Michael Heinrich
Marx’s State Theory after “Grundrisse” and “Capital”
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When we speak about
the development of state theory in Marx, we have to take into account the level
of development of his economic theory. Much discussed was the so called “break”
between the “young” Marx and the “old” Marx. But I don’t want to stress the
discussion about this break and also I don’t want to speak about the young Marx
and his rather philosophical discussion of state theory, which was a step on
the way to reach economic theory, but which was not informed by economic theory
In order to discuss
Marx’s state theory I want to stress another “break”, which took place only after 1845 (the year in which Marx
criticised his former philosophical conceptions, as he told us, in the Preface
of “A Contribution”). In the same preface, Marx mentioned another break, or if
you like, the reaching of a new level of research, which was much less
recognized by his readers. Marx stressed, that after he moved to London, the
enormous material in British Library and the new developments of capitalism
induced him “to start again from the very beginning” (“ganz von vorn wieder
anzufangen”). But this new start was not a minor point, it was one of the decisive
points in the development of Marx’s studies, what we can realize, when we compare
his economic writings of the late 1840ies and with the writings, which emerged
since 1857.
In the second half
of the 1840ies we find several writings of economic importance, especially
“German Ideology”, “Poverty of Philosophy”, “Wage labour and Capital” and
“Communist manifesto”. In all these writings, especially in the second and the
third, Marx strongly relies on Ricardo’s economic theory. He criticizes Ricardo
for not seeing capitalism as a historical, transitional mode of production, but
he has no fundamental critic of Ricardo’s analytical achievements or of the
categories used by Ricardo. In this period Marx used Ricardo’s categories and
results to explain the functioning of capitalism and to criticize other
socialist conceptions like that of Proudhon. In some respect we can say, that
in this time Marx’s had much in common with the left wing of the
The critic of
Ricardo’s theory itself only starts in the early 1850ies, at first Marx
criticizes Ricardo’s quantity theory of money, then Ricardo’s rent theory,
later his value theory. This process finally culminated in Marx “Critique of
Political Economy” (a critic which aimed not only to Ricardo but to the whole
science of political economy). “Grundrisse” was the first main text of this new
level of dealing with political economy. Not only the applications of Political
Economy are challenged, but also (and above all) the formation of the
categories, so the whole science is criticised in the way, its object is formed
and recognized.
Regarding Marx
economic writings after 1845 we have to distinguish between writings with a
prevailing “Ricardian discourse” during the late 1840ies and a real “Critique
of Political Economy” since the 1850ies. Like in the development of Immanuel
Kant, also in Marx we should distinguish a “pre-critical” period from the
period of the great “critique”.
But what has all this
to do with the theory of state?
In some respect we
can say, that society, the structure of economy in the Ricardian discourse is taken for granted. The specific relations of power and of exploitation are questioned, and
it is clear that these relations have to be investigated. But beneath this
relations of power and exploitation, there seem to be just general features
like “production” or “society”.
The discourse of “Critique
of Political Economy” tells us, that this impression is wrong. Neither economy
nor society we can take for granted entities. We have to ask for their “constitution”. But not for their
constitution in a historical sense. The constitution, which is crucial, is a
contemporary constitution. A constitution, which is the result of intermediating
(“vermittelnden”) processes, which are not directly visible.
May be, this sounds
a little bit strange. Perhaps it sounds less strange, when we remember, that
exactly this kind of reasoning we can find very explicitly in Marx’s theory of
money. In political economy (no matter, whether it is political economy of 19th
century or neoclassical or Keynesian economics of 20th century) money
is taken for granted. This doesn’t mean, that economists deny the existence of
societies without money, also they don’t deny a historical process, which
produces money. But when money has come into existence, it seems to be a
simple, transparent thing, which is defined by its functions: measure of value,
means of circulation, storage of wealth, and so on. For political economy the
explanation of money is done by explanation its functions.
Marx also explains
its functions, but only in Ch. 3 of “Capital”. But already Ch. 1 and 2 dealt
with money. What Marx shows in value form analysis of Ch.1 and the analysis of
the exchange process in Ch. 2 is just this (contemporary) constitution process
of money: the relation between value and money (the generality of value needs a
general form of value, the money form)
and the contradicting situation of the commodity owners (everyone wants that
his commodity is the general equivalent) makes it necessary that the commodity
owners exclude one thing as real
money.
