Abstract
Politics is of the essence of Marxism: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it’. However much Marxist economic and social theory may become divorced from its practical function, as in academia they often have, Marxist political theory must by definition embody it. And yet there has often been something rather paradoxical about Marxist political thought. Why should a theory which insists that the basis of human society is its socio-economic relations, set so much store by political change? What precisely is the meaning and status of ‘politics’ in relation to the socio-economic foundation? Why, having been very clear that politics is so crucial, should Marx himself have failed to develop a political theory?
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Notes and References
See Ralph Miliband, ‘Marx and the State’, The Socialist Register 1965 pp. 278–96, and at greater length, Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx Cambridge University Press, 1968, and Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution London, Monthly Review Press. Some major points are also summarised in my article, ‘The Theory of the State and Politics: a Central Paradox of Marxism’, Economy and Society 3 4 Nov. 1974, pp. 429–50. Where detailed references are not given for Marx and Engels’ ideas, the reader should refer to these sources.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto in Marx-Engels Selected Works, vol. I, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1950., p. 35.
For views sometimes labelled ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘structuralist’, see Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968
Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, London, New Left Books/Sheed and Ward, 1973
and the debate between them in Robin Blackburn (ed.), Ideology in Social Science, London, Fontana, 1972.
For ‘state derivation’ theories see John Holloway and Sol Picciotto (ed.), State and Capital: a Marxist Debate, London, Edward Arnold, 1978.
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: a Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China, Cambridge University Press 1979, p. 27.
Cited by Ralph Miliband, Class Power and State Power, London, Verso, 1983, p. 70.
For an interesting exploration of this problem see Ronald Aronson, The Dialectics of Disaster, London, Verso, 1983.
Leon Trotsky, ‘Not by Politics Alone’, in Problems of Everyday Life, London, Pathfinder, 1973, p. 15. This paradox is explored in my article quoted above.
The state is ‘a compulsory organisation with a territorial basis…. the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it’. Max Weber, The Theory of Economic and Social Organisation, Glencoe, Free Press, 1964, p. 156.
Otto Hintze, ‘The Formation of States and Constitutional Development’, in Felix Gilbert, (ed.), The Historical Essays on Otto Hintze, New York, OUP, 1975, p. 160.
See my ‘Introduction: War and Social Theory’ to Shaw (ed.), War, State and Society, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp. 1–19.
See, respectively, Holloway and Picciotto, op. cit., and Peter Binns and Mike Haynes, ‘New Theories of Eastern European Class Societies’, International Socialism 7, Winter 1980, pp. 18–50.
Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, London, Merlin, 1972.
Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, in Mary-Alice Waters (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, London, Pathfinder, 1970, pp. 153–219.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971
and discussions in e.g. Anne Showstack Sassoon, Gramsci’s Politics, London, Croom Helm, 1980
Perry Anderson, ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’, New Left Review, 100, Winter 1976–77.
A text which helps to re-establish the context of Gramsci’s work is Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1980.
The record is outlined in Göran Therborn, ‘The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy’, New Left Review 103, May-June, 1977.
Ralph Miliband, Capitalist Democracy in Britain, Oxford University Press 1982.
Miliband, Marxism and Politics, Oxford University Press, 1977
Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, London, Verso, 1978.
Geoff Hodgson, Socialism and Parliamentary Democracy Nottingham Spokesman, 1977.
Perry Anderson, Arguments Within English Marxism, London, Verson, 1980, pp. 204–5.
For an example of an economic account, Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972
for more complex cultural and institutional arguments see the early ‘Origins of the Present Crisis’ by Perry Anderson, in Anderson and Robin Blackburn (eds), Towards Socialism, London, Fontana, 1965
and Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain, London, New Left Books, 1977.
See Bob Jessop, ‘The Transformation of the State in Post-war Britain’, in Richard Scase (ed.), The State in Western Europe London, Croom Helm, 1980
and for an international comparison, Leo Panitch, ‘Trade Unions and the Capitalist State’. New Left Review, 125, Jan.-Feb., 1981.
Stuart Hall, ‘The Great Moving Right Show’, in Hall & Martin Jacques (eds), The Politics of Thatcherism, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1983.
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© 1985 Martin Shaw
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Shaw, M. (1985). Marxism, the State and Politics. In: Shaw, M. (eds) Marxist Sociology Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17912-1_8
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