Mexico: the Limits of State Autonomy

Abstract

The predominant role of the state in advanced capitalist societies as well as so-called third world countries has been evident in recent contemporary Marxist literature (Miliband, 1969; Murray, 1971; O'Connor, 1973; Warren, 1972; Quijano, 1972; Ianni, 1974; Pompermayer and Smith, 1973; also the journal Kapitalistate, and the Winter 1974 issue of Politics and Society). There is considerable disagreement among these studies with respect to such questions as the social basis of the state, the distinction between class power and state power, the mechanisms of class-state interaction, and the relative autonomy of the state (particularly in post-colonial societies) and its consequent role in shaping the social formation which emerges. Rather than discussing these differences, which have been analyzed and debated elsewhere (for example, Miliband, 1969; Poulantzas, 1969, and Miliband, 1973; Wolfe,1974; Sardei-Biermann et. al., 1973; Alavi, 1972 and Girling, 1973), the following article proposes to draw upon them in an attempt to construct a generalized model of the state in advanced capitalist and dependent societies. This model will in turn serve as a basis for examining the interpretations of the state which emerged from the Mexican revolution of 1910-1917 and particularly the conceptualization of the autonomous state which appeared to guide the program of the Cardenas government (1934-1940). An examination of the state in Mexico must take into account the apparent paradox of the Mexican revolution and of Mexico's subsequent development. As stated by Roger Hanson: in no major Latin American country has the government done more for the new industrial, commercial, and agricultural elite, nor less for the lowest 25 percent of society -despite Mexico's being the only Latin American country to undergo a profound social revolution during the first half of this century (1971: 87-88). An important element of this revolution was a conceptualization of the state as an autonomous entity which would utilize its power on behalf of the downtrodden groups and classes of Mexico a conceptualization which was to some extent realized in the administration of Lazaro Cardenas during the 1930s. It is a tentative proposition of this study that the contradictions inherent in this conceptualization of the state, and in its attempted realization within the context of a dependent, incipiently capitalist system, explain at least in part the divergence of the present system from that contemplated in the ideology of the revolution and the program of the Cardenas administration.