Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:31:42.256Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

States, Ancient and Modern

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Michael Mann
Get access

Extract

ThisPaper has a fairly clear overall argument: that the relationship between State and Society in large-scale societies changed dramatically with the advent of industrial capitalism. Prior to that development, the State and the state bureaucracy played a substantially autonomous role vis-à-vis the class structure of civil society. After that its autonomy has been negligible: indeed, for most analytic purposes the State can be reduced to class structure. Such an argument is by no means original. For example, its outlines were commonplace among eighteenth and nineteenth-century theorists. In this paper I draw somewhat on Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. For one particular argument I am indebted to the contemporary sinologist Owen Lattimore. The idea of such a dramatic shift in the history of society is nowadays extremely unfashionable, however. Today theorists usually present essentially the same view of state-society relations throughout human history. Most Marxists reduce the state to being contingent upon the ‘determining’ categories of ‘mode of production’ and ‘class struggle’. Functionalists present a theory of structural differentiation which occurs so early in human evolution that in all recorded history the relationship between, and relative autonomy of, economy and polity are essentially unchanging. Weberians, in arguing for the autonomy of each element of ‘the structure of social action’, also give a picture of the mutual independence of state and economy throughout history. In all three cases, the caution and specificity of the theory of the ‘founding fathers’—Marx, Spencer and Weber—is thrown to the wind.

Type
Whither the Unwithered State?
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , December 1977 , pp. 262 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, P., [a] Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, New Left Books, 1974).Google Scholar
Anderson, P., [b’ Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, New Left Books, 1974).Google Scholar
Andreski, S., Military Organization and Society (Berkeley/Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Balazs, E., Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy (New Haven, Yale U.P., 1964).Google Scholar
Bernardi, A., The Economic Problems of the Roman Empire at the Time of its Decline, in Cippolla, C. M. (ed.), The Economic Decline of Empires (London, Methuen, 1970).Google Scholar
Chesneaux, J., Peasants Revolts in China, 1840–1949 (New York, Norton, 1973).Google Scholar
Chi, Ch'ao-Ting, Key Economic Areas in Chinese History (London, Allen and Unwin, 1936).Google Scholar
Daudess, J. W., The Transformation of Messianic Revolt and the Founding of the Ming Dynasty, Journal of Asian Studies, XXIX (1969–1970), 539–556.Google Scholar
Duncan-Jones, R., The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Durkheim, E., The Division of Labor in Society (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1964).Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, S. N., The Political Systems of Empires (New York, The Free Press, 1969).Google Scholar
Elvin, M., The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford U.P., 1973).Google Scholar
Finley, M. I., The Ancient Economy (London, Chatto and Windus, 1973).Google Scholar
Fletcher, R., The Making of Sociology, Vol. I (London, Michael Joseph, 1971).Google Scholar
Haeger, J. W., Between North and South: The Lake Rebellion in Hunan 1130–1135, Journal of Asian Studies, XXVIII (1968–1969), 469–488.Google Scholar
Hartwell, R. M., Financial Expertise, Examinations and the Formulation of Economic Policy in Northern Sung China, Journal of Asian Studies, XXX (1970–1971), 281–314.Google Scholar
Hindess, B. and Hirst, P. Q., Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London, Routledge, 1975).Google Scholar
Hopkins, K., Economic growth and towns in classical antiquity, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E. A. (eds), Towns in Societies (London, Cambridge U.P., 1971).Google Scholar
Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire 284–602 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1964), 3 vols.Google Scholar
Lattimore, O., [a] Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston, Beacon Press, 1962).Google Scholar
Lattimore, O., [b’ Studies in Frontier History (London, Oxford U.P., 1962).Google Scholar
MacMullen, R., Enemies of the Roman Order (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U.P., 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacMullen, R., Roman Social Relations (New Haven, Yale U.P., 1974).Google Scholar
MacNeill, W. H., The Rise of the West (Chicago, Chicago U.P., 1963).Google Scholar
Mann, M., Idealism and Materialism in Sociological Theory, in Bertaux, D. and Freiberg, T. (eds), Current Trends in European Critical Theory (Lexington, Mass., Heath, 1977).Google Scholar
Marx, K., Capital (Moscow, Progress Publishers), Vol. I, 1970; Vol. III, 1971.Google Scholar
Marx, K. and Engels, F., Selected Works (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1968 edition).Google Scholar
Parsons, T., The System of Modern Societies (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1971).Google Scholar
Poulantzas, N., Pouvoir politique et classes sociales (Paris, Maspero, 1972).Google Scholar
Service, E. R., Origins of the State and Civilization (New York, Norton, 1975).Google Scholar
Slicher van Bath, B. H., The Agrarian History of Western Europe, AD 500–1850 (London, Edward Arnold, 1963).Google Scholar
Spencer, H., Principles of Sociology (London, MacMillan, 1969), one-volume abridged edition).Google Scholar
Stover, L. E., The Cultural Ecology of Chinese Civilization (New York, Pira Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Thompson, E. A., Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain, Past and Present, VII (1952), 11–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, E. A., The Early Germans (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965).Google Scholar
Wakeman, F. Jr, Rebellion and Revolution: the study of popular movements in Chinese history, Journal of Asian Studies, XXXVI (1977), 201–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westermann, W. L., The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1955).Google Scholar
Wittfogel, K., Oriental Despotism (New Haven, Yale U.P., 1957).Google Scholar