Werner Bonefeld

113

Some Notes on the

Theory of the Capitalist
State
A review article on The State Debate edited by
Simon Clarke, Macmillan, 1991
The State Debate, edited by Simon Clarke,1 is the first
publication in the Capital & Class /Macmillan Series and
republishes important contributions to the state debate. Most
of the papers collected by Clarke have been at the centre of
the CSE debate on the state during the 1970s. The collection
includes papers by Holloway, Picciotto, and Clarke. Although
these papers are not representative of the CSE debate taken as a
whole, they do represent a distinct theoretical approach to the
state which developed within the context of the CSE. The
distinctiveness of the approach can be summarised in terms of
the primacy accorded to class struggle, the emphasis on the
internal relation between structure and struggle, and the understanding of the relationship between the economic and the
political as standing to each other in a relation of difference-inunity. The other side of the debate is represented by papers by
Barker, Hirsch and Jessop. These papers comprise an attempt to
theorise the state as a particular structure which is reproduced
by social conflict, a social conflict which takes place within the
framework of the objective laws of capitalist development.

In reviewing The
State Debate, Werner
Bonefeld specifically
concentrates on
Clarkes class
struggle approach to
the state and
attempts to develop
this distinctive and
rich understanding
of the form of the
state.

114 Capital & Class 49

Clarkes partisan introduction makes clear the theoretical
and political importance of the papers, draws out the different
political implications associated with different approaches and
shows the contemporary relevance of the state debate. Without
Clarkes lucid introduction the character of the collection
could easily have been mistaken for an exercise of merely
antiquarian concern. The State Debate must be regarded as one
of the key books on state theory, beyond which to regress
would be a theoretical tragedy.
The development of the state over the last decade has
brought out the superficiality and naivity of many earlier
analyses of the capitalist state. The present collection provides
a splendid opportunity for reviving critical debate on the form
of the state. Such a debate will have to be a collective exercise.
What I shall do is to supply some general suggestions which I
believe are fundamental for understanding the capitalist state. I
shall critically assess Clarkes original contribution of 1983.
This is justified because the contributions by Jessop and
Hirsch have been critically assessed elsewhere2 and because
Clarkes critique in his introduction of other approaches,
including the class-based approach by Holloway and Picciotto,
is comprehensive and persuasive. Further, the difference
between a structural and functionalist approach to the state
and the approach centred on class struggle is clearly brought
out in the republication of Clarkes original contribution of
1983. The context of this paper was the New Rights attack on
the Keynesian state. Did the New Right represent a
functional response to the structural crisis in the fordist
regime of accumulation, as Hirsch and Jessop argue in the
republication of their original articles of 1983, or, as implied
by Clarke, did the rise of the New Right result from a political
defeat of the working class? I believe that Clarkes approach
shows the way forward. His analysis attempts to integrate the
abstract level of the state debate of the 1970s with the
historical development of the state in the 1980s 3 in a
conceptually rich, but paradoxical, way. If the rise of the New
Right was, as argued by Clarke, a result of the political defeat
of the working class, how can one explain, in the face of a
defeated working class, the failure of so-called Thatcherism? In
what follows I shall first focus on the problems inherent in the
class struggle approach to the state. Thereafter I shall focus on
Clarkes approach in more detail.

The State Debate 115

Within the context of the CSE debate on the state, the

emphasis on class struggle developed in response to the
German state derivation debate. This debate was seen as
downplaying class struggle and as permitting a structuralist
and functionalist conceptualisation of the state. The emphasis
on class struggle was developed theoretically and on the basis
of empirical analysis. The German debate was criticised for its
focus on the objective laws of capitalist development
permitting the exclusion of the class struggle from the analysis
of the form of the state. Against the German debate, the class
struggle approach emphasised that the class struggle has to be
seen as primary. However, the protagonists of the class
struggle approach never resolved the fundamental conceptual
problem inherent in their approach to the state. If the problem
of the German debate was its downplaying of the class struggle,
does the emphasis on the class struggle overcome the problem
inherent in the German debate? In other words, is the
emphasis on class struggle sufficient for establishing the
internal relation between structure and struggle, an internal
relation which was so much sought after by those advocating
the notion of the primacy of class struggle? The conceptualisation of an internal relation between struggle and structure is
not just a question of how much emphasis is accorded to the
primacy of class struggle. The focus on class struggle can lead
very easily to a conception of the working class as external to
capital. Within the CSE debate on the state, the notion of the
primacy of class struggle emphasised the state as a constant
object of class struggle. Is it not the case that the very idea of
the state as a mere object of class struggle tends to reinforce
the theoretical separation of structure and struggle? Is it not
possible to argue that the difference between the German
debate and the British debate focused on the primacy which
was attached to either laws of motion or class struggle?
It seems to me that the distinctive CSE approach to the
state did not overcome the dualist conception of the relation
between structure and struggle. This externality as between
structure and struggle obtains in the conceptualisation of the
state as an object of class struggle and not as a mode of
existence of labour in capitalism. The danger inherent in an
approach centred on the primacy of class struggle is that class
antagonism is understood as a relation between two opposing
armies whose internal relationship remains unexplored. I shall

116 Capital & Class 49

now critically assess Clarkes understanding of the state. I shall
do so with the view to discussing the state as a mode of
existence of labour in capitalism.
According to Clarke, the state is not a logical necessity of
capital but an historical necessity emerging from the class
struggle (see page 188). If there were no class struggle, there
would be no state (page 190). The development of the state is,
however, not purely contingent. The development is governed
by historical laws that have to be discovered on the basis of
Marxs analysis of the historical laws governing the
development of the capitalist mode of production (page 189).
Clarke thus conceptualises the state as a historical necessity
emerging from class struggle within the framework of
historical laws. The concept of class struggle makes it possible
to make the transition from the level of abstraction of the
concepts of Capital to their historical application to the real
world (page 190). The class struggle is thus seen as a means of
mediating between the abstract analysis of capitalist
reproduction and the concept of the state (ibid.). The
contradictory foundation of capital is construed in terms of an
abstract logic of capital on the one hand, and, on the other, the
need of capital to integrate the working class into its logic (see
page 197). The mediating role accorded to the class struggle
entails that the constitutive power of labour has no role at the
abstract level of capital. Labours role stands external to capital;
capital has merely to attempt to integrate labour into its own
project. This integration is seen in terms of class struggle
mediating the abstract with the concrete. As a result, unity
between structure and struggle is realised not on the
fundamental level of the formation of abstract concepts but on
the contingent level of historical development.
The externality between structure and struggle is reinforced
by the idea that the state is not, in the strictest sense, necessary
to capitalist social reproduction (page 188). Clarke argues that
none of the concepts developed in Capital presuppose the
concept of the state (ibid.). Does that mean that the concepts
of the critique of political economy are merely economic
concepts? According to Clarke, Marx offers, in Capital an
analysis of the self-reproduction of the capital relation, within
which the social relations of capitalist reproduction are
regulated, albeit in a contradictory and crisis-ridden fashion,
by the operation of the market (ibid.). As a consequence,

The State Debate 117

Clarke does not understand the basic contradiction of the

capitalist mode of production as the constitutive power of
labour existing against itself in the reified form of capital.
Rather, the basic contradiction of capital is understood to be
capital itself. As Clarke puts it, the starting point for the
analysis of class struggle has to be Marxs analysis of the
contradictions inherent in the reproduction of the capitalist
mode of production, on the basis of which the class struggle
develops (page 190). It seems to me that this understanding
of the primacy of class struggle is questionable. Is it possible to
derive the class struggle from the logically presupposed
contradictions of capital, contradictions which are seen as
internal to capital? If capital is in contradiction merely with
itself, how is it possible to integrate labour into the analysis?
If such a difficulty does obtain, how is it possible to establish
the internal relation between structure and struggle? Is the
class struggle merely an effect of capital being in contradiction
with itself? It seems to me that Clarke rearranges the internal
relation between structure and struggle on the basis of a causal
relation between capital, as the constitution of the
contradiction, and the class struggle, as the development of
the contradiction.
If one were to accept the idea of the state as merely an
object of class struggle, why should capital have opted to
supplement its rule through state power? According to Clarke,
there is no reason why capital should rely only on its material
power. Thus, in seeking to overcome the barriers to the
expanded reproduction of capital, capitalists use every weapon
at their disposal, and one such weapon, of course, is the power
of the state (pages 192/3). The state developed through the
class struggle that accompanied the revolutionising of feudal
society. Within bourgeois society the state is thus understood
by Clarke, not as a functional agency but as a complementary
form through which capital attempts to pursue the class
struggle in a vain attempt to suspend its contradictory
character (page 193). Clarke argues that the subordination of
the state to the reproduction of capital is not simply given by
the logic of capital. The state is also a moment of the class
struggle and the forms and limits of the state are themselves an
object of that struggle (page 195). He thus sees the form of
the state to be constituted by the contradictory logic of
capital, a contradictory logic which merely develops through

118 Capital & Class 49

class struggle. This understanding seems to reformulate
Hirschs conception of social development, a conception which
is based on the disarticulation 4 of structure from struggle.
The disarticulation is expressed in Hirschs notion of objective
laws but also class struggle.
Clarke tends to integrate structure and struggle on the basis
of a dualism between a determinist conception of capital and
a voluntarist conception of class struggle. While the
constitution of capitalist power is seen in terms of a
contradiction internal to capital, the development of this
contradiction is seen as one of class struggle. According to
Clarke, the state exists because of the class struggle, and the
class struggle exists because of the internal contradictions of
capital. This understanding of cause (internal contradictions of
capital) and effect (class struggle) and result (the state), is not
sufficient to conceptualise the internal relation between
structure and struggle. Clarkes understanding of the primacy
of the class struggle is based on a distinction between structure
and struggleeach of which is supposed to render its
contrasting term coherent. The state is seen as escaping
determinism because it is the constant object of class struggle
and class struggle is seen as escaping voluntarism because it is
qualified by capital being in contradiction with itself. Is it not
possible to suggest that Clarkes attempt to conceptualise the
internal relation between structure and struggle is sustained
through a tautological movement of thought?
Critically assessing the notion of the primacy of class
struggle does not imply its rejection simpliciter. Capital is class
struggle. However, capitalist society is not a formless thing. The
understanding of class antagonism as the essential social
relation implies that the starting point is the social constitution
and the historical movement of labour. Such an understanding
entails that the so-called laws of capitalist development cannot
be conceived of as laws internal to capital and hence as
external to labour but, rather, as a movement of contradiction
constitutive of, and constituted by, the mode of existence of
labour in capitalism. The contradictory character of capitalist
social relations are not constituted on the basis of capital, but
in and through capitals dependence upon labour. The
conceptualisation of labour as the constitutive power of social
existence is of fundamental importance for understanding the
self-contradictory mode of existence of the form of the state.

The State Debate 119

Unlike the theoretical suppression of class struggle in the

approaches put forward by Hirsch and, especially, Jessop,
Clarkes emphasis on class struggle takes as its starting point
the Marxian notion that all social relations are essentially
practical. In that emphasis lies an important difference from
structure-centred approaches. The difficulties inherent in
Clarkes approach is not that he sees class struggle as being
primary but that this notion is not developed to its radical
conclusion. Clarke understands the state implicitly as a onesided abstraction (i.e. the state as a means employed by capital
of imposing its rule over the working class). This notion is
conceptually bound up with the notion of capital being in
contradiction with itself. Clarke sees the contradiction of
capital as being constituted by the tendency to the global overaccumulation of capital, as the development of social
reproduction confronts the limits of the capitalist form as
production for prof it. This conceptualisation of the
contradictions of capital tends to neglect the constituting
power of labour. It does so inasmuch as the constitution of
this contradiction, i.e. the exploitation of labour, is displaced
to one between the development of the productive forces and
the limits of the market. This displacement is real inasmuch as
it constitutes a mode of existence of labour in capitalism: the
integration of the abstract category of labour with the value
form. However, this displacement is real only in and through
the constituting power of labour in and against capital: the
imposition of work (exploitation) through the commodity
form. Surplus value production concerns the state in and
through the mode of existence of exploitation as a social
relationship of formal freedom and equality. The displacement
of the contradictory unity of surplus value production (in its
mode of existence as formal freedom and equality) to the state
specifies the state as a moment of the social relations of
production that preserves the conditions of capitals existence:
living labour. Capital lives by turning the productive power of
labour against itself. The fundamental contradiction of capital
is its dependence on labour as the substance of value, and
hence surplus value. The working through of the antagonistic
tendency of the abstract category of labour compels capital
towards the elimination of necessary labour at the same time
as capital exists only in and through labour: the imposition of
necessary labour is the precondition for exploitation. The

120 Capital & Class 49

preservation of living labour, both in terms of the existence of
the working class and the normalisation of the aspiration of
the working class within the limits of the capitalist form of
social reproduction, is abstracted from capital as individual
capital and conforms to the states constitution as a mode of
existence of the social relation of capital and labour. The
contradictory mode of existence of the state is not constituted
by the contradictions internal to capital, as suggested by
Clarke, but, rather, by the above reported contradictory
constitution of the dependence of capital upon labour. The
state is not just an object of class struggle but, more
importantly, a mode of existence of labour in capitalism. The
state is a moment of the imposition of exploitation through
the commodity form. In sum, Clarkes understanding of the
state as an object of class struggle needs to be deepened into an
understanding of the state as a contradictory form of the
presence of the abstract category of labour in and against
capital. In contradistinction to Clarke, the notion of the
primacy of class struggle cannot be conceptualised merely in
terms of the development of the contradictory constitution of
capital. The contradictory constitution of capital needs to be
conceptualised in terms of the constitutive power of labour.
The contradictory existence of the state needs to be seen as
being constituted by the mode of existence of labour in
capitalism, the development of this contradiction needs to be
seen as one of class struggle .
Standing back from the book, the selection of papers might
make it difficult for those unfamiliar with the debate on the
state to follow the argument. Although Clarkes justification of
the selection of articles is persuasive, the direct critical
interrelation between the various contributions is not
immediately clear. In defence of the selection, Clarkes
comprehensive introduction sets the collection within the
context of the wider debate on the state. The cohesion of the
book is not achieved by the relationship between the selected
contributions but by Clarkes introduction. This circumstance
makes the introduction the most important part of the book.
Simon Clarke must be congratulated for providing a very
impressive, comprehensive introductory survey.

The State Debate 121

1. The State Debate. Edited by Simon Clarke. 14.95 (pbk.)
pp.270. ISBN 0 3354 8590. Macmillan, London 1991.
2. See the collection of articles edited by Bonefeld/Holloway, PostFordism and Social Form, Macmillan, London 1991.
3. See also Clarkes Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the
State, Edward Elgar, Aldershot 1988.
4. See Bonefeld: Reformulation of State Theory, Capital & Class
33, 1987, reprinted in Bonefeld/Holloway (eds.) cit. ob.

______________________________

Notes