12 - A Capitalist State? Marx’s Ambiguous Legacy

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Communist Manifesto contains probably the best-known and most oftenquoted statement on the subject of the state to be found in Marx's writing, in which it is claimed that political power is in the hands of the capitalist class or bourgeoisie. However, there are other views of the state to be found in Marx and, taken as a whole, his writing constitutes an ambiguous legacy. This chapter takes the Manifesto as a starting point to explore the variety of views of the state in Marx. Although important unifying themes are identified it is shown that Marx's legacy is marked by two dimensions of ambiguity. It is argued that Marxism is still wanting a theory of the state which satisfactorily resolves these ambiguities.

THE STATE AS INSTRUMENT OF THE CAPITALIST CLASS

In the Manifesto Marx and Engels offer a characterisation of the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the state which, it has been suggested, constitutes ‘the classical Marxist view on the subject of the state’. Here it is claimed that

Each of these stages of the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance […] The bourgeoisie - with the establishment of largescale industry and the world market - has finally gained exclusive political control through the modern representative state. The power of the modern state is merely a device for administering the common affairs of the whole bourgeois class.

The Manifesto appears to make a rather simple and bold claim: political or state power has been conquered or taken over by the capitalist class (thus suggesting deliberate political action by that class) and is used exclusively (that is to the exclusion of other classes) to defend and advance the interests of the class. Hence the Manifesto advances a class (or ‘class-theoretical’) analysis of politics and, more specifically, an ‘instrumental’ view of the state, in which the state is viewed as an instrument controlled by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes.