To revert to
the simplest criticism we can make of Marx’s theory of capital, in his haste to
reduce capitalism to a scientific formula, Marx forgot that “the forces of
production” do not and cannot cover the entirety of “the social relations of
production” and still less “social relations” overall, and that “the economic
base” cannot be separated categorically from “the ideological superstructure” –
because politics is not a concentrate of economics but instead it is economics
that is a concentrate of politics – because capitalism is not reducible to
“impersonal market forces” but is instead entirely dependent on specific
social, political and historical agencies that cannot be reduced to a simple
“scientific” or “economic” formula! Of course, anyone who has read Volume One
of Capital, or indeed the section on “Pre-Capitalist Economic
Formations” of the Grundrisse will know full-well that Marx was aware of
how violent the transition from feudalism to capitalism was, what he called
“primitive accumulation” (ursprungliche Akkumulation) where he describes
how capitalism came into being “steeped in blood from head to toe” by
expropriating the existing peasantry, especially in England, in what came to be
known as “the enclosure movement”. Yet even from this potent historical
perspective, Marx still sees the period of primitive capitalist accumulation
whereby the bourgeoisie “formally subsumes” the existing agricultural and
artisanal mode of production prevalent in the decaying feudal absolutist regime
as the doings of “the bourgeoisie” – as a historical “class”, yes, but still as
a collection of individual proprietors!
What Marx
failed to see, even when it ought to have been so evident, is that the emerging
bourgeoisie acted not as a collection of separate individuals but much rather
through the agency of the reformed absolutist State – in England as in France! The
insurmountable, almost unpardonable, problem with Marx’s theory of capitalism
is that he always saw the bourgeoisie as a collective of individual proprietors
and entrepreneurs and the capitalist State consequently as “a committee of
management” (in the Communist Manifesto) acting not as an independent agency
with its own political instruments extending over the entirety of society,
including those elements not yet within the cycle of the circulation of
capital, but rather as a simple elementary blunt tool of social repression
against the proletariat. Yet, in its bluntly political and therefore
“superstructural” role, Marx’s theory places not just the capitalist State, but
political coercion itself, outside the scope of his entire theory and critique
of capitalism! So keen was Marx to show that the capitalist mode of production
could operate through “impersonal market forces”, that he forgot the very
violently coercive “act of birth” of capitalist enterprise – that original sin
of “primitive accumulation” – that not only lay the foundations for all future
capitalist industry but also has remained to the present day an essential
feature of the society of capital!
Let us look
at this paramount deficiency in Marx’s theorization of capitalism from a
slightly different angle, but one that does not change the substance of our
review of the Marxian theory of capitalism and of our positing of a fresh
Marxist theory of the capitalist State, one that builds on the solid
foundations that Marx himself laid down. In his attempt to schematize his
critique of the capitalist mode of production down to its most basic elements,
Marx reduced capitalist society to its “productive” elements, and specifically
to the monolithic conflict between workers and capitalists. By so doing, Marx
neglected the undeniable reality that capitalist society involves conflicts not
just between workers and capital but also conflicts within the
working class and the capitalist class themselves, and then also between
elements of society that are not included in the direct process of production
yet are necessary parts of it because capital is value in motion, seeking to
expand continuously so as to involve elements of society, potential use values,
that do not yet form part of its process of valorization and realization, yet
are essential to it as the “living space” needed for capital to expand, to
accumulate itself as value.
Because he
neglected the dynamic of conflict within and between classes and elements
internal and external to the production, circulation and accumulation of
capital, Marx failed to theorize the organic need of the capitalist
class to erect a State that is not a mere appurtenance of capitalist social
relations of production, one that is not a mere excrescence but is instead
precisely what we have called it – the expression of an “organic need” of the
capitalist class to preserve and expand its social relations of production,
that is, its command over the working class in the direct process of
production, but also its political domination and hegemony over
those parts of society that are external yet essential to that process.
The problem with Marx’s theorization of capitalism is that he reduced the
society of capital to the pure antagonism over the process of production
(ownership of the means of production) between workers on one side and
capitalists on the other. These quintessential relations of production Marx
encompassed under the concept of “civil society” (burgerliche Gesellschaft)
which he adopted from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and adapted for his
own purposes.
Of course,
the greatest Marxist theoretician to perceive this deficiency in the Marxian
theory and critique of capitalism was the founder of the Italian Communist
Party, Antonio Gramsci. (For the following sections, see N. Bobbio, “Gramsci e
la concezione della societa’ civile”, now translated in C. Mouffe (ed.), Gramsci
and Marxist Theory.) It was Gramsci who first perceived the subtle yet
strong and pervasive links between the political coercion that obtains in the
workplace and the broader bourgeois social domination through the apparatus of
the State. Whereas for Marx the State was a pure blunt weapon of “the
organized and concentrated power” of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat,
emanating from the pure economic social relations of production obtaining in
the workplace, for Gramsci workplace relations themselves formed only part of
the overall “hegemonic dominance” of the bourgeoisie over civil society. In
other words, whereas for Marx the concept of civil society was exclusively an economic
category denoting the strictly productive aspects of social relations and
excluding the superstructural ideological aspects embodied by the State, for
Gramsci civil society was a broad social category that contained and
therefore included and conditioned the social relations of production.
For Gramsci
the struggle, conflict and antagonism between workers and capital was only a
part of civil society, albeit the dominant because productive part, the
part serving the most basic needs of society for its reproduction, at least for
no other reason than the fact that civil society contained social relations
that preceded capitalist industry as well as social relations that had
not yet been absorbed by capitalist industry. Of course, we would add
that capitalist industry requires the presence of a potential or reserve army
of living labour for inclusion in the expanded reproduction that is the essence
of capitalist accumulation – because surplus value, or profit, has no meaning
outside of the extension of the wage relation to new populations of workers.
There are
two ways, then, in which Gramsci altered and improved on Marx’s notion of civil
society inherited from Hegel: the first is that civil society is now extended
to social relations lying outside of the sphere of capitalist production and
indeed defining and therefore conditioning those social relations of production
which Marx had instead thought to be independent of broader “superstructural”
social relations. And the second alteration effected by Gramsci is that now the
capitalist State is not seen as a mere superstructural appurtenance or
excrescence of capitalist social relations of production – indeed as a blunt
tool or weapon for their violent imposition – but rather as an institutional
expression of this expanded notion of civil society. Whereas Marx sees in the
State an ideological dissimulation of the social relations of production
represented by civil society as he understood it, Gramsci instead interprets
the State as the political expression of a civil society that contains but is
not confined to social relations of production.
The
insuperable problem with Marx’s hermetic separation of State and civil
society is that if indeed social reproduction depends ultimately on the social
relations of production and the State is merely the violent imposition of these
“social relations of production”, then there is absolutely no need whatsoever
for the State to exist at all! As Norberto Bobbio has ably pointed out, in
effect Marx’s notion of civil society as confined to social relations of
production reduces Marx’s conception of these social relations of production to
a Hobbesian state of nature in which individual is pitted against
individual regardless of whether these individuals are then reclassified as
members of the working or capitalist class! Given that for Marx the
reproduction of capitalist society, whether simple or expanded, depends on
social relations of production, and given that the State is only a blunt
instrument for the imposition of these social relations of production or civil
society, it is impossible to see why the capitalist class should ever require
the services of any institution such as the State for any purposes whatsoever!
If we agree with Marx that what makes a worker and what makes a capitalist can
be reduced to mere social relations of production, that is, relations of force
limited to the workplace, to the labour process, it is impossible then to see
why a State structure is needed by the bourgeoisie to exercise a social power
that it possesses already as part of its ownership of the means of production!
Worse still, even the idea of “ownership” becomes meaningless or paradoxical
because as a legal entitlement it presupposes the existence of a State!
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