Reserve Text from: The Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Tom Bottomore, London: Blackwell, 1982

State

State, the A concept of crucial importance in Marxist thought, for Marxists regard the state as the institution beyond all others whose function it is to maintain and defend class domination and exploitation. The classical Marxist view is expressed in the famous formulation of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: 'The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.' This is a more complex statement than appears at first sight, but it is too summary and lends itself to over-simplification: however, it does represent the core proposition of Marxism on the subject of the state.

One of Lenin's most famous pamphlets, The State and Revolution, written on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, was intended as a restatement of the Marxist theory of the state against what he took to be its corruption by Second International 'revisionism'; and others in the Marxist tradition have been concerned with the state -for instance members of the Austro- Marxist' school such as Max Adler and Otto Bauer (see AUSTRO-MARXISM) and, most notably, Gramsci. But it is only since the 1960s that the state has become a major field of investigation and debate within Marxism. This relative neglect may be attributed in part to the general impoverishment of Marxist thought produced by the predominance of Stalinism from the later 1920s to the late 1950s; and also to an over-'economistic' bias (see ECONOMISM) which tended to allocate a mainly derivative and 'superstructural' role to the state, and to see it, unproblematically, as the mere servant of dominant economic classes. Much of the recent work on the state has, on the contrary, been concerned to explore and explain its 'relative autonomy' and the complexities which attend its relationship to society.

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able to overcome the division between CIVIL SOCIETY and the state and the split between the individual as private person and as citizen. Marx rejects these claims in his Critique on the ground that the state, in real life, does not stand for the general interest but defends the interests of property. In the Critique, Marx advances a mainly political remedy for this inability of the state to defend the general interest, namely the achievement of democracy. But he soon moved on to the view that much more than this was required and that 'political emancipation' alone could not bring about 'human emancipation'. This required a much more thorough reorganization of society, of which the main feature was the abolition of private property.

This view of the state as the instrument of a ruling class, so designated by virtue of its ownership and control of the means of production, remained fundamental throughout for Marx and Engels. The state, Engels said in the last book he wrote, is 'as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class' (Origin of the Family, ch. 9). This, however, leaves open the question why and how the state, as an institution separate from the economically dominant class or classes, plays this role; and the question is particularly relevant in capitalist society, where the distance between the state and economic forces is usually quite marked.

Notwithstanding the differences between them, both approaches have in common a view of the state as subordinate to and constrained by forces and pressures external .to itself: the state, in these perspectives, is indeed an agent or instrument, whose dynamic and impulse is supplied from outside.

This leaves out of account a very large part of the Marxist view of the state, as conceived by Marx and Engels. For they attributed to the state a considerable degree of autonomy. This is particularly clear in relation to the phenomenon to which both Marx and Engels gave particular attention, namely dictatorial regimes such as the Bonapartist regime in France after Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'etat of 1852 (see BONAPARTISM). In 18th Brumaire, Marx said that France seemed as a result of the coup d' etat 'to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall back beneath the despotism of an individual, and indeed beneath the authority of an individual without authority'. 'The struggle', he went on, 'seems to have reached the compromise that all classes fall on their knees, equally mute and equally impotent, before the rifle butt' (sect. 7). Bonapartism, Marx also said in The Civil War in France nearly twenty years later, 'was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation' (sect. 3); and Engels also noted in Origin of the Family that, 'by way' of exception', 'periods occur in which the warring cla,sses balance each other so nearly that the state power, as ostensible mediator, acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both' .(ch. 9). The absolute monarchies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the regimes of Napoleon I and Napoleon III, were examples of such periods, as was the rule of Bismarck in Germany: 'here', says Engels, 'capitalists and workers are balanced against each other and equally cheated for the benefit of the impoverished Prussian cabbage junkers' (ch. 9).

