Development and Change
Volume 6, Issue 2 pp. 119-135
Full Access

Marxism, Access and the State

Geoff Lamb, 

Geoff Lamb

Search for more papers by this author
First published: April 1975
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1975.tb00680.x
Citations: 15

Abstract

I am grateful to Dave Kaplan for helping me to sharpen the argument at a number of points, and indeed for raising major theoretical issues which I have been unable to tackle adequately in this context.

Footnotes

  • 1 Reprinted in Marx Engels Selected Works. Lawrence and Wishart, 1968, pp. 31–32.
  • 2 April 12, 1871; quoted in Lenin, The State and Revolution. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 2nd rev. edn. 1965, pp. 35–36.
  • 3 ‘The Civil War in France’, Marx Engels, Selected Works, pp. 285, 287.
  • 4 Lenin, The State and Revolution, especially p. 36, where he carefully differentiates between the contemporary dominance of imperialist forms of State, and earlier, ‘pure capitalist’ forms in which the military and the bureaucracy were relatively undeveloped.
  • 5 L. Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)’ in Lenin and Philosophy. Monthly Review Press, 1971.
  • 6 N. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes. New Left Books, 1973.
  • 7 This series of propositions is powerfully argued in ibidem, pp. 40–45.
  • 8 Ibidem p. 49. Lenin's remark is from Selected Works. Moscow 1967, vol. 3, p. 527; Marx's from The Poverty of Philosophy.
  • 9 Poulantzas, Political Power, pp. 53–54.
  • 10 Ibidem, p. 53.
  • 11 I am here deliberately gliding over Poulantzas' discussion of the distinction between hegemonic class, and ruling class in the sense of class ‘in charge’ of the State, and of his related concept of the power bloc. These issues are indeed central to his theory, but complex and full of problems. They are also less central to my immediate concern in this article and are therefore omitted.
  • 12 Poulantzas, Political Power, p. 190, refers to ‘a certain guarantee’ (my emphasis) of the economic interests of the dominated classes: I am unsure whether this important passage, and the concept of a ‘guarantee’ does justice to the notion of economic concessions as a product of active class struggle.
  • 13 Althusser, ‘Ideology’, especially pp. 142–143.
  • 14 Ibidem, p. 144.
  • 15 Ralph Miliband, ‘Poulantzas and the Capitalist State’ in New Left Review 82, Nov.-Dec. 1973. The critique of Poulantzas is part of a debate between the two in the pages of New Left Review (see also NLR numbers 58 and 59); for a comprehensive exposition of Miliband's ideas, see his book, The State in Capitalist Society. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969.
  • 16 Martin Shaw, “ The Theory of the State and Politics: a central paradox of Marxism’, Economy and Society 3, 4 (1974). Shaw in fact goes so far as to quote from Poulantzas’ article and attribute it to the book! I am grateful to Dave Kaplan for pointing out to me that Poulantzas’ later work, Fascisme et Dictature, which has only recently appeared in English translation, and which I have not read, appears to reject Althusser's formulation (pp. 300–301, NLR, 1974). It might be worth noting, too, that a recent article by Poulantzas, ‘ Internationalisation of Capitalist Relations and the Nation-State’, Economy and Society 3: 2, 1974, contains no reference to such ideas — indeed, seems again explicitly to reject them. See especially pp. 173–175.
  • 17 See for example Robin Murray - ‘Internationalisation of Capital and the Nation-State’, New Left Review, 67, 1971.
  • 18 Poulantzas, Political Power, p. 189.
  • 19 Ibidem, pp. 130–131.
  • 20 Balibar, ‘The Rectification of the Communist Manifesto’, translated and published by Partisan, Manchester, from La Pensee, 164, August 1972.
  • 21 Ibidem, pp. 21–22.
  • 22 Poulantzas, Political Power, p. 188.
  • 23 See especially Claude Meillassoux, ‘A Class Analysis of the Bureaucratic Process in Mali’, Journal of Development Studies, Jan. 1970; Hamza Alavi, ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh’, NLR 74, 1972; and John Saul's assessment of Marxist debates on the Tanzanian case, ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania’, in Socialist Register 1975 (Merlin Press, forthcoming).
  • 24 This is not the case, however, with Meillassoux, whose article deserves much fuller treatment than the mere citation I am able to give it here.
  • 25 I emphasise the monopoly-capital point in order to take account of the existence in some countries of the periphery (particularly some Latin American countries) of a substantial though declining set of competitive capitalist structures. An illuminating critique of Alavi's formulations, which have of course broken new ground in the field, is provided in David Kaplan, “The Role of the State: a review of some of the recent literature’. IDS Working Paper 22, Nov. 1974.
  • 26 Charles Bettelheim, Theoretical Comments’ in A. Emmanuel (ed.), Unequal Exchange (New Left Books, 1972), especially pp. 293–299.
  • 27 Annibal Quijano Obregon, ‘ The Marginal Pole of the Economy and the Marginalised Labour Force’, Economy and Society 3: 4, 1974, p. 423. See also Osvaldo Sunkel, ‘Transnational Capitalism and National Disintegration in Latin America’, Social and Economic Studies, 1973. Quijano's reference to apartheid is particularly suggestive here: state control of the articulation between modes in South Africa, and in particular bureaucratic control over the movement and allocation of labour, is almost the paradigm case of the development of ‘access structures’ as the primary mechanism of articulation.
  • 28 Quijano, The Marginal Pole’, p. 427.
  • 29 The access experience of ‘deprived’ categories is discussed in Schaffer and Lamb, ‘Exit, Voice and Access, Social Science Information, December 1974.

      • The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.