Money is not just a
thing with certain functions. Money is the result of certain relations (of
commodities and of commodity owners) but a result which reifies these
relations. The relations disappear in the result, which is stressed by Marx,
when he writes about money at the end of the second chapter of “Capital”:
“The
intermediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave not trace
behind”
(“Die vermittelnde Bewegung
verschwindet in ihrem eignen Resultat und lässt keine Spur zurück“)
But this
proposition holds not only for money, it holds also for the constitution of capitalist
economy and society:
The intermediate movement disappears in its own result
To discover that
there is an intermediation, was already
an important step, in Marx’s theoretical development. That there is a hidden
structure, was not clear for Marx during the second half of the 1840ies. The
Empiricism of “German Ideology”, the permanent stressing that we only have to
state the empirical facts, the real process and so on shows no recognition of
the complex visible/invisible, sensuous /over-sensuous (“sinnlich-übersinnlich)
structure of reality, which is revealed in “Capital”
In “Communist
Manifesto” Marx stresses that with the emergence and development of capitalism
not only the old structures disappear, also the social structure shall become
simple and transparent. This is an almost Weberian proposition (Max Weber sixty
years later told us about the demystification of the world, which happens in
modern capitalist societies).
Compare this with
Marx’s discourse of fetishism and mystification in “Capital”: capitalist
societies only seem to be simple and
transparent. What was appreciated in “Communist Manifesto”, now is recognized
as a wrong appearance and the constitution of this wrong appearance has to be
revealed. But this revealing is not possible with the economic categories of
political economy, which Marx used in the late 1840ies. In order to make this revealing
possible a critic of categories is necessary, only the “Critique of political
economy” allows this revealing.
The pre-critical
reasoning of “Communist Manifesto” touches also the way Marx deals there with
classes and the state. Both are taken for granted, the only constitution Marx
recognizes at this time is a historical constitution.
Classes are taken
for granted to such a degree that the “Manifesto” can start with, without any
explanation. You all know the famous first sentence of the first paragraph:
“All
history is a history of class struggle”
The message is
rather clear: the notion of class needs no explanation, it is a tool for giving
explanations and in this way Marx explains the emergence and the development of
capitalism.
And now compare this
with the structure of the argumentation in “Capital”. Not only that classes
don’t appear at the beginning. When they appear for the first time in the second
section they are not very determined. It is only a very preliminary and
implicit notion of class, which Marx uses in volume one of “Capital”.
Nevertheless, volume I prevailed for a long time the reading of “Capital” and
so this preliminary notion of class, was seen as “Marx’s concept of class”.
More complex views on class we can find in volume III and only at the end of
volume III Marx planned to a chapter on classes, as the last chapter.
To come to a
precise notion of class, it needs all three volumes of “Capital”. And this has
a reason. Already in the preface of “Capital” Marx made the well known remark,
that in his investigation persons only count as personification of economic
categories. What he already had recognized in “Grundrisse”,
“Society does’t
consist of individuals, it consists out of the relations between the
individuals”
now becomes the
decisive point:
Although all
structures of society are produced by persons, you cannot explain structures by
the action of individuals. Contrarily: you have to explain the actions (the
normal, average actions) by the logic of the structures.
How this works you
can observe in the first two chapters of “Capital”: only after the analysis of
the “commodity-form” of the labour product (ch. 1), Marx can analyse the
actions of the commodity owners (ch. 2).
But the same is
true for classes. Not only individuals act in form-determined context, also
classes do. Not only the charactermasques of the commodity owner also the
classes are constituted by a certain logic of structure, including the
fetishism and the mystifications inherent to these structures. When Marx
analyses the wage-form in volume I of “Capital” he gives the hint (without
deeper reasoning) that from the illusionary wage-form (it appears as if labour is paid, so that you can debate
whether the price of labour is just or unjust) all the imaginations of freedom
an justice, as well of the workers as well of the capitalist derive.
We can generalize
this insight. The wage-form is a constituent part of the Trinitarian Formula,
which Marx presented at the end of volume III. It expresses not only a false
appearance of the capitalist production process (the three factors of
production cooperate and every factor gets back what it delivers) it also gives
an imaginary picture of the position and functioning of the classes. Only after
the presentation has reached the Trinitarian Formula Marx can in a scientific
way (and not only in a preliminary way) speak about classes. And not sketched
by Marx but to me it seems very obvious: the magic everyday world of the
Trinitarian Formula leads to an understanding of the imaginary community of
“nation” which is not founded in ideological narratives but in structural
features of capitalist societies.
What holds for classes is also true for the state. In “Communist
Manifesto” Marx takes the state for granted. He considers it as an instrument
of power, as a “machine” as he later wrote. This instrument can just be used by
different classes, so there is also a class struggle about this instrument and
the ruling class uses it to defend its power.
This line of
reasoning is also used by Engels, when he wrote much later the “origins of
family, property and the state” and it also influenced a lot the Marxist
tradition of thinking about the state from Lenin to Gramsci until Poulantzas. I
don’t want to deny all the results of this tradition, but it looks very
incomplete. It is above all a sociology of power, but it doesn’t reach the
continent, which is opened by Marx’s “Critique of political economy”
Marx’s “Critique of
Political Economy” at the same moment makes it possible and necessary to have
an analysis of state and politics which is radically different from this
sociology of power. It makes it possible because with critical analysis of
social forms, with the analysis of fetishism and mystifications inherent to
social structure, the field for such an analysis is reached. But also this
analysis is necessary: Marx’ critique of political economy starts with the
category of commodity, proceeds to money and capital, but always (as already
the first sentence of the first chapter of “Capital” indicates) a society, in
which the capitalist mode of production prevails, is presupposed. This means a
society not only with full developed capital relations but also with the
bourgeois state as political form and with the capitalist world market around
(including all economic and political “exterior” relations).
