Marxist State Research Articles

Technology, Globalization, And Class Dynamics: Key Elements in Marxist State Modernization Analysis

Technology, Globalization, And Class Dynamics: Key Elements in Marxist State Modernization Analysis

Alexander Shchipkov’s So- cial Traditionalism

Alexander Vladimirovich Shchipkov is a famous Russian Orthodox philosopher and public fi gure. A few years ago, his keynote monograph The Social Tradition was published. It is focused on the presentation of his concept of the social traditionalism. In it, Shchipkov notes that liberalism has ceased to be one of modernist ideologies. It actually has turned into the language of the modern Western world and absorbed the ideologies that were previously considered as its alternatives: socialism and rightwing conservatism. Guided by the ideas of Wallerstein’s world-system analysis, Shchipkov refutes the theory of two totalitarianisms. Shchipkov sees the Christian moral economics and the conservative socialism as the alternative to liberalism. The socialism is not reduced to the Soviet-type “real socialism”. Shchipkov points to “variations on the theme of social fairness” in the “Acts of the Apostles”, among teachers and fathers of the church. He also highlights Byzantium, the traditions of the Russian peasant community, and Western “general welfare” states. Shchipkov gives weight to the presence of a socialist stream in the USSR. Not in the Soviet Marxist state, but in the Soviet society, which adopted a lot from the spirit of the peasant world. Shchipkov considers the following disadvantages of the Soviettype socialism: the isolation from the national tradition and the attempt to use the proletarian internationalism instead of Russian national values when building the core of the state of social fairness. According to Alexander Shchipkov, the turn to tradition is now taking place on a global scale. However, tradition and traditionalism can be diff erent. Alexander Shchipkov counters the right-wing, guénonian and neo-Protestant liberal traditionalism with the leftwing traditionalism resting upon the apostolic Christianity, the idea of collective salvation, morality, creativity, technological progress, moral state, solidarism, egalitarianism, and democracy. This is what he calls the social tradition. The review suggests the idea that the Christian worldview expects one speaking not only about tradition, but also about social creativity.

Marx in Movement: Operaismo in Context by Antonio Negri

Reviewed by: Marx in Movement: Operaismo in Context by Antonio Negri Robert F. Carley (bio) Antonio Negri, Marx in Movement: Operaismo in Context, trans. Ed Emery. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1-5095-4424-0. 184 pages. $24.95 (paperback) The essays and transcribed talks gathered under the title Marx in Movement: Operaismo in Context punctuate the extensive theoretical development of "operaismo," or "Workerism." Workerism is a political project developed as a theoretically wrought and non-party affiliated militant communist strategy that, as Harry Cleaver put it, reads Capital politically, specifically, as a document "that reflected a recognition and appreciation of the ability of workers to take the initiative in the class struggle." The necessarily cooperative and communicative social fabric of "living labor" are, in Workerism, prior to and constitutive of capital in an historical, sociological, political, and economic sense. Both Capital and the Grundrisse have, over time, provided to Workerism a foundation to understand both (the sociality of living) labor and class struggle as autonomous: socially and, then, politically instituent. Regarding the latter, Mario Tronti famously puts it this way: "[…] capitalist development becomes subordinated to working class struggles; it follows behind them, and they set the pace to which the political mechanisms of capital's own reproduction must be tuned." In Workerism, labor's de facto social autonomy and, especially, its ability to articulate its autonomy politically is a persistent threat to capital's ability to fix or dominate it. When it does, it does so principally through technological means; technology, over time, constitutes a part of the reorganization and political (re)activation of the working class. Capital responds; it struggles to compose from out of labor the political and technological means, however crude or sophisticated, to contain labor and extract wealth from it. This is, later on, reflected in Negri's Spinozism where revolutions in the relations of production are neither antagonistic nor dialectical; they represent two co-extensive singularities with, today, the multitude in the lead and empire treading heavily and directly on its path. Marx in Movement illustrates Negri's contributions to Workerism from readings of Marx's Capital and Grundrisse and in dialogue (initially) with Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti, Romano Alquati, Sergio Bologna, and Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and then in a critical posture toward Keynesianism, structural-functionalism, post-industrial sociology, Marxist state theory (neo-Gramscian and German Derivationist), and finally in conversation with Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, and more contemporary theorists, in particular, Paulo Virno, Carlo Vercellone, Yann Moulier-Boutang, Maurizio Lazzarato, and Matteo Pasquinelli. This book, especially the last chapter, argues that the methodology of Workerism is conjunctural: responsive to the changing sociality of labor as an [End Page 115] inventive force that recomposes itself both politically and through the technological changes imposed upon it (to scatter and displace it). In Workerism, each conjuncture gives rise, or corresponds, to new characteristics that determine the places into which classes are organized in economic production and the positions that classes inhabit socially and spatially. It follows that there is no "post-Workerism" as Negri argues; rather, in each conjuncture, the autonomy or invention-power of the working class (an ontological foundation and substrate) changes its technical and political composition. Workerism's political strategy is based on a "hard core" postulate: the ontological priority of labor. As such, Workerism could be read as a "research program" described in Michael Burawoy's interpretation of Trotsky's Results and Prospects in his article "Two Methods in Search of a Social Science." Despite this, the hypotheses and, by extension, the theorization of Workerism changes (is re-specified) across each conjuncture as, first, the technical composition of the working class intensifies and expands, changing it and, second, as the working class begins to elaborate a political composition through new forms of organization, strategy, and tactics that exceed the ability of capital to contain it. Negri concludes that Workerism, in its most current phase, rests on the extraordinary potential of working class struggle due to its high levels of technical composition in the current conjuncture but, arguably, leaves open the question of the shape that its political strategy and organization will take on. The first two chapters are the longest...

