "bourgeois" in several key senses, most notably it does not always serve the bourgeoisie, did not come into existence through the agency of the bourgeoisie, and it not internally restricted by the limits or driven by the conceptions or the contradictions of the bourgeoisie.  It is not a "moment" of the "totality" in a Hegelian sense.  The state has its own tendencies, conceptions, and contradictions which are irreducible to those of capitalism.

Tahir: I cannot agree with this at all. I guess I'm just one of those diehards that was brought up on notions of the 'bourgeois revolution?. There was a class struggle against the holy trinity of king, clergy and nobility, what I call an anti-feudal struggle; I think it was led by the bourgeoisie. In Europe, as in modern anti-colonial struggles too, it tended to be the petty b. types who went into government, your lawyers etc., while big business people stayed in the 'private sector' where bigger money was to be made. But the whole thing has a bourgeois character, and I see no evidence of the bourgeoisie today locked in a life and death struggle against the state. Where I come from the most bourgeois liberal elements are always going on about the rule of law, etc. Because that is what the market requires. You suggest throughout this post that the bourgeoisie are in some kind of struggle with the state. I see no evidence of that.

On the other hand, I would concede, firstly that the present state is modern (which is not the same as "bourgeois"); second, that the bourgeoisie needs the state; third, that actually-existing states are for contingent reasons fused with capitalism and with bourgeois logics.

Tahir: "Contingent" looks like a cop-out here. 

Tahir:  "This seems to me to have the purpose of establishing a national
market, a national workforce, a national communication system, etc. Why
should we doubt that this is inherently connected with capitalism as the
project of the rising bourgeoisie?"

Andy:  For a whole number of reasons.  One of these being that theorists of capitalism (liberals for instance) have always been concerned to limit the state.

Tahir: Of course, but not to lose any of its essential functions: law and order, defence, organisation of infrastructure required by commerce, etc.

  Another, that there is not a simple correlation between the rise of these modern, standardising measures and the rise of capitalism proper; for instance, absolutist states often pursued standardisation.

Tahir: The absolutist state was the political form of mercantile capitalism, which absolutely required standardisation of all the kinds I mentioned. Any arbitrariness or fiat is always dodgy from a capitalist point of view, the latter being the essence of feudalism.

  Thirdly, that the state outlasted the overthrow of capitalism in the Stalinist societies and survived without it.

Tahir: There was no overthrow of capitalism. There was wage labour, investment of the surplus in capital projects; there were classes, certain of which enjoyed their share of the surplus. As I argued earlier, and the part of my previous message that you snipped, the Stalinist project was such that all these essentially capitalist processes were hugely accelerated under Stalin.

  Fourth, because the state acts as an autonomous class force in cases such as Bonapartism, fascism, the "developmental state", etc.

Tahir: Yeah sure, I also act as an autonomous force on my better days, and so does everyone whenever they can. The 'developmental state', if there is such a thing, has the purpose of creating better conditions for capitalism, especially to get the home market functioning.

  Fifth, because there are similarities as well as differences between the modern and pre-modern state.

Tahir: Of course, ... and?

I think you are here confusing a functionality with a purpose.  It is indeed functional for capitalism that the state standardises in certain ways; this does not mean that capitalism is the purpose of this standardisation, especially since in many cases it preceded the development of capitalism.

Tahir: But it did not precede the advent of class society; because there has always been trade since the invention of private property. And in the years of merchant capital the processes of standardisation accelerated tremendously.

Tahir:  "It would be absurd to posit a fully formed
bourgeoisie that preceded capitalism, who then simply brought into being
by their actions a fully elaborated capitalism."

Andy:  So what is your claim?  That a partially formed bourgeoisie predeced capitalism and brought into being a full, or a partial, capitalist state?

Tahir: I think it was just such an uneven process as could be so (clumsily) described as you have done above. Yes, I think there was a proto-bourgeoisie and a proto-capitalism, a process of continuing struggle which brought forth what we know today as capitalism.

  But did the rise of the absolutist state really come from the pre-capitalist merchants?   I seriously doubt it, but even if so - did they do so for capitalist, or mercantile reasons?  

Tahir: Merchants commanded capital; it would not be long before they realised some new potentials for valorisation in the capital that they held. Am I the only one seeing in your formulations an extremem rigidity as if each of these concepts is sealed off from the other by some kind of hermetic seal?

Tahir:"I don't know what you call a statesman,
but I call him a bourgeois."

Andy:  If I was being polite and analytical, I'd call "him" (or her) a statist, or a bureaucrat (though those in development studies use the term "political class" instead, Djilas "new class", and there are other names too).  If I was being rude, I'd call him or her a pig - which is nonetheless distinct from being a boss.  There are few who can't tell a pig from a boss, even though they're usually on the same side.

Tahir: I have read Djilas's book and it is a very impressionist one; I don't think that it helps us understand the class forces in the USSR. I think he was a nice idealistic guy who was trying to work through his own disillusionment.

Tahir:  "I am rather arguing for a certain agency on the
part of the bourgeoisie towards finding those social forms that would
serve their interests (valorisation)."

Andy:  So we've established that you're an instrumentalist/intentionalist rather than a structuralist.

Tahir: I can honestly say that I've never had a structuralist moment (heh!) in my life. True. 

  But this seems to involve a very strong claim of agency which would take some proving shall we say.  First, you've admitted the bourgeoisie did not exist "fully formed" before capitalism - so how could it construct institutions to form interests which it did not already have?