But how does this
analysis of state as a political form, which is different from a sociology of
power looks like? Quoted again and again is the short abbreviation of the
Preface of 1859, where Marx talks about the “real foundation” and the “legal
and political superstructure”. The notion of superstructure, often misused in
an economistic and deterministic context, just relies to the relation of
structures, to a certain compatibility, necessary for the functioning of the
society (a much less “heavy” formulation about this necessary compatibility can
be found in a footnote of the section on fetishism in “Capital” in which Marx
concludes that,
“Don Quichotte ...
paid the penalty, for wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible
with all economic forms of society” ).
But the necessity
of compatibility makes no proposition about the character of the structure.
Marx, as well in the Preface of 1859 as well in this footnote only marks a
certain result he has reached, without explaining this result. A more concrete
hint gives a short remark in volume III, where Marx noted, that the “specific
economic form”, in which surplus labour is extracted, determines the relations
of power and rule, which directly origin from production.
Indeed, the
extraction of surplus labour under capitalist conditions has a very specific
form: it doesn’t rest on personal rule and
personal dependency, it has the form of a treaty between independent (free and
equal) commodity owners. Of course there is inequality and dependency but not
directly between persons, like in the feudal society of middle ages or the
slaveholder society of the ancient Greek and
The bourgeois
state, no matter what is its historic shape, has to intermediate and to secure
this impersonal form of rule. So we can identify a certain “core”, which does
not cover all of the state, all its functions and attributes, but something
like the “ideal average”. Presenting the “ideal average” of the capitalist mode
of production was the aim of “Capital” (as Marx told us at the end of
presenting the Trinitarian Formula in volume III). We can suppose that the book
on the state, he had planned as a part of his “Critique of Political Economy”,
had also to present such an “ideal average”.
The first basic
attribute we can articulate is, that a state which has to secure the structures
of impersonal rule itself cannot essentially be based on personal rule it must
be (to use the expression of Heide Gerstenberger) a “power without subject”
(subjektlose Gewalt).
Of course there is
a government, a president or a prime minister and parliaments in bourgeois
states. But can we say there is a personal rule like in the case of medieval
count? Surely not. And what about the “lords of monopoly”, which play such a
decisive role in Leninist traditions? Of course they try to get influence by
legal and illegal ways. Also the bourgeois press is full of such stories. There
is always a struggle: some groups try to extend their influence, other groups
try to restrict such influences. But is this already the mechanism of bourgeois
rule? Here is not the time for extensive explanations, but insofar the economy
is ruled by the impersonal “law of value”, which is not established but only
executed in the actions of capitals, then also the political form must be
submitted to such impersonal structures.
Or with other
words: What the Marxist sociology of power maintains about classes, class
fractions and their struggle for influence on the state is not wrong and also
it is not without importance, but it is only the surface behind which we have
to search for the deeper forces or more precisely the form-determinations, which impose a structure to this permanent
battlefield about influence on the state. There are not only power relations,
there is a already form determined field in which these power-relations take
place.
Three spheres of
this form-determination we can distinguish
- the execution of
power in form of the rule of law, guaranteeing freedom, equality and property
of the subjects, so that the subjects without property are forced so sell their
labour power, but also with the possibility to execute “general interest”
(which is general interest in capitalist sense) to execute against some
fractions of the capitalist class
- providing the
general conditions of the existence of society as a capitalist society:
providing infrastructure which cannot be produced in a profitable way by
individual capitals, and providing the existence of the labour power as labour
power (not providing a good life for the labourers, but providing that labour
power continues to exist although it is confronted with certain risks like
unemployment, disease etc.)
- finding and
legitimating the “general interest” (as a capitalist interest): the “ruling
class” of capitalist societies consists out of competitors, their common “class
interest” is not clear, it has to be found and balanced against the different
fractions. But also it has to be legitimated to the subordinated classes
(otherwise pure repression is necessary, which not only contradicts the first determination,
but which is also rather expensive and diminishes the total profit).
The concrete shape
of these three spheres is always changing and it is always the object about
which classes and class fractions fight. But at least in a developed capitalist
society, we will find all three spheres as direct fields of state policy or as
fields which the state regulates. Some closer investigation of this “ideal
average” may help to understand what is going on “behind” the political fights
which are in the centre of the considerations of the Marxist sociology of
power, to which the biggest part of Marxist state theory belongs. Also it can
help to understand what happens on an international level, in how far
international institutions are starting points for new state structures (like
in the European Union) or in how far they just intermediate and moderate the
competition between the nation states (like the IMF or the WTO).