These formulations come very close to suggesting not only that the state enjoys a 'relative autonomy', but that it has made itself

altogether independent of society, and that it rules over society as those who control the state think fit and without reference to any force in society external to the state. An early case in point is that of 'Oriental despotism' (see ASIATIC SOCIETY), to which Marx and Engels devoted much attention in the 1850s and 1860s; but it applies more generally. In fact, the 'Marxist theory of the state', far from turning the state into an agency or instrument subordinate to external forces, sees it much more as an institution in its own right, with its own interests and purposes. In 18th Brumaire, Marx also speaks of the executive power of the Bonapartist state as an 'immense bureaucratic and military organization, an ingenious and broadly based state machinery, and an army of half a million officials alongside the actual army, which numbers a further half million'; and he goes on to describe this force as a 'frightful parasitic body, which surrounds the body of French society like a caul and stops up all its pores' (sect. 7). Such a "state machinery" must be taken to have interests and purposes of its own.

This, however, does not contradict the notion of the state as concerned to serve the purposes and interests of the dominant class or classes: what is involved, in effect, is a partnership between those who control the state, and those who own and control the means of economic activity. This is the notion which must be taken to underlie the concept of. STATE MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, which is the description of present-day advanced capitalism used by 'official' Communist writers. The description is vulnerable, in so far as it suggests a merger of the political and economic realms, whereas the real position 'is one of partnership, in which the political and economic realms retain a separate identity, and in which the state is able to act with considerable independence in maintaining and defending the social order of which the economically dominant class is the main beneficiary. This independence is implied even in the formulation from the Communist Manifesto which was quoted at the beginning, and which seems to turn the state into such a subordinate institution. For Marx and Engels speak here of 'the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie': this clearly implies that altogether independent of society, and that it rules over society as those who control the state think fit and without reference to any force in society external to the state. An early case in point is that of 'Oriental despotism' (see ASIATIC SOCIETY), to which Marx and Engels devoted much attention in the 1850s and 1860s; but it applies more generally. In fact, the 'Marxist theory of the state', far from turning the state into an agency or instrument subordinate to external forces, sees it much more as an institution in its own right, with its own interests and purposes. In 18th Brumaire, Marx also speaks of the executive power of the Bonapartist state as an 'immense bureaucratic and military organization, an ingenious and broadly based state machinery, and an army of half a million officials alongside the actual army, which numbers a further half million'; and he goes on to describe this force as a 'frightful parasitic body, which surrounds the body of French society like a caul and stops up all its pores' (sect. 7). Such a 'state machinery' must be taken to have interests and purposes of its own.

This, however, does not contradict the notion of the state as concerned to serve the purposes and interests of the dominant class or classes: what is involved, in effect, is a partnership between those who control the state, and those who own and control the means of economic activity. This is the notion which must be taken to underlie the concept of. STATE MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, which is the description of present-day advanced capitalism used by 'official' Communist writers. The description is vulnerable, in so far as it suggests a merger of the political and economic realms, whereas the real position 'is one of partnership, in which the political and economic realms retain a separate identity, and in which the state is able to act with considerable independence in maintaining and defending the social order of which the economically dominant class is the main beneficiary. This independence is implied even in the formulation from the Communist Manifesto which was quoted at the beginning, and which seems to turn the state into such a subordinate institution. For Marx and Engels speak here of 'the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie': this clearly implies that

neglect of such distinctions in subsequent years.

Lenin's concern, in State and Revolution and elsewhere, was to combat the 'revisionist' notion that the bourgeois state might be reformed: it must be 'smashed'. This was the point which Marx himself had made in 18th Brumaire ('all revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it'), and which he reiterated at the time of the Paris Commune: ('the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is the preliminary condition for every real people's revolution on the Continent' (letter to Kugelmann, 12 April 1871). The state would then be replaced by the DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT, in which there would occur what Lenin called 'a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other' institutions of a fundamentally different type ...instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (the privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army) the majority itself can directly fulfil all these' functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power' (State and Revolution, CW 25, pp. 419-420). This echoes faithfully the basic propositions of classical Marxism on the subject. In a famous passage of Anti-Duhring Engels had said: 'The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society -the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society -this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then withers away of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It "withers away" (p. 385. Italics in text). This, and many other references to the state in the writings of Marx and Engels, show the affinities of classical Marxism to ANARCHISM: the main difference between them, at least in regard to the state, is that classical Marxism rejected the anarchist notion that the state could be done away with on the very morrow of the revolution.

