Everyday Life and the State

Peter Bratsis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317260035
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

'Peter Bratsis breaks new ground, forcing us to think of the connections between big structures and our most intimate inner lives. A fascinating and erudite book.' -Frances Fox Piven, CUNY Nearly four centuries ago, liberal political thought asserted that the state was the product of a distant, pre-historical, social contract. Social science has done little to overcome this fiction. Even the most radical of theories have tended to remain silent on the question of the production of the state, preferring instead to focus on the determinations and functions of state actions. Bratsis argues that the causes of the state are to be found within everyday life. Building upon insights from social, political, and anthropological theories, his book shows how the repetitions and habits of our daily lives lead to our nationalization and the perception of certain interests and institutions as 'public.' Bratsis shows that only by seeking the state's everyday, material causes can we free ourselves from the pitfalls of viewing the state as natural, inevitable, and independent from social relations.

1 The Spontaneous Theory of the State and the State as Spontaneous Theory

DOI: 10.4324/9781315634777-1

Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. … In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to the seduction of the initial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one’s first observation. … Far from marveling at the object, objective thought must treat it ironically.

—Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire

That Marxist state theory should be silent on the question of the state’s production is shocking for two reasons. Firstly, Marxist theory has always held the position that its goal is not simply to make sense of the world, but to change it, to transform reality through a critical and demystifying understanding of it.¹ A “philosophy of praxis” (Gramsci) or “class struggle in theory” (Althusser) is the intended character of such a theoretical project; Marxist political theory takes as its goal the transformation of society through the production of a critical and subversive understanding of it.² Indeed, irrespective of the degree of success, the production of critical knowledge has been an explicit goal for state theory.³

¹ Etienne Balibar notes this point in his discussion of Marx’s analysis of the commodity form_ “What, then, is Marx’s objective in describing the phenomenon in this way? It is twofold. On the one hand, by a movement akin to demystification or demythification, he is concerned to dissolve that phenomenon, to show that it is an appearance based, in the last instance, on a ‘misunderstanding.’ The phenomena just mentioned (exchange-value considered as a property of objects, the autonomous movement of commodities and prices) will have to be traced back to a real cause which has been masked and the effect of which has been inverted” (as in a camera obscura) (Balibar 1995, 60). ² Slavoj Žižek has summarized this particular component of Marxist thought: “In short, in Marxism as well as in psychoanalysis we encounter what Althusser calls topique, the topical character of thought. This topicality does not concern only or even primarily the fact that the object of thought has to be conceived as a complex Whole of instances that cannot be reduced to some identical underlying Ground (the intricate interplay of base in superstructure in Marxism; of Ego, Superego and Id in psychoanalysis). “Topicality,” rather, refers to the topical character of ‘thought’ itself: theory is always part of the conjunction into which it intervenes. The ‘object’ of Marxism is society, yet ‘class struggle in theory’ means that the ultimate theme of Marxism is the ‘material force of ideas’—that is, the way Marxism itself qua revolutionary theory transforms its object (brings about the emergence of the revolutionary subject, etc.). … In short, a ‘topic’ theory fully acknowledges the short circuit between the theoretical frame and an element within this frame: theory itself is a moment of the totality that is its ‘object’” (Žižek 1994, 182). ³ For example, Ralph Miliband framed The State in Capitalist Society as a critical response to the pluralist hegemony inside and outside the academy (cf. Miliband 1969, 1–7). Nicos Poulantzas intended Political Power and Social Classes to be for the political moment of the capitalist mode of production what Marx’s Capital was for its economic moment: a rigorous and demystifying understanding of its specificity and dynamics (cf. Poulantzas 1973, 16–23; Jessop 1985, 59–60). Even behind the presumed obscurity and theoreticism of their debate, we see that Poulantzas stressed the critical function rather than simply the methodological or epistemological content of Miliband’s arguments. The essence of Poulantzas’s critique of Miliband is that he fails to sufficiently demystify the state.

Second, it was Marx himself who first noted the tendency for political theory to misrecognize the state as being universal and ahistorical. In his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” Marx argued that Hegel’s misrecognition of the state as universal and as possessing a privileged ontological status in relation to “civil society” functioned to legitimize the state. As Jean Hyppolite has noted:

When, in turn, Marx criticizes Hegel for having opposed bourgeois or civil society to the State, for having arrived by deduction at the constitutional monarchy and Prussian democracy, giving them an aspect of the eternal, he is simply revealing an essential tendency of Hegelian thought, which is to legitimate existing reality by conceiving it philosophically. … The truly concrete subject, the bearer of predicates, is man as social being, who belongs to what Hegel called bourgeois society, and the State, which Hegel mistakenly took for the Subject, as Idea, is in fact a predicate of man’s social nature. The Idea—in reality, the product of man’s social activity—appears in Hegel as the authentic which results in “a mystery which degenerates into mystification,” as Marx puts it. (Hyppolite 1969, 108–112)

This straightforward and powerful opposition to the Hegelian view of the state has tended to be forgotten by a Marxist state theory that has largely been content to debate the class functions of the state while ignoring key questions regarding its ontological status and historical specificities.⁴

⁴ Paul Thomas has suggested that a return Marx’s early work, particularly his critique of Hegel, would be of great benefit to state theory precisely because of the ways that Marx opposes Hegel’s view of the state as a “finished thing” (cf. Thomas 1994, 27–19). In a similar way, Stathis Kouvelakis returns to the Marx of the early 1840s in order to discover his theory of the state and politics, coming to conclusions very similar to Thomas’s regarding the significance of Marx’s break with Hegel vis-à-vis the theory of the state (cf. Kouvelakis 2003, 246–256).

Of course, no Marxist state theorist says that the state is an a priori, that its existence is not a product of social relations or practices, that it does not have a cause. Nonetheless, state theory acts “as if” this were the case. Precisely because state theory does not explain the existence of the state, because state theory takes the state as its point of departure and fails to demystify its existence through explanation, all state theory proceeds “as if” the state was indeed a universal a priori predicate to our social existence rather than a product of our social existence. This “as if” act by state theory is a fetishizing act (and thus reifies the state) because it endows the state with ontological qualities not its own and abstracts its existence from the realm of social relations.⁵

⁵ See Lukacs (1971, esp. 83–110) and Žižek (1989, ch. 1) for an extended discussion of reification and fetishization.

The State as Subject and as Object

This reification is present in both dominant conceptualizations of the state within Marxist and neo-Weberian state theory: the state as subject and the state as object. State-as-subject conceptualizations understand the state to be a social actor distinguished by a common subjectivity among the people who occupy state positions. In its Leninist form, this conceptualization considers the state to be an appendage of the bourgeoisie by virtue of the bourgeois class consciousness of those who “control” the state (cf. Lenin 1932). For Lenin, the state functions as an “instrument” of class domination.⁶ For the state to be an instrument of class domination, however, a certain class consciousness must be presupposed on the part of those who control state power. The “instrument” is not the state in this context but, rather, state power. This is to say, in all theories that conceive of state power as a thing (instrumentalist theories of power), the state institutions must be unified by a given subjectivity for state power itself to gain coherence and unity.

⁶ This understanding of the Leninist theory of the state goes against most categorizations of it. Most commentators focus on the claim that the state is an instrument of class domination and categorize Lenin’s conception of the state as being “instrumentalist,” that Lenin considers the state to be an instrument/thing/object (cf. Jessop 1990, 28). There is no doubt that Lenin is an instrumentalist, but, as I argue below, instrumentalist theories of power result in a state-as-subject conception of the state since only in this way can the unity of state institutions and the coherent function of state power be understood.