A Parceiros da Educação e o processo de colonização da educação pública

The study presents a critical analysis of Parceiros da Educação (PdE), a Civil Society Organization of Public Interest (OSCIP) based in São Paulo, Brazil. It is an institution that aims at mediating partnerships between entrepreneurs or companies and public schools. Their objective is to implement an intervention program, prepared by PdE, in several dimensions of the school. The investigation presented here sought to categorize the organizational structure of OSCIP, through the analysis of the composition of its Executive Council, from 2009 to 2013. Based on the Marxist State theory, especially on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Nicos Poulantzas, the study sought to analyze critically the internal and external connections of OSCIP in the expanded State. The results show that PdE is an association run by very significant representatives of the bourgeoisie that operates in Brazil, especially financial capital. Its connections in the expanded State suggest a wide network of power involved in the colonization of public education, whose tentacles involve institutions like Todos pela Educação, political parties and key posts in the state apparatus.

The Kelsen-Bauer debate on Marxist state theory and the equilibrium of class forces

This serves as an introduction to a debate between Hans Kelsen and Otto Bauer concerning the nature and relative autonomy of the state, and the theories that informed the political practices of the Austro-Marxists and of the SDAP (Austrian Social Democratic Workers’ Party) immediately after the fall of the monarchy and during the early years of the First Republic. Both pieces (translated below) were published in Der Kampf ( The Campaign), the SDAP’s theoretical journal, in which many key texts of Austro-Marxist thought appeared. The debate is of theoretical interest, particularly with respect to Marxist state theory, but is potentially also of renewed relevance to an age of post-GFC (Global Financial Crisis) austerity. Bauer’s distinction between functional oligarchy and functional democracy is identified as one such potential contribution to current debate and analysis.

David Harvey ve Bob Jessop’ta Uzam-Zamansal Sabitler

David Harvey, one of the most preeminent Marxist theoreticians of the contemporary world revolutionized our thinking about the capitalist production of space while Bob Jessop, another leading Marxist theoretician, transformed Marxist state theory. While the two converge on many points in their analysis of the capitalist mode of production, they diverge on some methodological and theoretical arguments about how to analyze the concept of spatio-temporal fixes. While Harvey follows Capital and Grundrisse to adopt a value-theoretical approach that focuses on the circulation of capital, Jessop follows Poulantzas and the Regulation School to call for a more socio-political orientation towards capitalist social formations. Whereas Harvey concentrates on the inner contradictions and crises tendencies of capitalism and capital circulations in the creation of spatio-temporal fixes, Jessop pays more attention to political power relations and the state as modes of the extra-economic principles of societalization in producing spatio-temporal fixes. The present study, recognizing Harvey’s crucial contributions to the field, but following Jessop, argues for a more socio-politicized concept of spatio-temporal fixes. It recommends linking it with state power and socio-political power relations through the complex articulations of the economic, political, and ideological determinations of social totality.

Ensayo y error. Un análisis marxista de las políticas públicas

<p>Este artículo aborda la problemática de la racionalidad del proceso de formulación de políticas públicas y su objetivo es esbozar lineamientos desde una perspectiva distinta de la concepción racionalista. Propone como hipótesis que el proceso de políticas públicas constituye un ensayo y error signado por una racionalidad acotada. Aunque estos conceptos provienen del debate “racionalistas/incrementalistas”, aquí se redefinen a partir de un análisis del Estado capitalista y de los límites que le impone a su capacidad de intervenir conforme a los requerimientos de la reproducción capitalista, enmarcado en la vertiente derivacionista de la teoría marxista del Estado. El artículo constituye un trabajo teórico-metodológico, apoyado en observaciones propias del marco de investigaciones empíricas sobre procesos concretos de políticas públicas.</p>

Nicos Poulantzas on political economy, political ecology, and democratic socialism

Abstract This article presents the inaugural memorial lecture at the Nicos Poulantzas Institute in Athens. It examines and extends the work of the eponymous Greek legal and political theorist, political economist, and communist intellectual, Nicos Poulantzas, who radically transformed Marxist state theory, made major contributions to the critique of political economy for the era of Atlantic Fordism and post-war American imperialism, and called for a judicious balance between representative and direct democracy to secure a democratic transition to democratic socialism. It first offers some general reflections on the originality, legacy and actuality of Poulantzas's work in these respects and then reconstructs his later views on the critique of political economy before his death in 1979. Noting his neglect of the environment and issues of political ecology, which was typical of the French and Greek left in the 1970s and also rooted in more general features of Marxist theorizing on nature and the environment, the article elaborates a Poulantzasian view of political ecology based on key arguments from his work. The article concludes by reasserting the validity of his vision of democratic socialism, indicating that it would have become a critique of political ecology, and suggests that he would have approached this in the same spirit of romantic public irony that was advocated by one of his major theoretical and political influences – Antonio Gramsci. Key words: capitalist states; class analysis; democracy; ecology; imperialist rivalries; Nicos Poulantzas; productivism; state theory; the strategic-relational approach

Implications of Marxist State Theory and How They Play Out in Venezuela

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first-century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie (or sectors of it) displays a sense of ‘class-consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalisation over a period of time. During Poulantzas’s lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures.

FROM CHAOS TO CHAOS: SOUTH YEMEN 50 YEARS AFTER THE BRITISH DEPARTURE

Fifty years after the British departure the future of South Arabia or South Yemen is just as uncertain as it was on 30 November 1967, when the People's Republic of South Yemen (PRSY) came into existence. The old order was swept away in the revolutionary tide of the mid- 20th century to be replaced by a Marxist state. Yet, within less than 23 years the new order was undermined by unresolved issues inherited from South Arabia and led to an ill-prepared union with the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) in 1990. Today, after over two and half years of war, Yemen is fragmenting and one outcome might be the return of a southern state which will have to confront the same unresolved issues. Are southerners Yemenis or South Yemenis? Can institutions be created to overcome tribal and regional differences with the South? Can a viable economy be created in a country with so few natural resources? This article provides a history of the region and the conflicts of the last 50 years, along with a consideration of the present situation and a discussion of the enduring issues.

RELASI ANTARA IDEOLOGI DENGAN MEDIA MASSA

The progress of mass media is influenced by the development of social theories. One interesting case to be discussed is the relation between ideology and mass media.There are three main groups which have different views on the relation between ideology and mass media. Marxist States that mass media is an institution which can be used to socialize false ideology built by borjuis class. Another group, the liberal pluralist, States that mass media is an institution which is free from interventions of State, political parties, and other repressing groups so that ideology has no relationship with mass media. The third, the critical group, States that texts produced by mass media is not free from any conflicts and interests. This group tries to rebuild the relationship between ideology and mass media.However, the ideology developed by this group is not an flght ideology or false awareness, but an ideology emphasizing on the articulation of meaning or ideology which functions as a discussion and logical social process.

An Evolving Scientific Public Sphere: State Science Enlightenment, Communicative Discourse, and Public Culture from Imperial Russia to Khrushchev's Soviet Times

ArgumentBy the late nineteenth century, science pedagogues and academicians became involved in a vast movement to popularize science throughout the Russian empire. With the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, many now found the new Marxist state a willing supporter of their goals of spreading science to an under-educated public. In the Stalin era, Soviet state officials believed that the spread of science and technology had to coalesce with the Communist Party's utilitarian goals and needs to revive the industrial sector of the economy. This resulted in a new Stalinist technologically oriented popularization campaign. In the Khrushchev era (1953–64), Soviet politicians became increasingly more aware of the competitive power of Soviet technology in the global arena and developed extensive campaigns to publicize Soviet feats for a broad domestic and foreign public audience. This was particularly true for topics such as the space program and big technologies such as nuclear power.

The present state of health economics: a critique and an agenda for the future

A couple of days ago, I was asked to give an interview concerning the conference ECHE 2012, the motto of which was, ‘‘Progress in Health Economics’’. One of the questions posed to me was, ‘‘What is your vision of Health Economics 10 years from now?’’ Here is what I had to say. There are two peculiarities of Health Economics that are of concern to me and that I would like to see addressed in the future. One is the often tenuous relationship of the discipline with general economic theory. Take for instance risk adjustment (RA) in health insurance, which has become an industry of its own in the course of the last 30 years [6]. Health economists invariably seek ways to neutralize the risk selection incentives of health insurers. However, RA payments by health insurers are not borne by them but are shifted to the insured under the guise of increased contributions. The analogy with an indirect tax is evident, and any standard Economics textbook will point out that, while an indirect tax is paid by the sellers of a good, it is effectively borne by the consumers (entirely so in the long run). In the case of RA, the low risks are made to pay a contribution in excess of what is justified in view of their risk profile, while high risks receive an indirect subsidy financed by the low risks. However, the analogy with indirect taxation has two implications. First, as long as RA remains imperfect (i.e., a situation unlike the long-run equilibrium in the case of a good traded on a competitive market), the risk-selection incentives of both the insured and the insurers must be targeted. After all, the low risks have an incentive to seek out a health insurer offering them a favorable deal, permitting them to eschew the indirect tax in form of payment into RA. The high risks do the same, selecting the health insurer offering them a low contribution thanks to a maximum cross-subsidy. This may explain why, at least in Switzerland, the volume of RA has not ceased to increase, contrary to expectations that RA would ‘wither away’ since it neutralizes insurers’ risk selection incentives [2], an expectation reminiscent of government ‘withering away’ in the happy Marxist state. Second, when there are two objectives (neutralizing the incentives for risk selection of the insurer and the insured in a RA context), the Tinbergen rule of economic policy states that two instruments are needed to attain both of them. Therefore, RA is subject to a kind of impossibility theorem precluding a perfect solution. Admittedly, it took me about a decade to recognize this [4]. Without doubt, Health Economics will benefit in the future by reinforcing its ties with general economic theory. The second peculiarity of Health Economics causing concern is its overly close relationship with national institutions and sponsors of research. This occurred to me for the first time during ECHE 1995 in Stockholm. When roaming between sessions, I noticed that there was hardly any overlap between two camps of delegates (this is also reflected in [7]). One camp comes from countries with a National Health Service (NHS). There, the discussion revolves about cost effectiveness, QALYs, and equity. The other camp is rooted in insurance-based countries; its focus is on risk selection and RA, moral hazard effects, and the production of health. Interestingly, the members of the two camps seem to be quite happy to be among themselves, presumably their reunion helping them to present their research to some national sponsor later.... This is an extended version of the Farewell Address by the Honorary Chairman, ECHE 2012 European Conference on Health Economics, 19–21 July 2012 in Zurich.

Renewing State Theory

The role of the state in recent years has demonstrated the continued need for the insights of Marxist state theory. Yet this should not blind us to the reasons why the latter became discredited. This article seeks to rescue the key insights of Marxist state theory from the clutches of its structuralist legacy. It discusses contributions that successfully avoided the conceptual problems of structuralism and proposes that we re-energise state theory by building on these and proceeding to branch out and engage related fields of scholarship.

Acorns and fruit: From totalization to periodization in the critique of capitalism

This article enlivens Marxist state debate by clarifying and furthering the appraisal of a series of interventions on the subject linked with Open Marxism. It highlights four particular weaknesses in Open Marxism, arguing that they stem from the same source: a totalizing ontology that takes the capital relation as the singular constitutive source of human social practice. This universal focus on the capital relation leaves Open Marxism ill-suited for the task of offering a critique of transformations and reorganizations of class power within state forms and specific phases of capitalist development.

La dialectique religion et politique dans la révolution éthiopienne: pour une ethnographie historique de la révolution marxiste

This article presents a history of the Ethiopian revolution of 1974 in a remote ethnic group called the Maale. A striking feature of the upheaval as it occurred locally was that evangelical Christian converts constituted the revolution's Jacobins – its most radical supporters. As the Marxist state consolidated itself, that support was eventually lost, but even so, virtually every member of the communist party in Maale by the early 1980s was an ex-evangelical Christian. The analysis below highlights local notions of time in both religion and politics to explain these conjunctions.

Towards an anti-racist Marxist state theory: A Canadian case study

While significant advances have been made in Marxist state theory, there are important gaps that need to be addressed if we hope to reach a more complete understanding of the state and the implications of its power. One of the most glaring weaknesses in Marxist state theory is its near-silence on questions of race and racism, since racism is so central to what the capitalist state does. Using the insights of anti-racist Marxist writings to complement the theoretical developments of Open Marxist theories of the state—and incorporating a historical study of the Canadian state—this article will show that capitalist state power and class relations are developed through, and cannot be abstracted from processes of racialisation.

Von der neoliberalen zur sozialistischen Gouvernementalität Anforderungen an eine Rifondazione der Linken

While the European socialdemocratic parties cling to their illusion that they could combine a shareholder approach to global capitalism with social welfare for everybody they damage the trust and the political orientation of their former electors and members. The emerging left vacuum could be filled by various groups which criticise global capitalism. A transformational as well as civilising approach of criticising capitalism could be developed if the oppositional forces could agree on first strategic steps towards an utopia of socialistic governmentality, that is a socialistic way and aim of governmental rationality. With Foucault we must realize that this rationality can't be found in the one and only true marxist state theory, but has yet to be invented.

China Against the Tides: Restructuring through Revolution, Radicalism and Reform (second edition). By Marc Blecher. [London and New York: Continuum, 2003. xv +246 pp. £19.99. ISBN 0-8264-6422-X.

Marc Blecher's magisterial text on China's political economy was first published in 1996. The tale of China's unfolding political economy after the 1949 Revolution has often been told, but Blecher did full justice to the subject, telling his story with aplomb, verve and no little eloquence. By focusing on politics and economics, he sensibly restricted the scope of his book, and by combining three narrative chapters with more analytical chapters on the state, inequality, as well as economics and politics, Blecher's reach extended well beyond that of any mere descriptive account.This book, the second edition, retains the essential structure of its predecessor, but updates the story to 2002. In addition, a significant body of new material has been included. For example, the Society chapter includes an up-to-date and apposite discussion of gender inequality, whilst that on political economy discusses the implications of WTO entry. And, in recognition of the increased blurring of the distinction between rural and urban China, the separate chapters on the rural and urban economics of the first edition have been amalgamated. A little more up-dating would have improved the text still further; for example, the chapter on pre-1949 China takes into account little by way of recent scholarship. That, however, is only a minor quibble.In its essentials, this is a textbook, and that is reflected in the balanced and judicious tone that permeates its pages. Nevertheless, Blecher's stands as a text apart. For one thing, it does proper justice to the complexities of Chinese political economy and (in a truly excellent discussion) its administrative system. Doubtless, some will complain that it is too sophisticated for its audience, but it is hard to condemn an author for refusing to pander to the mediocre. Secondly, this book is richly informed by Blecher's own research on the local Chinese state and economy, particularly that on Shulu county (Xinji city) in Hebei, conducted with Vivienne Shue. It is, therefore, the work of a practitioner, not an onlooker. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it focuses on the fundamentals of development, class, inequality and growth, and in so doing avoids fashionable ephemera. In a sense, its flavour is rather traditional. For example, the term “social formation” is used without either apology or irony, and the 1949 Revolution retains its (rightful) place as the fundamental climacteric in 20th-century Chinese history. Not all will share Blecher's approach to these matters. However, it is hard to see how one can understand an explicitly Marxist state armed only with a knowledge of missionaries and modernization theory, or a messianic faith in the capability of the multinational to render harmonious a fractured social landscape. If we are to comprehend post-1949 China, we need to understand its political and economic structures, as well as the forces and ideals which animated its leaders. Marc Blecher's book is the place to start.

Democratization in the Arab World? Yemen’s Aborted Opening

In 1990, North and South Yemen surprised the world by announcing that, along with the unification of the two countries, the new Republic of Yemen would bring democracy to the Arabian Peninsula. Rapid democratization seemed unlikely, given that Yemen is a mostly rural country with poor economic development, a lack of basic services in many areas, and low levels of literacy. But the first years after unifica- tion were promising. The country had a vibrant public sphere and the 1993 national elections produced a pluralistic parliament. Today, how- ever, the government more closely resembles the autocracy of the pre-unification North than a country in democratic transition. Although President Ali Abdallah Salih continues to call Yemen an emerging de- mocracy, 1 he seems uninterested in moving the country beyond tactical liberalization and toward a genuinely open political system. The Republic of Yemen was formed in May 1990, when the leaders of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and the People's Demo- cratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen)—the Arab world's only Marxist state since winning independence from Britain in 1967—agreed to unify their countries. 2 While the embrace of democracy was largely a strategic choice by which each intended to prevent the other from domi- nating, talk of unification dated to the 1970s, and South Yemen's leaders had been debating democratic reforms since the 1980s. With unifica- tion, each believed that it would do relatively well in the elections, maintaining its own base while winning support in the territory of the other. Unification took place fairly quickly. While some aspects of the North- South power-sharing arrangement were formalized, such as having the Jillian Schwedler is assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and chair of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), publisher of Middle East Report.