Classical Marxism and Leninism always stressed the coercive role of the state, almost to the exclusion of all else: the state is essentially the institution whereby a dominant and exploiting class imposes and defends its power and privileges against the class or classes which it dominates and exploits. One of Gramsci's major contributions to Marxist thought is his exploration of the fact that the domination of the ruling class is not only achieved by coercion but is also elicited by consent; and Gramsci also insisted that the state played a major role in the cultural and ideological fields and in the organization of consent (see HEGEMONY). This process of legitimation, in which both the state and many other institutions in society are engaged, has attracted considerable attention from Marxists in the last two decades. A question which has in this connection preoccupied a number of theorists in recent years is how far the state in capitalist-democratic regimes is able to cope with the task of eliciting consent in circumstances of crisis and contraction. On the one hand, the state in these regimes is required .to meet a variety of popular expectations. On the other, it is also required to meet the needs and demands of capital. It is argued that the growing incompatibility of these requirements produces a 'crisis of legitimation' which is not readily resolved within the framework of capitalist-democratic regimes (see CRISIS IN CAPITALIST SOCIETIES).

The establishment of the Soviet state was bound to offer a major conceptual challenge to the Marxist theory of the state; for here was a society in which the means of production had come under public ownership, and whose regime proclaimed its allegiance to Marxism. This raised the question of the nature of the state which had been brought into being. Any discussion of that question was, however, overshadowed by the experience of Stalinism and, as was to be expected, Stalinist thought on the state insisted on its paramount and enduring importance: far from 'withering away', the state must be reinforced as the prime motor in the construction of socialism, and also in order to deal with its many enemies

at home and abroad. The 'revolution from above' of which Stalin spoke was made, he also said, 'on the initiative of the state'.

This state, Stalin also claimed, was a 'state of a new type', which represented the interests of the workers, the peasants and the intelligentsia --in other words, of the whole Soviet population. It was, in this sense, no longer a class state, seeking to maintain the power and privileges of a ruling class to the detriment of the vast majority; it was rather, in a phrase which came to be used under Khrushchev, a 'state of the whole people'.

This claim has been strongly contested by Marxist critics of the Soviet regime. Their own view of the Soviet state (and of the state in all Soviet-type regimes) has been greatly influenced by their judgment of the nature of Soviet-type societies. Those critics who viewed them as class societies also took the state in them to be the instrument of a 'new class', and, as such, not significantly different, I in conceptual terms, from the state in other class societies. Those critics, on the other hand, who viewed Soviet-type societies as 'transitional' between capitalism and socialism, and who rejected the notion of a 'new class', spoke of the state in these societies as a 'deformed workers' state', under the control of a 'bureaucracy' avid for power and privilege, and which a workers' revolution would eventually dislodge (see CLASS; TROTSKY). This debate still proceeds; but there is at any rate no disagreement among its protagonists as to the immense power wielded by the state in these societies. Nor is this affected by the fact that the state itself is controlled by the party leaders.

Marxists concerned with the state in capitalist societies are also confronted by many different questions and problems: what is the precise nature and role of the state in advanced capitalist societies today? How does its class character manifest itself? How far can it be transformed into the instrument of the subordinate classes? How can it be prevented, in a future socialist society, from appropriating an undue measure of power; or, as Marx put it in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, how can the state in such a society be converted 'from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinated to it?' These and many other unresolved questions about the state are certain to give it a major place in Marxist discussion for many years to come.
RM

Reading
Boggs, C. and Plotke, D. eds. 1980: The Politics of EuroCommunism.

Cliff, T. 1970: Russia. A Marxist analysis.

Draper, H. 1977: Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution vol I State and Bureaucracy.

Gold, D. L, C. and Wright, E. O. 1975: 'Recent Developments in Marxist Theories of the State'.

Gramsci, Antonio 1929-35 (1971): Selections from the Prison Notebooks.

Habermas, Jurgen 1973: Legitimation Crisis.

Hibbin, S. ed. 1978: Politics, Ideology and the State.

Lenin, V. 1.1917 (1969): The State and Revolution.

Littlejohn, G. et ale 1977: Power and the State.

Miliband, Ralph 1973: 'Marx and the State'.

Poulantzas, Nicos 1973: Political Power and Social Classes.

Tucker, R. C. ed. 1977: Stalinism.