Tahir: I've already pointed out your tendency to deny concepts unless the particular case is a perfect specimen of the category, which seems to be a very rigid mode of thought. The bourgeoisie did not simply sit down and construct institutions as one sits down to design a house, say. The intentionality would have been much more diffuse, messy and prone to all sorts of setbacks than this. 

  Second, how can this group, or its successor, the fully-fledged bourgeoisie, be sure of having true consciousness rather than false consciousness of its beliefs - especially when a discourse analysis of its texts reveals these to be awash with what from this perspective can only be termed mystification?

Tahir: This has no relevance to my argument, unless you thought I was saying that the bourgeoisie had some kind of soothsaying ability, which other mortals lack.

Also, I would add that the claim that the bourgeoisie built the modern state because it serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, still would not make this state bourgeois.  It would simply make it useful to the bourgeoisie.  To compare: if someone builds a hammer because it is useful to them, this does not make the hammer human.  

Tahir: I don?t think anyone ?built? the modern state. Just look at French history for example: the various struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie from 1879 until the rise of Napoleon, followed by the restoration, then 1830 and the July monarchy, 1848, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris commune, the third republic, etc. etc. The idea of someone simply designing and building something is your caricature of my position throughout.

Tahir:  "What does matter here is
what the rising bourgeoisie had in their heads: law and order, Athenian
democracy, Voltaire, financial instruments, reform of state apparatuses,
anti-clericalism, etc. But at every historical moment what they were
doing was fighting against something, namely feudalism, and therefore
capitalism in its development is an anti-feudalism. This is what it
essentially is, the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against their
aristocratic oppressors."

Andy:  I would agree that what is in the heads of social agents is important, but I would locate this firmly at the level of discourse, not interests.  Patently it is possible to have all kinds of things in one's head which are not in one's interest!

But in fact your historical account makes little sense.  Firstly because what was in the heads of early liberals and merchants was certainly not the modern state as it eventually emerged. 

Tahir: Again, I repeat that no-one designed the whole thing from scratch. No-one had a view of the whole thing. It was a product of centuries of class struggle. Now I?ve said that enough times for you to understand surely the difference between that caricature and my position.

 Secondly because in most of the world the state form was imposed by colonial fiat, not at all in rebellion against feudalism.

Tahir: This is a major topic in itself. I won?t address it here.

  Thirdly because even in Europe, the situation is far more complex - in particular, the absolutist state does not seem to have grown from bourgeois agency, but rather, from agency of the state itself in a pre-capitalist period.  In Germany the "modern" state was the state of the Junkers for example.  In the risorgimento there was a definite "political class" autonomous from capitalist agency.  In England/Britain, a fusion of aristocracy and bourgeoisie.

Tahir: In all cases there has been some kind of class compromise; and that is what gives rise to what we have called the movement from formal to real subsumption. Class struggle continues.

I'll grant that a set of distinctly modern existential constructs and discourses, such as homogeneous empty time and a micropolitics of disciplinary regulation, seem generative in relation to both capitalism and the modern state.  But I don't see how this makes the state "bourgeois".

Tahir: The specific form of the state; states are in fact always present in all forms of class society. But the form of the state is bourgeois. And there is always a continuing struggle to make it more bourgeois. Look at what is happening in higher education today; a clear case of the continuing struggle against institutions that have some vestiges of feudalism about them.

Tahir: "the state is the state
of the class struggle at that point in time, including struggles amongst
fractions of the bourgeoisie. I don't know what you call a statesman,
but I call him a bourgeois. This applies equally to the USSR. It was the
product of the class struggle within capitalism at that time in that
place. If I understand your logic you would deny all theses of state
capitalism that have been put forward regarding this."

Andy:  This is either tautology or nonsense.  

If you mean that the state is structured in a way that results from the balance of social forces in a society, and that the state's power is limited by the balance of social forces, then this is true, but it is tautologically true of any social force - one could as well say "the bourgeoisie is the is the bourgeoisie of the class struggle at that point in time", or "the working class is the working class of the class struggle at that point in time".  Saying this would neither affirm nor deny the autonomy of this particular social force.  

If on the other hand you mean that the state is simply a reflection of the balance of other social forces, and thus cannot be a social force itself, then the claim is clearly nonsense given the various cases where it clearly acts as a separate force in a situation (Bonapartism even, let alone Stalinism or absolutism).

Tahir: The game, once its rules have been accepted, must have a referee.

Yes, I disagree with theories of state capitalism.  The reason for this is I don't see how the fundamental contradictions of capitalism were operating in state society.  I don't see how value was valorising itself.  I don't see how workers were free to sell their labour power to the highest bidder.  And I don't see why world capitalism would work so hard to smash something which was just another form of capitalism.

Tahir: They smashed many another state guilty of insubordination to big capital.

I'd agree that statism in the workers' movement is "counter-revolutionary", in the sense of expressing the logic of another class.  But I don't see how it's specifically capitalist.

Tahir: Hair splitting. And to what end?

Tahir: "I think that if one separates the state (i.e. the bourgeois
state) from capitalism, that is in fact a form of reduction. It makes
the state into something rather spectral, without any substance at all."

Andy:  It makes the state into a social logic.  Similar to, say, capitalism as a social logic.

Tahir: So there are just all these social logics kicking around, bouncing up against one another, who knows where from?

Why is it more reductive to accord this status to the state, than to accord this status to capitalism?

Tahir: I think I?ll bow out here. Enough already. 

Ssssnip!

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