The Marxist Theory of Power

"Of the whole bourgeoisie." The state has a degree of independence from any individual owner, and later Marxists made a great deal of that independence, calling it the relative autonomy of the state.

Later in the same text they state the general proposition: "Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another."

3. Law and ideas serve the same interest

The superstructure follows the base. Law defines and protects property, enforces contracts made between very unequal parties, and calls the arrangement freedom. The Manifesto puts the point about ideas in one line: "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class." What a society regards as obvious, natural, fair and unthinkable is, on this account, shaped by the interest of those who rule it.

This is the proposition a law student should sit with longest, because it is a claim about the subject they are studying. It is not the claim that judges are dishonest. It is the claim that a body of law which treats parties as formally equal will systematically favour the party who is substantively stronger, and that this happens through the ordinary and honest application of the rules.

4. The state will eventually disappear

If the state exists to hold one class down, then when classes end the state has nothing left to do. Engels puts this precisely in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: once there is no social class to be held in subjection, nothing remains to be repressed and a special repressive force is no longer necessary; state interference becomes superfluous in one domain after another and then "dies out of itself"; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things. And he insists on the word: "The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out."

That distinction is worth marks, because it separates Marxism from anarchism. The anarchist wants the state abolished now; Engels says it cannot be abolished and will become unnecessary.

Between capitalism and that condition, the Manifesto contemplates a transitional stage in which the proletariat makes itself the ruling class and uses state power to sweep away the old conditions of production. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it is taught properly at topic 3.4.

The modern developments a good answer mentions

Gramsci and hegemony. Antonio Gramsci asked why the workers of Western Europe did not revolt when the theory said they should, and answered that the ruling class holds power not only through coercion by the state but through hegemony: leadership of the whole culture, through schools, churches, newspapers and common sense, so that its view of the world is accepted by those it rules as simply the way things are. This is the Marxist version of the third face of power.

Instrumentalism and structuralism. Ralph Miliband argued that the state serves capital because the people who staff it are drawn from the same class; Nicos Poulantzas argued that it serves capital because of its structural position in a capitalist economy, whoever staffs it. The second is the stronger claim, since it survives the appointment of a socialist government.

The Indian debate. Indian Marxists have had to explain a state that is neither straightforwardly bourgeois nor feudal, and the standard account describes a ruling coalition of the industrial bourgeoisie, the rich farmers and the bureaucratic elite. Whether that is Marxism or elite theory in Marxist vocabulary is a fair question to raise in an answer.

A worked example

A State proposes a law raising the minimum wage for construction workers.

A pluralist sees competing groups: builders against unions, with government holding the ring, and the outcome reflecting their relative strength.

An elite theorist sees a decision taken by a small number of ministers, officials and industry leaders who know each other, whatever the unions say publicly.

A Marxist asks a different question altogether: who owns the sites, who owns the workers' time, and what happens to the surplus? On this reading the law will pass in a form the industry can live with, because the state manages the common affairs of the owners rather than the interests of any one builder. It may genuinely improve wages, because a workforce that cannot eat cannot build, and because a concession now prevents a confrontation later. And it will not touch the relation that produced the low wage, which is that the worker owns nothing and must sell their labour on whatever terms are offered. A Marxist would add that the law will be enforced weakly, not because inspectors are corrupt but because the machinery of enforcement is thin in exactly the places where the owners' interest lies in its being thin.

Notice that the Marxist prediction is testable, which is the merit of the theory. It predicts the shape of the concession as well as the fact of it.

Criticism of the Marxist theory of power

Economic determinism. The theory has trouble with power that is plainly not economic in origin: caste in India, religion, language, nationalism, gender. Engels himself said in later letters that the economic factor is determining only in the last instance, which is an admission that it is not determining in the first.

The state has been more independent than the theory allows. Modern states regulate, tax and expropriate owners, and welfare states have redistributed on a scale the theory did not anticipate.

Where it was tried, the state did not die out. In the states that called themselves socialist, the abolition of private ownership produced not the withering away of power but its concentration, which is precisely what Michels predicted and what Pareto called circulation.

Class is not the only cleavage, and may not be the deepest. Indian voting behaviour has for decades been organised around caste and community at least as much as around class.

It underestimates democratic institutions. Universal suffrage, an independent judiciary and a free press have delivered real gains to the propertyless without the ownership of production changing hands.

Distinctions that carry marks

What this theory is NOT

It is not the claim that politicians take money from industrialists. That is corruption, and it is a much smaller claim. The Marxist claim is structural: the state serves the owning class through its ordinary, honest, lawful operation.

It is not the claim that the state never acts against business. The Manifesto's own words are "the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie", which allows the state to act against a particular owner to preserve the system.

It is not the same as the elite theory. Both say a minority rules; they disagree on what defines the minority and on whether minority rule can end. The next chapter is entirely about that disagreement.

"Withering away" is not abolition. Engels insists on the difference, and the difference is what separates Marxism from anarchism.

Quick revision

1. Base and superstructure: economic structure is the base; law, politics, religion and ideas are the superstructure raised on it.
2. Class is defined by relation to the means of production: bourgeoisie own, proletariat sell labour power.
3. The quotation: "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." Note common and whole.
4. The general proposition: "Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another."
5. On ideas: "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
6. Engels on the state: it "dies out of itself"; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things; "The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out."
7. Developments: Gramsci's hegemony; Miliband's instrumentalism against Poulantzas's structuralism.
8. Criticism: economic determinism; the state's real independence; where tried, power concentrated instead of withering; caste and religion; the gains democracy has actually delivered.

Test yourself

1. State the Marxist theory of power in four propositions. First, economic power is the source of political power: whoever owns the means of production controls the livelihood, and therefore the behaviour, of everyone else. Second, the state is not a neutral arbiter but an instrument by which the owning class maintains its dominance. Third, law, morality and the prevailing ideas form a superstructure that reflects and protects that base. Fourth, since the state exists to hold one class down, the end of classes leaves it nothing to do and it dies out.

2. Explain the Manifesto's description of the modern state, paying attention to its exact words. Marx and Engels write that the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The word "committee" denies that the state is a puppet of individual capitalists; the words "common affairs" and "whole" allow it to act against a particular owner or industry in order to preserve the system as a whole. That is why a Marxist can explain factory legislation or a bank rescue without difficulty: each protects capitalism from capitalists.

3. What did Engels mean by saying the state "dies out"? That the state cannot be abolished by decree, as the anarchists wished, but becomes unnecessary. Once there is no class to be held in subjection, nothing remains to be repressed and a special repressive force is superfluous; state interference falls away in one domain after another, and the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things. He insisted on the distinction: the state is not abolished, it dies out.

4. What is hegemony, and what problem was it introduced to solve? Gramsci's term for the ruling class's leadership of the whole culture, exercised through schools, churches, newspapers and common sense, so that its view of the world is accepted by the ruled as simply the way things are. He introduced it to explain why the workers of Western Europe did not revolt when the theory predicted they would: power there rested less on the state's coercion than on consent that had been manufactured, which makes hegemony the Marxist counterpart of the third face of power.

5. Give three criticisms of the Marxist theory of power. That it is economically deterministic and cannot account for power founded on caste, religion, language or gender, a difficulty Engels half conceded by saying the economic factor determines only in the last instance. That modern states have shown far more independence of owners than the theory allows, taxing, regulating and redistributing at a scale it did not anticipate. And that where the ownership of production was in fact transferred to the state, power did not wither away but concentrated, which is what the elite theorists predicted.