State Theory E-Book

Bob Jessop

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 894

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

This volume develops a novel approach to state theory. It offers a comprehensive review of the existing literature on the state and sets a new agenda for state research.

Four central themes define the scope of the book: an account of the bases of the operational autonomy of the state; the need to develop state theory as part of a more general social theory; the possibilities of explaining 'capitalist societalization' without assuming that the economy is the ultimate determinant of societal dynamics; and a defence of the method of articulation in theory construction.

In developing these issues, Bob Jessop both builds on and goes well beyond the view presented in his earlier books, The Capitalist State (1982) and Nicos Poulantzas (1985). The result is a highly original statement which will become a center-point of discussion. The volume confirms the author's standing as one of the most important post-War Marxist state theorists.

Leseprobe

STATE THEORY

Putting the Capitalist State in its Place

Bob Jessop

Polity Press

Copyright © Bob Jessop 1990

First published 1990 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Reprinted 1996

Transferred to digital print 2003

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Polity Press, 65 Bridge Street,Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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Blackwell Publishers Ltd

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Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-0-7456-6735-5 (Multi-user ebook)

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10/12pt Sabon

by Witwell Ltd, Southport

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Marston Lindsay Ross International Ltd,Oxfordshire

To the memory of my mother and father

CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations

List of Tables

Preface and Acknowledgements

General Introduction

PART I On Marxist Theories of Law, the State and their Relative Autonomy from the Capitalist Economy and Class Struggles

Introduction

1 Recent Theories of the Capitalist State

2 Recent Theories of Law, the State and Juridico-political Ideology

3 Marxism, Economic Determinism and Relative Autonomy

PART II Political Representation, Social Bases and State Forms: Corporatism, Parliamentarism and the National Interest

Introduction

4 The Material and Social Bases of Corporatism

5 Capitalist States, the Interests of Capital and Bourgeois Rule

6 The Democratic State and the National Interest

PART III The Value-form, the Capitalist State and Hegemonic Projects: From State Forms and Functions to the State as Strategy

Introduction

7 Accumulation Strategies, State Forms and Hegemonic Projects

8 Poulantzas and Foucault on Power and Strategy

9 The State as Political Strategy

PART IV Rethinking State and Society: Towards a Strategic-relational Theory of Societalization

Introduction

10 Anti-Marxist Reinstatement and Post-Marxist Deconstruction

11 Political Economy or Radical Autonomy? Regulation, Societalization and Autopoiesis

12 Putting States in their Place: Once More on Capitalist States and Capitalist Societies

Analytical Table of Contents

Selected Writings of Bob Jessop

General Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

ANALYTICAL TABLEOF CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations

List of Tables

Preface and Acknowledgements

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Apologia pro suo Libro – General Trends in State Theory – Theoretical Trajectories – Societies, Societalization and Anti-essentialism – States, State Projects and State Effects – Strategic Selectivity – The Method of Articulation – Contingent Necessity – Errors and Omissions – Concluding Remarks

PART I ON MARXIST THEORIES OF LAW, THE STATE AND THEIR RELATIVE AUTONOMY FROM THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY AND CLASS STRUGGLES

INTRODUCTION

1 RECENT THEORIES OF THE CAPITALIST STATE (1977)

The Classic Texts on the State

Variations on Some Classic Themes

The State as the Ideal Collective Capitalist

The Attempt to Introduce Historical Specificity and Class Struggle

The Capitalist State and Popular-democratic Struggle

Concluding Remarks

2 RECENT THEORIES OF LAW, THE STATE AND JURIDICO-POLITICAL IDEOLOGY (1980)

Some Leading Theoretical Approaches

On the Form and Function of Bourgeois Law

Pashukanis on Capitalist Law and the State – In the Steps of Pashukanis – The Constitutional State and its Limitations – The State as Legality plus Illegality – Critique and Assessment

On Private Individuation and Public Unity

The Economic Functions of Capitalist Law – The Political Functions of Capitalist Law – The Nature of Juridico-political Ideology – Normal and Exceptional States – Authoritarian Statism – Law and the State – Critique and Assessment of Poulantzas

Interpellation and Legal Subjectivity

On ‘Authoritarian Populism’ and the ‘Law and Order Society’

In Guise of a Conclusion

3 MARXISM, ECONOMIC DETERMINISM AND RELATIVE AUTONOMY (1986)

Against Economic Reductionism

Economic Determination without Determinism

Mode of Production – Rethinking Economic Determination

The Relative Autonomy of the State

The Capital-theoretical Approach – The Class-theoretical Approach – State-theoretical Views

The Autonomization of the Legal System

The Young Poulantzas on the ‘Internal-External’ Dialectics – The Approach of Tuschling and Fine – The Approach of Hirst

A Critique of Marxist Approaches

Input-Output – ‘Internal-External’ Dialectics – Articulation

Rethinking the Problem

PART II POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, SOCIAL BASES AND STATE FORMS: CORPORATISM, PARLIAMENTARISM AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST

INTRODUCTION

4 THE MATERIAL AND SOCIAL BASES OF CORPORATISM (WITH POSTSCRIPT 1989) (1979)

Definitions of Corporatism

Schmitter on Corporatism – Pahl and Winkler – Preliminary Conclusions

On Marxist State Theory

Parliamentarism and Corporatism

Parliamentarism – Corporatism – Tripartism as a Hybrid

State Forms and Capital Accumulation

The Limits of Parliamentarism – The Nature and Limits of Corporatism

Functional Complementarity or Contradictory Unity?

Lehmbruch on Functional Complementarity – Rethinking the Problem

The Social Bases of State Power

Changing Social Bases of State Power – The Social Bases of Liberal and Fascist Corporatisms

Corporatism and Social Democracy

Social Democracy and the Keynesian Welfare State – The Highest Stage of Social Democracy’

Towards the Strong State?

Concluding Remarks

Postscript 1989

Material Bases for the Recurrence of Corporatism

The Changing Significance of Corporatism

Beyond Corporatism?

Conclusions

5 CAPITALIST STATES, THE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL AND BOURGEOIS RULE (1983)

The Rule of Capital and the Modern State

Instrumentalism – Structuralism – Form-determination – A ‘Strategic-relational’ Approach – Preliminary Conclusions

The Value-form and the Interests of Capital

The Circuit of Capital – The Dilemmas of Capital – Are There Capitalist Interests? – Beyond Capital Logic to Accumulation Strategies

Accumulation Strategies and Capitalist Interests in Weimar Germany

The Story So Far – Its Theoretical Lessons

Political Representation and the Form of the State

Capitalist Interests and State Forms

The Risks of Clientelism – The Contradictions of Corporatism – The Second Best Political Shell?Interim Confusions

Conclusion

6 THE DEMOCRATIC STATE AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST (1983)

The Non-socialist Defence of the Democratic State

The Democratic Form of the Modern State – The Bases of State Power – The Purpose and Role of Government – Problems with the State

A Socialist Critique of Capitalist Democracy

The Form of the State – The Bases of State Power – The Role of the State – Problems with the State

Concluding Remarks

PART III THE VALUE-FORM, THE CAPITALIST STATE AND HEGEMONIC PROJECTS: FROM STATE FORMS AND FUNCTIONS TO THE STATE AS STRATEGY

INTRODUCTION

7 ACCUMULATION STRATEGIES, STATE FORMS AND HEGEMONIC PROJECTS (1983)

The Capital Relation and the Value-form

The Value-form and the Law of Value – On Accumulation Strategies

Some Implications of Accumulation Strategies

The Interests of Capital – Accumulation Strategies and Periodization – Strategies and Tactics

On the Form of the State

Formal and Substantive Aspects of the State

Hegemony and Hegemonic Projects

Three Conditions for Successful Hegemony

Some Implications of Hegemonic Projects

One Nation v. Two Nations – Passive Revolution and Wars of Manoeuvre – Hegemony and the Historic Bloc – Hegemony and Periodization

Concluding Remarks

8 POULANTZAS AND FOUCAULT ON POWER AND STRATEGY (1986)

Poulantzas and Foucault

Links between Poulantzas and Foucault

Some Borrowings – Six Convergences – Six Criticisms of Foucault

Some Hidden Parallels

Ubiquity of Power and/or the State – Diagram and Mode of Production – Plebeian Spirits and Class Instincts – Micro-diversity and Macro-necessity

On Power and Strategy

Might and Power – Complementary Fallacies in Poulantzas and Foucault

Beyond Poulantzas and Foucault

9 THE STATE AS POLITICAL STRATEGY (1985–6)

Approaches to State Theory

Dimensions of State Theory – ‘Capital-’ v. ‘Class-theoretical’ Approaches – The False Dichotomy of Capital and Class

Towards a ‘Strategic-theoretical’ Approach

The Regulation Approach – The State is a Social Relation – Foucault on Power and Strategy – ‘Capital is Class Struggle’ – Preliminary Conclusions

The State as Political Strategy

Objections to a Strategic-theoretical Approach

A Strategic-theoretical Approach is no Supplement – A Strategic-theoretical Approach is not Enough – Against a General Theory of Strategic Relations – There are no Master Strategies – A Strategic-theoretical Approach is Materialist – Strategy Needs Structure

Implications of a Strategic-theoretical Approach

Concluding Remarks

PART IV RETHINKING STATE AND SOCIETY: TOWARDS A STRATEGIC-RELATIONAL THEORY OF SOCIETALIZATION

INTRODUCTION

10 ANTI-MARXIST REINSTATEMENT AND POST-MARXIST DECONSTRUCTION (1988)

Bringing the State Back In

Bringing State Managers Back In – Skocpoľs Account – Bringing Constitutions Back In

The Critics of Statism

Where the Statists Go Wrong

Discourse Analysis and the Art of Politics

Hegemony and the Logic of the Social – Does the State Exist? – Meta-theoretical Reflections – The Deficits of Discourse Analysis

Concluding Remarks

11 POLITICAL ECONOMY OR RADICAL AUTONOMY? REGULATION, SOCIETALIZATION AND AUTOPOIESIS (1986–8)

Regulation Theory and the State

Objects and Modes of Regulation – Regulationists on the State – A Regulationist Approach to the State – Interim Conclusions

Autopoiesis, Politics and the State

Autopoiesis in the Political System

Political Codes – The Self-referential Character of Politics – The State as Self-description

Structural Coupling and Societal Guidance

Structural Coupling and Co-evolution – Interpenetration and Societal Guidance

Autopoieticism and Marxist Theory

Concluding Remarks on Societalization

12 PUTTING STATES IN THEIR PLACE: ONCE MORE ON CAPITALIST STATES AND CAPITALIST SOCIETIES (1990)

What is the State?

The Complexities of the State and State Theory – Defining the State – A Conceptual Hierarchy … – … or Six Dimensions?

The Idea of the State and the State as Idea

‘State’ Semantics and State Structures – Did States Exist before ‘State’ Discourse? – The State, Politics and Society – State Projects and Reasons of State

Is the State Capitalist?

What Makes a State Capitalist? – The Capitalist Type of State – Structural Coupling and Strategic Coordination

The Paradox of State and Society

The State and Other Institutional Orders

Whither State Theory?

Analytical Table of Contents

Selected Writings of Bob Jessop

General Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

ABBREVIATIONS

AS

Authoritarian statism

CCC

Classes in Contemporary Capitalism

(Poulantzas)

CD

Crisis of the Dictatorships

(Poulantzas)

CME

Capitalisme monopoliste d’état

CMP

Capitalist mode of production

CPGB

Communist Party of Great Britain

CSE

Conference of Socialist Economists

DP

Discipline and Punish

(Foucault)

GRREC

Groupe de recherche sur la régulation des économies capitalistes (Grenoble)

MWT

Mitteleuropa Wirtschaftstrust

PCF

Parti communiste français

PK

Power/Knowledge

(Foucault)

PPSC

Political Power and Social Classes

(Poulantzas)

SPS

State, Power, Socialism

(Poulantzas)

SRA

Strategic-relational approach

SSA

Social structure of accumulation

TRPF

Tendency of the rate of profit to fall

WK

Will to Know

(Foucault)

TABLES

  3.1 Autonomy or independence? Capital-theoretical views

  3.2 Autonomy or independence? Class-theoretical views

  3.3 Autonomy or independence? State-theoretical views

10.1 Calling the state into question

10.2 Some differences between discourse and strategic-relational analysis

PREFACE ANDACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In this book I have assembled 12 essays concerned with different aspects of the state and state theory. Three appear here for the first time; three were previously published in obscure journals and working papers; three have been substantially rewritten for this collection; and three appear more or less unchanged. As far as possible I have written out significant overlap across the articles and, where appropriate, added new material. But the main lines of argument in each essay remain the same so that, should anyone be interested in such matters, the course of my theoretical development can be traced. Many other past essays and articles have been omitted because to include all my previous work on the state would have made this book too long and produced too much redundant material. And, although it might have made intellectual sense to include further work on regulation theory and political economy, since these issues are so closely connected with my arguments on the state, this would have overburdened a volume that is already unconscionably lengthy.

Not unnaturally, in writing these essays over a period of many years, I have incurred many intellectual debts. Some of these debts are acknowledged in particular essays but I would like to record here my lasting thanks to all my graduate students over the years at the University of Essex who have endured in good humour the ramblings of a Marxist state theorist and even come back for more. Over the years the Conference of Socialist Economists has also provided a forum for debates on the state and regulation theory. Simon Clarke, John Holloway and Werner Bonefeld have been unfailingly good-humoured protagonists in this context, and we have enjoyed disagreeing with each other. Other friends or colleagues with whom I have exchanged ideas over the years include Grigoris Ananiadis, Natascha Apostolidou, Ted Benton, Kevin Bonnett, Simon Bromley, Noelle Burgi, Michael Kraetke, Tom Ling, David Marsh, Rob Stones, Hugh Ward, Harold Wolpe and Tony Woodiwiss. Most of the unimportant mistakes are theirs and I can only suggest that, if some minor theoretical misdemeanour or other upsets readers, they ‘round up the usual suspects’ from among those just listed. Where more serious offences are concerned, however, I am happy to assume full responsibility. Should this burden prove too great or my discharge of it leave the mob dissatisfied, then some of the following could be unjustly incriminated for having made me stray from the theoretical straight and narrow.

No one who reads these essays will fail to notice the influence of Nicos Poulantzas, whom I still regard as the most important postwar theorist of the state. Although we met only once and exchanged only a couple of letters, I have spent more time and energy struggling with Poulantzas’s work than with that of any other state theorist. This work is often infuriatingly difficult and obscure but it remains the most important starting point for any critical modern account of the capitalist state. Poulantzas apart, the most important postwar influences on my approach have been German. Both Joachim Hirsch and Josef Esser from Frankfurt have in their different ways strongly influenced my approach. Joachim showed me how political economy and political sociology can be integrated theoretically and introduced me to the useful German concept of Vergesellschaftung (societalization); and Jupp Esser has always stressed the need to test state theory against relevant evidence and, for as long as I have known him, has not stinted himself in the German practice of hospitality. Another friend and colleague from Frankfurt, Alex Demirovic, has an intellectual energy and enthusiasm for debate which knows no bounds; he has acted as a sounding board for some of my wilder ideas and has helped to domesticate some of them. For more of the same and for hospitality in Berlin, I would also like to thank Hans Kastendiek. More recently, a rereading of the early work of Claus Offe has reinforced my conviction that the state must be seen as the site of strategic dilemmas as well as structural contradictions.

In 1984 a chance meeting on board a plane bound for Columbus, Ohio, introduced me to Niklas Luhmann and his ideas. His original and startling view that the state is the self-reference of the political system troubled me then and continues to do so. Further meetings with Luhmann followed in Florence in 1986, where I also had the opportunity to discuss the implications of autopoieticist theory with Gunther Teubner. More recently, two colleagues at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinaere Forschung (Bielefeld), Helmut Willke and Rainer Eichmann, have encouraged me to rethink my ideas in relation to (if not in terms of) autopoietic systems. It will be obvious from my essays that I am by no means a born-again systems theorist and that there are many points of divergence and disagreement with autopoieticist theory in my work. But I have certainly learnt much from these encounters and from my attempts to defend a Marxist approach against the challenge of autopoieticist theory.

Discourse analysis has been another influence on my approach. It has provided some useful conceptual tools for my reflections on societalization as well as a flow of questions from puzzled students in search of clarification. Ernesto Laclau has probably been the most influential discourse analyst in my intellectual development – albeit mainly as a silent interlocutor over many years. I do not share his enthusiasm for post-Marxism and, although it may not always be evident, have strong criticisms of the main thrust of his research. But some of the strongest influences on one’s intellectual development come from those with whom one disagrees.

A fifth influence in recent years has been regulation theory. This may be less evident in the current collection, in which the influences are more subterranean; but much of my recent research on postwar British political economy draws heavily on regulation concepts as well as state theory. Trying to integrate them sent me further down the path towards the ‘strategic-relational’ approach. In pursuing this interest I have learnt much from discussions with Robert Boyer and his colleagues at the CEPREMAP institute in Paris. I would particularly like to thank Robert for his support.

Last, but by no means least, an equally chance meeting in 1986 with Citlali Rovirosa Madrazo, whose husband I subsequently became, has since led to many heated discussions about the nature of the state and much else besides. She it was who finally convinced me that my interest in state theory has been developed at the expense of a more basic enquiry into the nature and existence of the state itself. Much Marxist theorizing has focused on the state’s functions for capital; the better sort has examined its form and shown how this problematizes these functions; none has put the very existence of the state in question. I do not fully subscribe to Citlali’s thesis that the state does not exist (a claim inspired by Laclau’s somewhat less startling thesis that society does not exist) but her role as theoretical agente provocateuse has still been important. Her influence is so strong in chapter 10 that it directly includes material from her MA thesis.

More formally, I would like to thank the following journals and publishing houses for permission to reprint my material on the state and politics. The Cambridge Journal of Economics and Academic Press for chapter 1; The International Journal of the Sociology of Law and Academic Press for chapter 2; Sage Publications for Chapter 4; West European Politics and Frank Cass Ltd, for chapter 5; Basil Blackwell for chapter 6; Kapitalistate and the Kapitalistate collective for chapter 7; Ideas and Production and the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology for chapter 8; Economy and Society and Routledge Journals for parts of chapter 11; and Edward Elgar for parts of chapter 12.

Before closing I must also thank David Held and Debbie Seymour of Polity Press in Cambridge: David for the incredible good humour and patience with which he waited for this collection to appear; Debbie for doing her best to make up for the delays by speeding it at all stages through publication. A different kind of material support during the last year has come from the Economic and Social Research Council in the form of a personal research grant; I have also benefited greatly from eight months spent at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinaere Forschung (Bielefeld). I am grateful to both bodies for the time and resources to work on unifying these essays and even to develop some new ideas.

Bob Jessop St Valentine’s Day 1990

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This volume presents 12 essays on state theory written over the past 15 years. Substantively, they cover matters as diverse as law and the state, hegemony and coercion, relative autonomy and economic determinism, discourse analysis and political theory, interests and power, the state as idea and the state as project, parliamentarism and corporatism, economic reproduction and regulation, the dialectic of structure and strategy, the micro-physics of power and societalization, and so on. Their theoretical scope is, perhaps, more limited. For they are all written from a doubly critical Marxist perspective: one which is often highly critical of Marxism itself as well as one which offers Marxist critiques of alternative approaches. As part compensation for this I have included two essays dealing with important non-Marxist approaches (the neo-statist paradigm, discourse analysis and autopoietic systems theory) and two which develop a more inclusive approach which, for want of something better, I have labelled ‘strategic-relational’1 This is consistent with several developments outside Marxist work and provides a useful framework within which to deal with many issues which have never been central within Marxism.

Apologia pro suo Libro

Given the diversity of these essays, it is worth asking why they should be printed in one volume. There are, I would argue, three good reasons. First, and most important on intellectual grounds, all 12 essays address issues which have already proved central to debates on the state or should soon become so. If this were not the case, there would be little point in bringing them together. This reason is strengthened when one can show, as I hope to have done here, the strong interconnections among the various issues; and hence the need to tackle them within a common frame. Secondly, and not unrelated to this last point, half of the essays have not been previously published or else have only appeared in journals and working papers with a limited circulation. Yet these relatively obscure pieces often discussed essential elements of the more general approach so that their relative inaccessibility has hindered its overall reception. A collection such as this provides author and readers alike with an opportunity for greater understanding. The third reason for bringing the essays together also bears on this issue. For, although some early pieces may have been superseded, they still provide useful critical introductions to contemporary debates as well as important background material for later analyses. In this sense they have more than a purely archival or antiquarian interest. Indeed, at a time when the Marxist debates of the 1970s are fast passing into oblivion, recalling their theoretical achievements is an important goal in its own right.2

General Trends in State Theory

The following essays reflect certain general shifts in theories of the state as well as a certain personal evolution in my approach. I will use this section briefly to explore some of the general trends in state theorizing; succeeding sections will then deal with some of the more idiosyncratic aspects of my own work.

In the 1970s it was Marxists who made the running in discussions of the state and they related its form and functions to the nature of capital and/or the class struggle. In the 1980s, after the Marxist debate had largely exhausted itself, the baton was taken up by social scientists more interested in analysing the state in its own terms. However, as a revival of interest in the state has occurred twice in the past 20 years, we should not be surprised that this repetition of history assumes the usual dramatic form. For the first debate ended in tragedy, the second is proving a farce. Sadly, the Marxist debate gradually lost its audience because many of its crucial insights were lost to view in a welter of starting points and obscure formulations; the statist debate has been met with some acclaim, on the other hand, because the commonplace distinction between ‘state’ and ‘society’ which informs it gives it a superficial but misleading appeal.

There have been four main causes for the crisis and decline of Marxist state theory since the 1970s. Two of these are internal to Marxism itself and two concern the relation between Marxism and other theories. First, as many commentators have noted, the Marxist tradition as a whole experienced a crisis in the late 1970s. This prompted an exodus from Marxist theoretical ranks as strong as that from its political ranks. Secondly, both for Marxism in particular and the left in general, there have been significant shifts of interest. In political theory old problems (such as democracy) have been rediscovered and new issues have emerged (such as new social movements, ecology and feminism). Although these have a state-theoretical dimension, they are not always directly reflected in state theory itself. This can be seen in the growing interest in discourse theory and its implications for Marxism and socialist strategy (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe 1985). In addition, the crisis of capitalism over the past decade or so has also provoked a resurgence of interest in Marxist political economy (long wave theory, the labour process, economic crisis theory, regulation theory etc.) at the expense of state-theoretical concerns as such. Neither its internal crisis nor the shift of interest within Marxism imply, however, that Marxist state theory is no longer relevant. They do require state theorists to show that it can address these new issues and problems in a fruitful manner.

A third reason for the decline of Marxist state theory is rooted in theoretical developments elsewhere. For many other disciplines have become interested in questions of legal and state theory. They have drawn on and/or developed many different theoretical perspectives besides those embodied in Marxism. This has made the pioneering work of Marxist political theory in the 1960s and 1970s more marginal for contemporary theoretical work and has forced Marxist theories to compete with other approaches for continued attention. Especially influential on the left has been the growing vogue for Foucault’s genealogies and disciplinary studies as well as recent work in deconstruction and the field of discourse analysis. But other developments such as the new institutionalism, ‘rational choice’ theories and ‘structuration’ also offer more or less attractive alternatives. Finally, within state research itself, a challenge has been mounted from the ‘state-centred’ theorists. I have real worries about both the polemical intent of statist evangelists and about the solidity of the conceptual foundations of statism (see chapter 10). However, in so far as it focuses much more directly on state capacities and the internal dynamics of political regimes as well as on geopolitical issues, warfare and international relations, it is a useful corrective to some Marxists’ exaggerated concern with the state’s inherently bourgeois character.

Theoretical Trajectories

The essays gathered here reflect these shifts in intellectual fashion but do not follow them with slavish dedication. Thus some trends are simply ignored and others dealt with rather summarily. In other cases I devote some attention to new developments but do so with the tunnel vision of a state theorist. And yet others are taken seriously enough to warrant more extended treatment, albeit more critical than some would deem prudent. I am particularly critical, for example, of the theoretical arguments advanced in favour of recent attempts to ‘bring the state back in’. And I also express some doubts about the current fashion for discourse analysis. Thus my own intellectual development as presented here3 clearly differs strongly from the simple succession that one might deduce from a European Marxist hegemony in the 1970s and an American statist hegemony in the 1980s. Instead, as these essays suggest, my long march through state theory begins with abstract and simple Marxist theorizing on the state. This was a common starting point in the 1970s but my own route took the ‘high road’ of anti-reductionism rather than the ‘low road’ of economic determinism. It then proceeds via more concrete analyses of specific regimes (such as corporatism and parliamentarism) and more complex analyses of political economy (especially accumulation strategies and modes of regulation).4 And it is now moving slowly towards the ultimate destination of ‘putting the state in its place’ within a more general theory of societalization or ‘society effects’ (on which, see below).

In short, although my research has tracked some of the successive concerns of state theory, it has followed its own dynamic. This can be seen in my attempts to integrate a relational view of the state with the Marxist ‘form-analytic’ account of capital as a social relation.5 My belief that this is both feasible and desirable has reinforced my commitment to exploring potential paths within a sophisticated Marxist paradigm at a time when others are wandering down the ‘post-Marxist’ by-ways of discourse analyis.6 In this sense, despite the current intellectual fashion for denigrating Marxism or my own occasional resort to discourse analytic arguments, I would still define my approach as Marxist. For its analysis of the capital relation is heavily indebted to Marx’s critique of political economy and its account of other social relations always explores their articulation with the circuit of capital. But this is far from a misguided attempt to reduce all social relations to their economic determinations. Indeed, my approach to societalization stresses the ‘contingent necessity’ and asymmetry of society effects and thereby denies that any sub-ensemble of social relations could ever be determinant in the last instance.

Societies, Societalization and Anti-essentialism

What precisely does ‘societalization’ mean in this context? In the following essays, written as they have been over several years, this term seems to have acquired two meanings: one is literal and totalizing but also remains largely implicit, the other is more often explicit but also partial. Moreover, reviewing the general chronological movement in the line of argument across the essays (which does not coincide with the order in which they are presented below), it would seem to involve growing awareness of the limits of the first approach and increasing appreciation and affirmation of the second. Let us see what is at stake here.

First, in its mainly unstated meaning, ‘society’ refers to the social processes in and through which ‘society effects’ are produced. The premiss of this approach is that the existence of a ‘society’ cannot be taken for granted: it must be constituted and reproduced through more or less precarious social processes and practices which articulate diverse social relations to produce a ‘society effect’. ‘Society’ can obviously be defined in different ways and at different levels of abstraction and any definition is likely to be dismissed as arbitrary and incomplete. As it happens no definition is advanced anywhere in the following essays and instead I resort to two conventional solutions. Either ‘society’ is implicitly defined through the nominalist convention that it is a social order subject to the authority of a given (nation-)state (e.g. Weimar Germany) or else it figures as an indeterminate horizon against which to distinguish various ‘societalization projects’ (e.g. radical Thatcherism). The first solution begs far too many questions – especially the crucial one of whether modern societies are really constituted mainly in and through states. The second solution offers far too many answers – one for each specific societalization project – and also fails to address the problem of the material preconditions of a successful project. In retrospect neither approach is at all satisfactory.

Indeed, it is doubtful whether any firm definition of ‘society in general’ would amount to more than an arbitrary list of putative conditions of existence (touching on institutional integration as well as social cohesion) for the intergenerational reproduction of a socially acknowledged ‘community of fate’. The nature of any particular society would vary with its collective identity and how these conditions were met. It would emerge from and be based on a more extensive substratum of social relations which included many more elemental relations than those which are articulated to form this particular set of ‘society effects’. There are always interstitial, residual, marginal, irrelevant, recalcitrant and contradictory elements and, in so far as alternative societies are possible, there is scope for conflict over rival ‘societal projects’ as well as emergent contradictions among institutional logics. In this sense effective societalization has both a ‘social’ and a ‘system’ integration aspect (cf. Lockwood 1964). In another context it might be worth exploring these issues more fully but for the moment I want to emphasize another set of issues. For social interaction and organizational life can occur in the absence of societies, much of social life occurs without regard to their existence, if any, and there is no reason to privilege ‘society’ as a unit of analysis. On the contrary, as argued in chapter 9, there are many good reasons to look at other sites of social relations and other axes of organization.

The second, increasingly frequent meaning of ‘societalization’ arises from a simultaneous extension and attenuation of the more literal meaning. Its use is generic and covers the complex social processes in and through which specific institutional orders and their broader social preconditions are secured. Many problems of expanded economic reproduction, for example, can be analysed by referring to broader social relations short of society as a whole. Thus regulation theory is concerned not merely with narrow economic reproduction but also with a wide range of social conditions necessary for this to occur. This concern is quite explicit in analyses of successive ‘social structures of accumulation’ (SSAs) but other regulation theorists also work with an implicit notion of l’economia integrale (integral economy). The latter can be defined as an ‘economic nucleus + its mode of social regulation’ or as the historic bloc formed through the structural coupling of an economic ‘base’ and the various social forms supportive of and/or consistent with it. Likewise it is perfectly possible to analyse the expanded reproduction of ‘state effects’ without referring to ‘society’ as a whole. Thus Gramsci analysed lo stato integrale (‘the integral state’ or ‘the state in its inclusive sense’) by exploring ‘political society + civil society’ from the viewpoint of the forms and effectiveness of state power. Although Gramsci ‘s concept seems all-embracing, there are many aspects of society which can safely be ignored as irrelevant or marginal to this problem. Indeed, in certain senses one could argue that the tasks of the state can include compensating for the non-coincidence of the boundaries of state and society and/or the relative weakness of ‘society effects’. In both these cases, then, and they could well be multiplied by looking at other institutional orders integrally or ‘in their inclusive sense’, a broad-ranging social analysis is possible without invoking ‘society’ in any positive, as opposed to loosely contextual, sense. However, in so far as an expanded reproduction of the economic or political orders requires an effective coupling between the institutional order in question and others within a more encompassing social context, we can talk generically about ‘societalization’. Here it connotes ‘integral’ analyses of specific institutional orders: institutions in their societal context.

The essays below are mainly concerned with two types of ‘integral’ (hence partial!) societalization. The first deploys a Marxist critique of political economy to explore the anatomy of ‘bourgeois society’ from the viewpoint of the expanded reproduction of capital. This is where concepts such as ‘historic bloc’ (or SSA) enter the analysis and much of Marxist state theory has been concerned with the state’s functions for capitalist societalization. The second area is more concerned with the state as such and looks at the state in its integral sense with special reference to ‘state effects’. Although it is common practice to define a society through ‘its’ state (e.g. British society), it is perfectly normal to analyse states and political systems without referring to society as a whole. For, although states must be related to their societal context, this context is always both less and more then ‘society’. It is less than ‘society’ in so far as it excludes many aspects or effects of the latter; and it is more than ‘society’ in so far as it includes social relations which escape integration into ‘society effects’ and/or which lie beyond them in other ‘societies’, ‘states’, ‘economies’, or other institutional orders. Moreover, in exercising its responsibility for maintaining social cohesion, the state does not operate on ‘society’ as such but on a complex field of social relations. This is yet another reason why the conceptual couplet ‘state-society’ is doubly misleading.

Reconsidered in these terms, a standard criticism of Marxist work, namely, that it involves economic or class reductionism, appears in a different light. For, rather than being a totalizing view of ‘society’, Marxist analysis is only concerned with ‘capitalist societalization’ and not with society effects in general. Society is merely a horizon against which to explore one possible axis of societalization and its implications for the ensemble of social relations. In turn, this suggests that a feminist could explore patriarchal societialization without falling into essentialism; or an anarchist study the preconditions, dynamic and impact of the state form. In all cases societalization can be explored from the viewpoint of participants and/or outside observers. Where capitalist societalization is concerned, for example, one could examine accumulation strategies, state strategies and bourgeois hegemonic projects; and/or the complex historical interaction of structural and strategic factors in the evolution of capitalist societalization in its broader social context. Capital and class will obviously be crucial issues for such an analysis but they will enter not only as explanatory principles but also as reference points for assessing the significance of other forms of social relation. When seen from this less ambitious perspective, there are two potential weaknesses in Marxist analysis: first, it tends to ignore other axes of societalization or treat them as secondary and, secondly, it tends to deny the authenticity of projects which give primacy to other forms of societalization. In short, if society is understood as a natural and inclusive social phenomenon, there is a standing invitation to essentialism. But, if we abandon the notion of ‘society’ as a privileged reference point or explicandum, the danger of essentialism is diminished.

States, State Projects and State Effects

It is in dealing with the state from this perspective that I introduced the rather idiosyncratic concept of ‘state effects’. This mirrors regulation theorists’ concern with the unity and cohesion of the circuit of capital as well as the more general post-structuralist critique of the positivity of ‘society’ as an object of enquiry. It is surprising now, looking back, how seldom Marxist analyses of the state ever critically evaluated the very nature of the state itself. In turn, since my early work focused on theories of the state rather than on states themselves, it was unconcerned with the prior question of whether and in what sense the state could be said to exist. For, as Rovirosa suggests, it is no more necessary for a critique of state theories to ask whether the state exists than for a critique of various religious doctrines to question whether God exists (Rovirosa 1988). Once we move from a critique of state theories to research on actual states, however, the modalities of their existence, if any, become quite crucial. And, once we pose this question and explore possible answers, we will discover a long history of scepticism (for a particularly forthright critique of claims for the positivity of the state, see Kelsen 1945; and, more recently, Abrams 1977). It is not my task to present that history here but the tradition certainly lives on in many areas of social and political enquiry (see chapter 12). It might be helpful for some readers, however, to trace the germs of this idea in my own work and its culmination in the notion of ‘state projects’ as the source of ‘state effects’.

My first published review of state theories (Jessop 1977) stressed the complex and conflictual character of state apparatuses and institutions and noted how this very fact ruled out both crude instrumentalism and treatments of the state as a subject in its own right (see chapter 1, pp. 44–6). This conclusion soon gelled into the basic argument that an adequate account of the state should treat it ‘as a set of institutions that cannot, qua structural ensemble, exercise power’ (Jessop 1979a; cf. chapter 4, p. 116). In turn this postulate sustained the related arguments that, first, ‘one can legitimately define the state in various ways since it has no essential unity which establishes unambiguous institutional boundaries’; and that, secondly, ‘whatever one’s chosen definition, it is essential to consider the complex forms of articulation among state institutions and between state and non-state institutions in the overall reproduction of capital accumulation and political domination’ (cf. chapter 4, p. 117). The Capitalist State then argued that the unity, if any, of the various state apparatuses, ‘far from being pregiven, must be constituted politically’ (Jessop 1982: 222). Indeed, since there were real problems in securing both the formal and the substantive unity of the institutions comprising the state apparatus, specific strategic projects could play a crucial role in limiting conflicts within and among its various branches and/or managers. In this context I referred en passant to the Poulantzasian idea of ‘state party’ and focused on the possible role of ‘hegemonic projects’ in providing an ideological and material base for the relative unity and cohesion of the state (Jessop 1982: 231–3, 244–5, 259).

This view was clearly unsatisfactory because it failed properly to distinguish between the strictly administrative problem of ‘apparatus unity’ and the more general problem of the state’s potential role in unifying a society divided into classes. The significance of this distinction dawned on me whilst I was completing my critique of Poulantzas. Thus, drawing on his work, I suggested in the concluding programmatic statement of Nicos Poulantzas that we needed to separate analytically the sort of political hegemony involved in securing the substantive institutional unity of the capitalist type of state from that which was involved in infusing this institutional unity with a definite class unity. In addition, the substantive institutional unity of the state could be understood narrowly (as the state’s capacity to use constitutionalized violence to reproduce its own institutional system and secure compliance with its policies in the face of resistance) and/or more broadly in terms of its capacity successfully to perform its global political function of maintaining social cohesion. Only where these unities were combined with a national-popular project would the state and its managers become the political Traeger (support) of capitalist interests. In the absence of such a hegemonic project successfully linking institutional and class unity, however, ‘state managers themselves might constitute the unity of the state around its narrow political functions at the expense of the state’s global political function. Or, worse still, the unity of the state, always provisional, unstable, and tendential, might collapse completely’ (Jessop 1985a: 350).

It was shortly after this monograph was published that ‘state project’ was entered as an explicit term in my own state lexicon. Its essential theoretical function is to sensitize us to the inherent improbability of the existence of a unified state and to indicate the need to examine the structural and strategic factors which contribute to the existence of ‘state effects’. Moreover, just as there can be competing accumulation strategies or hegemonic projects, so too can there be competing state projects. This implies that effectively functioning states are emergent, tendential phenomena and that there could well be continuing struggles to impose contradictory ‘apparatus unities’ on (potential) state organs. In turn this suggests that the always tendential institutional logic and distinctive interests of the state cannot, pace the state-centred approach, be defined independently of the state projects, if any, which happen to be politically hegemonic or dominant at any given moment. There is never a point when the state is finally built within a given territory and thereafter operates, so to speak, on automatic pilot according to its own definite, fixed and inevitable laws. Nor, to be somewhat less demanding, is there ever a moment when a single state project becomes so hegemonic that all state managers will simply follow universal rules to define their duties and interests as members of a distinct governing class. Whether, how and to what extent one can talk in definite terms about the state actually depends on the contingent and provisional outcome of struggles to realize more or less specific ‘state projects’. For, whatever constitutions might declare about the unity and sovereignty of the modern state as a juridical subject, there are often several rival ‘states’ competing for a temporary and local hegemony within a given national territory. Nor do national boundaries as such constitute a fixed horizon for emergent state projects: there is no more reason to rule out strategies aiming to build multi- and transnational networks and circuits of state power than there is to exclude local or regional state projects. These reflections suggest that state actions should not be attributed to the state as an originating subject but should be understood as the emergent, unintended and complex resultant of what rival ‘states within the state’7 have done and are doing on a complex strategic terrain.8

Strategic Selectivity

This brings us to the other relatively novel term introduced below: that of ‘strategic selectivity’. Whereas the concept of ‘state projects’ highlights the state’s character as both a site and an object of strategic elaboration, ‘strategic selectivity’ brings out the state’s differential impact on the balance of political forces and the strategies which they can pursue. There is nothing very original about this general theme in Marxist studies, of course, since it was already present in Marx’s work or Lenin’s claim that the bourgeois democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capital (see chapter 1). The main source of the concept as I deploy it, however, is first found in Poulantzas’s account of the state as a social relation. All that I have tried to do is bring out more clearly the implications of this rather elliptical thesis.

Above all my interpretation stresses the relational character of the state’s selectivity. Its differential impact on the capacity of different class (-relevant) forces to pursue their interests in different strategies over a given time horizon is not inscribed in the state system as such. Instead it depends on the relation between state structures and the strategies which various forces adopt towards it. The bias inscribed on the terrain of the state as a site of strategic action can only be understood as a bias relative to specific strategies pursued by specific forces to advance specific interests over a given time horizon in terms of a specific set of other forces each advancing their own interests through specific strategies. Particular forms of state privilege some strategies over others, privilege the access of some forces over others, some interests over others, some time horizons over others, some coalition possibilities over others. A given type of state, a given state form, a given form of regime, will be more accessible to some forces than others according to the strategies they adopt to gain state power. And it will be more suited to the pursuit of some types of economic or political strategy than others because of the modes of intervention and resources which characterize that system.

The point of adopting a relational, strategic-theoretical approach is not to capture the (non-existent) ‘essence’ of the capitalist state. The point is to pose and answer such questions as: how have the strategic capacities of states in Western Europe affected their ability to manage economic crisis, why has the labour movement been able to maintain the welfare state in some countries but not others, what has influenced the choice between neo-liberal and neo-corporatist strategies in the transition to post-Fordism, why has the women’s movement been more influential in some states than others, what impact does the movement from direct to indirect taxation have on investment and consumption? This requires a real effort to develop middle range concepts for analysing the state which are commensurable with the fundamental categories of Marxist political economy. This is where my more empirical research (for example, on the significance of Thatcherism in the transition to post-Fordism) is currently engaged.

The Method of Articulation

Having introduced some distinctive substantive themes from the present collection, I can now comment on two of its basic methodological features. These are the use of what I have termed the ‘method of articulation’ and the insistence on the ‘contingent necessity’ of social phenomena. These features are actually closely related and can best be understood if I spell out the meaning of the basic method. This is essentially a method of theory construction but its validity also depends on specific ontological and epistemological claims.

In ontological terms, the need for the method is implied in the non-necessary interaction of different causal chains to produce a definite outcome whose own necessity originates only in and through the contingent coming together of these causal chains in a definite context. Epistemologically, if one accepts that such ‘contingent necessities’9 exist in the real world, it follows that an adequate understanding of such events requires us to combine concepts, assumptions and principles of explanation from different theoretical systems and to relate them to a given, theoretically defined explanendum. In turn this implies that the appropriate methodology for theory construction is one based on a dual movement: first, from abstract to concrete along one plane of analysis; and, secondly, from simple to complex through the differential articulation of different planes of analysis of the real world. By combining these two forms of theoretical development, increasingly adequate explanations are generated. It is in this context that I first commented on the ‘method of articulation’ and this methodological interpretation is its primary meaning in the essays presented below (cf. Jessop 1982: 213–20).

There is also a fourth sense in which the word ‘articulation’ will sometimes be used below. For, the above-mentioned meta-theoretical issues apart, articulation is also an important practice in many different substantive areas. It has been identified, for example, as the primary mechanism involved in semiotics. Thus it is suggested that meaning derives from the differential articulation of a plurality of symbols, words or discourses and is thereby generated from the relations established among them in inherently unstable chains of signification.10 It is the conflation of these substantive mechanisms with the abstract methodological implications of the articulatory method which lends credence to the claim of discourse analysts to have developed the master analytic for the social sciences. This claim is contested in chapter 10 below. Different kinds of articulatory practices are also important in other substantive fields: logistics (the articulation of both physical objects and social relations in time and space), musical composition,11 politico-military strategy, hegemonic wars of position and so forth. Since these substantive articulatory practices are so varied, we should be careful not to take any one as the paradigmatic form of the others. Instead we need to explore each in its own terms as well as its connection with other types of articulatory practice. This is another area where the ‘strategic-relational’ approach can prove useful.

Contingent Necessity

Some commentators have claimed that the concept of ‘contingent necessity’ embodies a contradictio in adjecto. This criticism is typically rooted in a quite different set of meta-theoretical assumptions since it makes no sense within the realist approach I have just outlined. For, in terms of the latter perspective, the words ‘contingency’ and ‘necessity’ refer to two different conceptual systems.12 Whereas ‘contingent’ is a logical concept and concerned with theoretical indeterminability, ‘necessity’ is an ontological concept and refers to determinacy in the real world. Thus ‘contingent’ means ‘indeterminable within the terms of a single theoretical system’; it can properly be juxtaposed to the notion of ‘necessity’, which signifies the assumption underpinning any realist scientific enquiry that ‘everything that happens is caused’.13

In the light of these meta-theoretical remarks, I would suggest that the apparently paradoxical concept of ‘contingent necessity’ implies the following five main arguments:

1 that an adequate explanation for an actual event must show how different causal chains have interacted to make it necessary;

2 even though that actual event is the overdetermined result of the interaction of different causal chains, no single theory exists (or could be developed) which would explain why this interaction had to occur nor why its outcome was necessary;

3 since the necessity of an actual event is indeterminable (contingent) relative to any one theoretical schema, explanations for it must be historical (or genealogical);

4 this does not mean that explanations involve a mere chronological enumeration of discrete events which fails to refer to their origins in real causal mechanisms and tendencies; and

5 the adequacy of an explanation for a ‘contingently necessary’ empirical event depends on the level of abstraction and degree of complexity at which the event is specified – the less abstract and more complex the event, the more determinate it is and the more detailed must be any specification of causal mechanisms, initial conditions and so forth.

Clearly these arguments apply to all forms of scientific enquiry and not merely (or especially) to questions of state theory. But they have a particular resonance for attempts to avoid the many forms of Marxist reductionism: economism, politicism, ideologism, class reductionism, functionalism and formalism. Quite simply, such an approach rules out any possibility that a single set of causal mechanisms could explain the concrete, complex development of social life. Thus I do not believe that the economic system (or the dominant mode of production) has the properties necessary to enable it to play a unilateral causal role in determining the form, functions or impact of other systems of social relations. Indeed, I deny that any system of social relations can have these properties. Nor do I believe that Marxist analyses (i.e. studies which focus on modes of production, their dynamics, their conditions of existence and their effects on other phenomena) could exhaust all aspects of social structures and/or social relations. This implies in turn that, for some purposes, Marxist analyses must be articulated with concepts, principles of explanation and assumptions drawn from non-Marxist theories. One of my objectives in the following essays is to identify some of these concepts, explanatory principles and assumptions and to show how they might be integrated into a Marxist critique of the state and political economy.

Errors and Omissions

It would be quite wrong, then, to conclude that my focus on Marxist theories of law and the state or my concern to relate law and the state to Marxist economic categories imply that the modern state is in essence a capitalist state. I may have erred on other grounds in concentrating on these issues but not because of any alleged essentialism. Indeed, one basic aim of my approach is to refute attempts to reduce the state to just one of its multiple determinations – whether as a principle of explanation for what states are and what they do and/or as a point of reference for assessing the significance of the state in reproducing specific social forms. In this sense my work on Marxist theories can also be interpreted as an extended exploration of the methodology of theory construction. To the extent that the assumptions which inform the method of articulation are valid, it should also be applicable to other fields of state research.

This is my attempt at exculpation for two glaring omissions over the years: the failure to address militarism and warfare and the nature of feminist state theories.14 These are not unrelated. For, as Bob Connell expressed it so pithily: ‘the state arms men and disarms women’ (Connell 1988: 126). Even if one could claim, along with Catherine MacKinnon, that ‘there is no feminist theory of the state’ (MacKinnon 1983: 635), there are certainly more than enough ‘force theories’ of the state with which to contend.15 Whilst feminists have developed their own distinctive theories of gender and/or power relations, their ideas on the general nature and form of the state have quite often been imported from outside.16 They have aimed at a feminist critique of political theory rather than a feminist theory of the state as such17 or have been concerned with specific, gender-relevant aspects of the operation and impact of states, notably in their representative, legal and welfare functions. These have not been my substantive theoretical concerns: my starting point has been the specificity of the modern state as an impersonal, formally class-neutral, public authority with a constitutionalized monopoly of violence. The critique of Marxist political economy seemed the best place to begin in explaining why the modern state had acquired this particular form. Besides this, the critique of political theory has become important for me only recently through its formative role in shaping state projects and, as for the state’s strategic selectivity, I have been more interested in some of its capital- and/or class-relevant aspects. In another sense my concern has been with the methodological problems raised by state theory and, in this regard, Marxist state theory has hitherto offered a theoretically more sophisticated and self-aware body of work than feminist state theory.18

None the less it seems high time that more Marxist state theorists took account of some, if not all, feminist critiques of the state. We can classify the latter in the same methodological terms as Marxist theories: they too employ three main methods – subsumption, derivation and articulation. Thus some radical feminist theories simply subsume each and every state under the overarching category of patriarchal domination: whatever their apparent differences, all states are expressions of patriarchy and each must be opposed. Other feminist theorists have tried to derive the necessary form and/or functions of the state from the imperatives of reproduction (rather than production), from the changing forms of patriarchal domination, the nature of domestic mode of production etc. And yet others seek to establish the nature of the state on the basis of the contingent articulation between patriarchal and capitalist forms of domination crystallized in the state. The best work in this field confirms the importance of the articulation method: for it shows that patriarchal and gender relations make a difference to the state.

A Marxist state theorist could adopt one of three broad positions on feminist work. It could be dismissed as irrelevant; accepted as a more or less important supplement to the core contributions of a Marxist critique; or welcomed as a fundamental challenge to the received wisdom. For myself I incline to the third position. Since a general introduction is not the place to expand on this at length, let me take four quick examples from many. First, the statist as much as Marxist claim that the modern state enjoys a legitimate monopoly over the means of physical coercion must be fundamentally qualified. For it relates much more to the separation of coercion from the organization of production (exploitation takes the form of exchange, dictatorship takes the form of democracy) than it does to the exclusion of male coercion from the family and patriarchal domination over women. Secondly, if the state is uncritically defined in terms of the juridical distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’, it is not just class relations which are obfuscated but also, and perhaps even more fundamentally, a crucial mechanism of patriarchal domination. Thirdly, turning to the repressive core of states constituted by their military and police apparatus, feminist analyses have shown important links among militarism, the state and patriarchy. And, fourth (but by no means last), feminist research is beginning to reveal new aspects of the strategic selectivity of the state in relation to its basic forms and not just in relation to the specific content of one or another policy field. Thus there are feminist critiques of forms of representation (e.g. how the rise of the party form reinforced the division between public and private), the internal organization of the state (the feminist critique of bureaucracy as form) and intervention (e.g. the very form of the Keynesian welfare state).19 Pursuing these lines of enquiry through the method of articulation would mean transforming oneself from a Marxist state theorist into an articulated Marxist-feminist (or feminist-Marxist) theorist. But this would be no bad thing!

I am less convinced that ‘force theories’ pose a basic threat to Marxist theorizing but I am still open to persuasion. Some of the basic objections to claims that the fundamental dynamic of states is rooted in their control over armed force and their propensity to engage in warfare and predation were first clearly stated more than a century ago by Engels (1878, 1888). Likewise the apparent contradiction between multiple states and a tendentially global economy poses no basic theoretical difficulties for a Marxist critique (see Jessop 1982: 112–17). That there might be an emergent, radically autonomous military system with its own exterminist logic is more worrying, perhaps, because of its control over the ‘means of destruction’. But there are analogous tendencies towards autonomization elsewhere in the state system (witness Luhmann’s critique of the self-closure of the welfare state, 1981a) and they can be addressed with the sort of articulatory method recommended here. Nor do I feel inclined to apologise for neglecting international relations. They are certainly an important site of social practices but there is no more reason to accord them a special theoretical status than the ‘micro-physics of power’ relations.

Concluding Remarks