By JOSÉ RAIMUNDO TRINDADE*

Considerations on the materialist theory of the State

Introduction

The analysis of the capitalist State, or what we will call here the “political form of capital”, is not a simple process, much less a linear one, and the analysis of this central phenomenon that shapes modern society constitutes an elaboration of enormous critical importance at the current time.

Following Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notebooks, Vol. 3) the “State constitutes a complex totality of practical and theoretical activities with which the dominant class not only justifies and maintains its domination, but manages to obtain the active consent of those it dominates”, and it is not possible to analyze it without addressing the contradictions inherent to “capitalist sociability”, mainly regarding the conditions of historical development of this productive system and social representation that change radically and cyclically.

The State we are dealing with is not an abstract and general form but rather the modern capitalist State, constituting a completely singular totality in relation to previous historical phenomena that were named under this title, in the same way as money and merchandise in the capitalist mode of production are singular and universal social forms distinct from what historically may have appeared in other modes of production.

To address this singular phenomenon, we will use the Materialist Theory of the State, which is above all a critique of the State, understood as a political form of bourgeois society. The text that became best known in Brazil in the development and treatment of the aforementioned theory of State was the book by Joachim Hirsch, but some Brazilian Marxists also ventured into the debate at the appropriate time, with the work of Alysson Mascaro standing out.[I] and Marcio Bilharinho[ii].

In this review article, we will seek to develop some specific elements of the analysis of the State based on the theoretical framework referenced. Joachim Hirsch's book is divided into four major chapters, the first of which is specifically intended to address the materialist theory of the State, the second develops elements of the so-called “regulation theory” and the third and fourth address aspects of the formation of capitalist imperialism and the crisis of bourgeois democracy. In this text, we will focus on the analysis of the Materialist Theory of the State.

Capitalist sociability

A key aspect in addressing a materialist theory of the State refers to the very broad meaning of “capitalist sociability”. Capitalism as a historical social and economic form is established based on basic “social forms” characterized by the particular conformation of economic value as an autonomous and dominant form in the system.

In capitalism, the social relations of individuals are social forms objectified (fetishized) by the mercantile standard, through the value form, as observed by Joachim Hirsch. However, like merchandise or money, the State is not a thing, a subject or a rational organization, but a complex of social relations, an important point in the analysis developed by the Materialist Theory of the State, and this social form is established “by active individuals, but under conditions that escape their immediate consciousness and control”, as expressed by Hirsch in the first chapter of the work presented here.

How did Karl Marx treat The capital, commodities integrate a double value: use and exchange, and are always forms of abstract value, that is, a shapeless mass of socially necessary labor time that is homogenized in the capitalist market. As an encounter of a use value with an exchange value, all production in this economic form is intended to be exchanged.

Value constitutes precisely the interaction of these two parts of the commodity form. Relations between individuals in this society are always mediated by the market, and money, by expressing the monetary form of value, defines the representation of social power through the domination of wealth. Capitalist sociability establishes relationships between individuals mediated by the production of commodities.

The productive logic in capitalism is not based on use value or necessity, but rather on obtaining a mass of profit that manifests itself from the production process of that commodity, as Joachim Hirsch (2010, p. 27) rightly observes: “it is the profitability of capital that determines what, by whom, in what way and how much is produced”, and spatiality can also be added, that is, the “where”.

Wage earning constitutes the basic relationship of this process of capitalist sociability, the most important economic condition for the development of bourgeois legal relations,[iii] to the extent that the definitive establishment of contractual relations that in form maintain the equality of opposition between individuals bearing similar exchange value, whose availability of use value for exchange occurs in the form of the commodity labor power, giving capitalism and the expropriation of surplus value an apparent universal legitimacy.

It is worth dwelling more carefully on this basic process of capitalist sociability, which is wage-earning, comprising four movements that are key to the permanence and systemic regularity of capitalism: (i) firstly, wage-earning constitutes a central social form because it guarantees the exploitation of labor, expropriating part of the wealth produced as surplus value and allocating it to the owner of the means of production and controller of the system; (ii) it establishes the supreme form of subsumption of labor to capital, establishing that rhythms and productive techniques are defined and controlled, reducing the worker to a subordinate and alienated party; (iii) it defines the main form of identity and relationship between individuals in capitalist society, we have a social identity around labor; (iv) it constitutes the relationship of contractuality as a non-coercive foundation, organizing the interaction of supposed equality between individuals.

As a class society, capitalism presents a central cleavage in the dispute for social wealth, marked by the class struggle. However, several other forms of oppression materialize in capitalist sociability, and “the relationship between society and the State is defined not only by the process of capitalist valorization, but also by the relations of sexual, ethnic, nationalist and racist oppression and exploitation, closely linked to it” (Hirsch, 2010, p. 40).

However, capitalist society and the capitalist mode of production are inherently unstable and prone to crises. The State, as a form of relative autonomy, acts to contain the growing contradictions within certain limits, without necessarily fulfilling the role of solving crises, but rather of limiting their possible worsening and the fraying of capitalist sociability. It is worth noting that the “structure of capitalist society contains models of legitimacy that support social preservation,” whether in the form of the ideological representation of the State as a representative of universal interests and guarantor of the notion of citizenship based on commodity property, or nationalism and racism as integrating ideologies.

