The Mexican State: 1915-1973 a Historical Interpretation

Abstract

This section constitutes the core of this special issue. The problem of correctly analyz ing the nature and function of the State in Mexico is introduced by Juan Felipe Leal in a substantiated piece of historical interpretation. The main conclusion of Leal's work, i.e. that the Mexican State promotes the capitalist development of the country within the lim its allowed by imperialism is developed by David Barkin, a well-known student of the Mexican economy and teacher of economics at Herbert Lehman College. Barkin success fully shows the intricate but concrete relationship that exists between the country's social and economic ills and the overwhelming manner in which U.S. imperialism has shaped the Mexican economic structure. Nora Hamilton, a graduate student at the Department of Sociology, University of Wis consin, suggests that the Cárdenas administration attempted to implement a revolution ary conceptualization of the autonomous state. Real contradictions in this attempt are shown to be responsible for the later change in class-state relations in which the state acts on behalf of the dominant classes. Hamilton's article is a very sophisticated utilization and development of the notion of "state autonomy" which was first explored by Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire and was later elaborated by Gramsci. "State autonomy" refers to the fact that under conditions of stalemate in the class struggle, when no particular class can clearly "win" but they are all fairly strong, the state is "floated up" and be comes an arbiter, usually in favor of the dominant class, but with a much higher degree of autonomy than the usual bourgeois state. This is developed by Gramsci in order to explain dictatorship and Caesarism and is an important component of the Marxian explanation of "states of exception" and fascism. In closing this section, Stephen Niblo argues that any optimism about the contempor ary economic situation is unfounded and that such measures as have been taken by the most recent government administration have failed to mitigate the increasing degree of misery under which most Mexicans labor. Stephen R. Niblo teaches history at the Univer sidad de las Américas in Puebla.