What is the state?
A moment’s foray into the now substantial annals of Marxist state theory will reveal that whilst Marxists may well rely implicitly upon certain conceptions and understandings of the state, they are notoriously bad at consigning these to the page.
This makes it somewhat difficult to identify any analytically precise Marxist definition of the state as an object of inquiry, let alone one that is commonly agreed upon. Family resemblances in the assumptions which inform Marxist conceptions of the state can nonetheless be identified - indeed, these can be crystallized into four rather different conceptions of the state.The state as the repressive arm of the bourgeoisie
According to Martin Carnoy: ‘it is the notion of the [capitalist] state as the repressive apparatus of the bourgeoisie that is the distinctly Marxist characteristic of the state’ (Carnoy 1984: 50). This somewhat onedimensional conception of state power (the state as the expression of the repressive might of the ruling class) is most closely associated with Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917 [1968]), but is also appealed to in the work of Engels (see, for instance, 1844 [1975]: 205-7; 1884 [1978]: 340; cf. van den Berg 1988: 30-1). Its functionalism - the attempt to explain something by appeal to its consequences - is well captured by Hal Draper:
The state... comes into existence insofar as the institutions needed to carry out the common functions of society require, for their continued maintenance, the separation of the power of forcible coercion from the general body of society. (Draper 1977: 50)
More on the topic What is the state?:
- The so-called ‘new institutionalism’ is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of theories of the state and, like some of the other perspectives considered in this volume, it is by no means only a theory of the state
- Like Henry Higgins who, through his work changed the object of his studies into something other than what it was, the purpose of the Marxist theory of the state is not just to understand the capitalist state but to aid in its destruction. (Wolfe 1974: 131)
- The concept of the state
- Beyond the state?
- Marxism and the state
- SANCTION AND THE STATE
- The state as institutional contextualization
- The genealogy of the concept of the state
- The state and problems of legitimacy
- Green critiques of the state
- The Weberian definition of the modern state
- Statism and institutionalism.· is there more focus on the state?
- The state as an instrument of the ruling class
- Recent developments in state theory
- Greening the state?
- Defining the state
- The active role of the state
- The state still matters: but it may no longer do the things it did
- Forms of state failure