The capitalist state

The State constitutes a “social form” that assumes the political configuration of the relations of domination of capital as a collective entity, but in order to establish itself as a “political form of capital” the State manifests a condition of “relative autonomy” that allows it to appear as a “political community of capitalist society”, something central to composing what is called in the so-called French “Regulation theory” the “mode of regulation”, a broad interactivity between institutions, state apparatus, multidiversity of ideological organizations, such as church, school and media, which compose the nexus of stabilization of capitalist relations.[iv]

The aspect of relative autonomy of the State is configured in the perspective that one cannot separate “State” and “society” in an absolute way, since the broad reciprocity between both constitutes the very essence of capitalist sociability, something that Antonio Gramsci called, when dealing with the notion of civil society under the terms of “expanded” or “integral” State, comprising the diverse branches of organizations that, even though formally separated from the State, make up the “regulatory system” that produces and organizes values ​​and ideas that enable the regular maintenance of capital accumulation.

The State and civil society do not constitute a “unitary and closed system” but rather a “highly complex system full of conflicts”, however the referred relative autonomy of the State results “not only because certain functions must be fulfilled, but as a consequence of the implementation of a defined mode of production”, that is, by the formative essence of capitalism in which social and class relations are manifested, in such a way that it constitutes “the objectification of a structural relation of classes and exploitation”.

The historical formation of the modern State occurs in a long process concomitant with the development of capitalism, with the predominance of the commodity and money forms of value concomitant with the rise of the political form of the State. The existence of the political form of capital is linked to its central function, which is the “guarantee of private ownership of the means of production as a precondition for the mercantile exploitation of the labor force.”

However, there is no dichotomy between the social economic forms (commodity value and money) and the political form (State), as they are parts of a structural totality that constitutes capitalism, that is, the State is an integral part of capitalist production relations. Hirsch (2010, p. 39) establishes that “Market and State are not opposite forms, but refer to each other in an inseparable way”, permanently intervening “in the mercantile process to keep it functioning”.

The interactive process between State and Market is only established with the mediation of their institutional forms, thus institutions guide and coordinate social behavior, and capitalist sociability requires the configuration of institutional forms that materialize formal social determinations, thus institutions are material compositions of a social form, but are not confused with it, for example, the money form requires a broad institutionality constituted by banks and central banks, for example, but its own origin is found in the reproductive dynamics of capital expressed in the expanded formula of capitalist production in which money-capital expands through the incessant production of goods.

Nicos Poulantzas summarized the State as a material condensation of a social relationship of force, but as a political form of capital, the State “also simultaneously forms and stabilizes them”, being intersected by contradictions and social disputes (Hirsch, 2010, p. 37). Nicos Poulantzas’ perception can converge with the understanding of institutions established above, in such a way that the set of institutionalities that make up the State is configured as subject to the social relationships of force hegemonized by the bourgeoisie, but continually at odds with social struggles and disputes within the “power bloc”.

Capitalism is established in its entirety when the conditions of social reproduction are totally subordinated to the center of industrial production of goods, and social wealth is necessarily broken down into portions that are largely appropriated by those who control the means of production, by landowners and by the State, in simplified terms: surplus value is divided into profit, land rent, interest and taxes.

The characteristic of a system in recurrent cyclical crisis is established from the very structural form of capitalism: on the one hand, the incessant obtaining of profit that remunerates the various capitals in competition and limited by a varied set of internal obstacles to its dynamics, whether due to the cyclical decline in profit rates, the inability of continued expansion of markets and also due to internal disputes between capitals and between capital and workers.

The State, faced with this complexity, appears as an “institutional condensation of social relations of force”, as understood by Nicos Poulantzas, and changes in the political system are always driven by social and political struggles, so that, as Joachim Hirsch (2010, p. 47) considers, “social action breaks the basic economic and political forms, the permanence of capitalist society is called into question”.

At various critical moments in capitalism, the State acts to stabilize the system in favor of capital, even imposing social defeats on the working class. The Materialist Theory of the State provides us with an essential interpretation for understanding the State and how to think about the radical action of the forces that must dispute future projects for Brazil and humanity.

*Jose Raimundo Trinidad He is a professor at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at UFPA. Author, among other books, of Agenda of debates and theoretical challenges: the trajectory of dependency and the limits of Brazilian peripheral capitalism and its regional constraints (Paka-Tatu).

References

Joachim Hirsch. Materialist Theory of the State. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Revan, 2010.

Antonio Gramsci. Prison Notebooks (Vol. 3). Rio de Janeiro: Civilization Brasil, 2002.

Alysson Leandro Mascaro. State and Political Form. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.

Karl Marx. Capital: Critique of Political Economy (volume 1). New York: Routledge: 2013 [1867].

Marcio Bilharino Naves. Marxism and law: a study on Pachukanis. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2008.

Notes

[I] Alysson Leandro Mascaro. State and Political Form. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.

[ii] Marcio Bilharino Naves. Marxism and law: a study on Pachukanis. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2008.

[iii] “Initially, the exchange between capital and labor presents itself to perception in exactly the same way as the purchase and sale of all other commodities. The buyer gives a certain sum of money, and the seller a different article of money. In this fact, legal consciousness recognizes at most a material difference, expressed in legally equivalent formulas: do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias.” (MARX, ([1867], 2013, p. 611).

[iv] Hirsch deals in detail with the theoretical body of “regulation theory” in Chapter 2 of the work under analysis.

the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE