Bob Jessop and the Marxist Theory of the State
I Introduction
In this blog post I want to summarise and assess Bob Jessop’s account of the classical Marxist tradition’s account of the capitalist state in the first chapter of his 1982 book The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods. You can find a PDF version of it on his Academia.edu profile here. Just in case this link ever becomes broken, I have uploaded the PDF to the blog database here.
I wanted to perform this brief critical analysis of this first chapter of Jessop’s book because I disagree with Jessop’s assessment of the classical Marxist tradition. Jessop argues that the original works of Marx do not contain a coherent and general account of the capitalist state. Jessop explains that the reason why Marxist scholars have failed to grasp a coherent theoretical account of the state is because there is no coherent theoretical account available in Marx’s works. In order to arrive at a successful Marxist account of the capitalist state, Jessop argues that we will have to do extra work. We will have to reinterpret, change, append and reconfigure elements of the existing corpus of Marx in order to give a proper account of the state.
I want to disagree with this argument. As I read this first chapter of The Capitalist State, I felt as if the various strands and elaborations on the theme of the capitalist state by Marx in his original works did amount to a sufficient account of the capitalist state. As I said to my supervisor, I felt as if Jessop had failed to grasp the essence of what Marx was trying to say, despite the fact that Jessop performed an excellent summary and paraphrasing of Marx’s classical works.
This blog post will be broken up into two parts. The first part will be a summary of Bob Jessop’s reconstruction of the classical Marxist account of the capitalist state. The second part will be a short argument by myself as to why we can accept this classical Marxist work as a successful account of the state, despite what Jessop says.
II Summary of Jessop
Jessop writes that Marx did not succeed in committing to paper an account of the capitalist state that matched the analytical power and rigor of his account of the capitalist mode of production. I think we can certainly agree with this. Jessop feels that the fact that Marx failed to do this means that the various discontinuous writings that Marx did make on the state do not amount to any coherent or successful theory of the state:
Instead his legacy in this respect comprises an uneven and unsystematic collection of philosophical reflections, journalism, contemporary history, political forecasts, and incidental remarks. It was left to Engels to develop a more systematic account of the origins and nature of the state and to discuss the general relations between state power and economic development. However, while it was Engels rather than Marx who first adumbrated a class theory of the state, the ‘General’ was no more successful than Marx himself in developing this insight into a complete and coherent analysis of the capitalist state (Jessop, 1982: 1).
Apparently this lack of complete and coherent analysis has lead many scholars to many different contradictory accounts of the content and philosophical legacy of Marx’s account of the state. There are three examples we can give of the competing interpretations of the classical Marxist theory of the capitalist state.
The first is Shlomo Avineri, who develops a “Hegelian centered reading of Marx” (1982: 2). Avineri
seeks to establish the deep-seated continuity of the social and political thought of Marx by tracing the themes of his early work on Hegel’s political philosophy through the vicissitudes of Marx’s subsequent theoretical development (Avineri, 1968, passim).
The second is Lucio Colletti, who argues that the intellectual tradition of Marx’s account of the state comes from Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Colletti argues that Marx’s theory of the state is only original in the fields of social and economic analysis, instead of politics (Colletii, 1975: 45-48). Jessop adds to this footnote: “For Colletti’s views on the theoretical importance of Marx’s social and economic analyses, idem, 1969: 3-44, 77-102). This interpretation of the classical Marxist account of the state sees it as effectively completed. Indeed Jessop describes Colletti’s attitude to Marx’s theory of the state as considering it “near definitive” (1982: 2):
Colletti argues that Marx had already developed a near definitive theory of state power before the 1844 manuscripts started him on the long march to his most important theoretical discoveries. In particular Colletti argues that the Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Law’ (1843) and the Introduction to a proposed revision of that critique (written in 1843-1844) embody a mature theory that neither the older Marx, Engels, no Lenin would substantially improve upon in the least. And he also argues that this so-called mature Marxist theory was heavily indebted to Rousseau for its critique of parliamentarism, the theory of popular delegation, and the need for the ultimate suppression of the state itself (2).
The third competing interpretation of the classical Marxist theory of the state is by Robin Blackburn. Blackburn argues that the classical Marxist account of the state is very poor indeed. It took until the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 until Marxists were able to “substantially (albiet not finally)” (1982: 3) come up with an coherent and complete picture of the capitalist state. This account of the classical Marx holds that Marx’s real innovation was political rather than philosophical or economic. The theoretical concepts of historical materialism such as “class, party, revolution, bureaucracy, state, nation, etc” (3) were not to be found in any of the intellectual predecessors of Marx and Engels. They were largely original.
As I said above, Jessop takes these competing interpretations of Marx on the state to be evidence of the fact that the classical Marx does not amount to a complete and coherent theory of the state. The rest of this first chapter of The Capitalist State is an account of how this is true. Let’s have a look at Jessop’s reconstruction of the classical Marx.
A The Early Marx
1 Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Law’
The first text we need to engage with in order to reconstruct the classical Marx on the state is the Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Law’. Like Jessop says, it is the central piece of political theory written by Marx in the period before he became a communist. In this text, Marx shows that Hegel’s idealistic method results in an apology for the Prussian state. It is the specific metaphilosophy that Hegel deploys, Marx argues, that leads Hegel to approve of, and justify, the oppressive authoritarian political system of Prussia. Hegel comes into the political system of Prussia from the outside with his theory of the Absolute Idea, looking to confirm that it can be actualised in the empirical matter of the concrete world. This is the first phase of his criticism of Hegel’s political philosophy.
The second phase is where Marx looks at the way the various organs of the Prussian state are supposed to interrelate and build into a concrete universality. The separate spheres of the state are the monarchy, the executive, and the legislative assembly. These three different organs represent the singular, the particular, and the universal, and there interrelation achieves the mediated universality of the Absolute Idea. Hegel writes that the successful organic relationship between these three elements of the Prussian state allow the State and Civil Society to be successfully integrated with one another. Marx disagrees. Because of Hegel’s method, he fails to grasp the truth of reality that these two spheres of the modern human social system remain inimical. Marx argues that
this separation cannot be resolved either through the rule of a universal and neutral bureaucracy or the election of the legislative assembly to govern in the interests of the people (Marx, 1843a: 20-149).
Jessop points out correctly that Marx agrees with Hegel that there are two distinct spheres in modern society, and that Civil Society is the location of egoism or self-interest. Marx disagrees with Hegel, however, that this separation is inevitable. He also disagrees that the state has the power to transcend the Hobbesian Civil Society, and unite modern society organically in itself.
Marx argues that the state becomes differentiated within itself not because of some transcendental logical Idea, but because of the real historical process of capitalism. Landed property and free commerce are what cause the state to particularise itself. Further, it is impossible for the organs of the state to achieve the status of some impartial and universal representation of all the competing factions within Civil Society because Civil Society infects the state. Hegel elevates the Prussian bureaucracy to the level of a ‘universal class’, which is able to mediate between all the conflicting components of Civil Society. Marx says that this is a pure abstraction, due to Hegel’s idealistic method, and the bureaucracy itself forms a particular interest within the State, among others:
Indeed Marx notes that the various independent groups in Prussian civil society struggle to maintain their interests against the encroachments of the bureaucracy but also need the latter to act as their guarantor of their interests against other groups. In turn the officials tend to appropriate state power as their private property and use it to further both their corporate and individual interests. Moreover, since state power is used to protect the rights of property (especially those of the Junker class), the Prussian state actually functions to reproduce the war of each against all in civil society (Marx, 1843a: 98-99 and 108; Jessop, 1982: 5).
Against Hegel’s overtures about the Godliness of the Prussian state, Marx insists that this society is in fact greatly alienated. The universal interest that Hegel pictures as embodied within the state is illusory, and the Hobbesian state of war against all persists even in this social formation. Marx argues that neither the incorporation of Civil Society into neo-feudal estates, or the transformation of the Prussian state into a proper bourgeois democratic republic will solve this problem of the State being infected with “crass materialism”, as Jessop puts it.
Only the abolishing of the state and of private property will lead to the end of alienation and estrangement in modern life, because only then will the Hobbesian war of all against all be ended. The most attractive solution to the Prussian state, bourgeois democracy, will not end this Hobbesian state of nature, but only reproduce it within the state. Parliamentary representatives will merely “further private interests and … dominate rather than represent the people” (Jessop 1982: 5; Marx 1843a: 122-123).
2 On The Jewish Question
This second piece of work, written in 1843 and published in 1844, elaborates on the themes contained in the Critique of ‘Philosophy of Law’. Marx argues for the continued conceptual antagonism between abstraction and concreteness in the State and Civil Society in this text, and also the infection of the State with the crass materialism of Civil Society with its Hobbesian state of nature:
Marx argues that the modern state abolished the political significance of religion, birth, rank, education, and occupation through the institution of formal equality among its citizens; but it could not abolish their continuing social significance in the reproduction of their substantive inequalities. Thus, although the modern state and civil society are structurally distinct, it is the egoism of civil society that shapes political activity (Marx, 1843b: 153 and 164). Accordingly Marx concludes that the emancipation of man requires more than the concession of formal political freedom. It can be completed only when the individual activities of men are reorganised to give full expression to their social and public nature (Marx 1843b: 167-168).
As Colletti says in his introduction to Karl Marx: Early Writings (1974-1975):
Civil society, claims Marx, can acquire political meaning and efficacy only by an act of ‘thoroughgoing transubstantiation’, an act by which ‘civil society must completely renounce itself as civil society, as a private class and must instead assert the validity of a part of its being which not only has nothing in common with, but is directly opposed to, its real civil existence’ (36).
Those passages come from the Critique, but as Colletti says:
… both texts arrive at the same conclusion: the political constitution of modern representative states is in reality the ‘constitution of private property’. Marx sees this formula as summing up the whole inverted logic of modern society. It signifies that the universal, the ‘general interest’ of the community at large, not only does not unite men together effectively but actually sanctifies and legitimises their disunity. In the name of a universal principle (the obligatory aspect of ‘law’ as a general expression of a general or social will) it consecrates private property, or the right of individuals to pursue their own exclusive interests independently of, and sometimes against, society itself (36-37).
3 Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Law’
III My Response