The most cogent example of this Leninist concept of the state as subject can be found in Miliband’s The State in Capitalist Society. Miliband concurrently emphasizes the institutional fragmentation of state power and the importance of the “state elite” in giving direction and coherence to this potentially fragmented power:

There is one preliminary problem about the state which is very seldom considered, yet which requires attention if the discussion of its nature and role is to be properly focused. This is the fact that “the state” is not a thing, that it does not, as such, exist. What “the state” stands for is a number of particular institutions which, together, constitute its reality, and which interact as part of what may be called the state system. (Miliband 1969, 49)

These are the institutions—the government, the administration, the military and the police, the judicial branch, subcentral government and parliamentary assemblies—which make up “the state,” and whose interrelationship shapes the form of the state system. It is these institutions in which “state power” lies, and it is through them that this power is wielded in its different manifestations by the people who occupy the leading positions in each of these institutions. (Miliband 1969, 54)

Having established the fragmented nature of the state and state power, emphasis must be placed upon the agency of this state elite in uniting these institutions and for “wielding” state power in a coherent way. The consciousness of this state elite is what must be examined for Miliband if we are to be able to characterize the state as a coherent actor. To these ends, he examines the class origins, social networks, and educational attributes that characterize all state elites. It is upon that basis that he is able to conclude that the state is a bourgeois actor.

The reason for attaching considerable importance to the social composition of the state elite in advanced capitalist countries lies in the strong presumption which this creates as to its general outlook, ideological disposition and political bias. (Miliband 1969, 68)

What the evidence conclusively suggests is that in terms of social origin, education and class situation, the men who have manned all command positions in the state system have largely, and in many cases overwhelmingly, been drawn from the world of business and property, or from the professional middle classes. (Miliband 1969, 66)

Thus, a central concept for Miliband is what he calls “bourgeoisification,” which he uses to argue that even those members of the state elite who do not come from the bourgeois class itself undergo a process of education and socialization through which they learn to think like those who are members of the bourgeoisie.

In its neo-Weberian form, the state-as-subject conceptualization considers the state to be a distinct actor by virtue of the bureaucratic rationality that unites its members and that provides a socially autonomous set of interests such members act to maximize (cf. Block 1987; Skocpol 1979 and 1985; and Levi 1988). Unlike its Leninist counterpart, such theories posit the autonomy of the state from society, since the subjectivity that unites its members is state specific and does not originate within society, state managers have a subjectivity that is all their own.

Notable contemporary versions of such arguments can be found in the work of Theda Skocpol and Fred Block. Block rejects more orthodox Marxist theories of the state since they assume a class consciousness among the bourgeoisie that he claims is reductionist and remains unexplained (Block 1987, 52–58). As a corrective, Block puts forth an argument that does not rely on such assumptions and that, he claims, does a better job of explaining what objective processes determine why the state does what it does. In doing this, Block privileges three groups, capitalists, workers, and the managers of the state, as being the principal agents behind state policy. Capitalists and workers are assumed not to have a class consciousness; they are guided by their individual economic interests. State managers are assumed to share a set of interests (namely, the preservation and expansion of the state) given their position within the institutions of the state and are expected to act in ways that further these interests. This is to say that it is assumed that the individual interests of state managers can be reduced to their institutional interests (bureaucratic rationality). Similarly, Skocpol argues that the state is best understood as having interests of its own that make its rationality autonomous from the rationality of social actors (Skocpol 1979, 24–33).

The fetish in the above neo-Weberian approaches is an institutionalist one. State managers, it is argued, share a bureaucratic rationality, which explains the given subjectivity of this state as actor. This rationality (or, subjectivity) is a function of the institutional position of these individuals. If you or I occupied one of these positions, it would be expected that we too would then “think” and “act” in accordance with this bureaucratic rationality. Thus, we could say, the state as an autonomous social agent exists when those individuals who occupy the positions of state managers share a bureaucratic rationality and act accordingly. However, this relation between the position of an individual within the institutions of the state and their “bureaucratic” consciousness remains unexplained. It is assumed that the state exists since it is assumed that any person who occupies an institutional position within the state acquires this bureaucratic rationality. At no point does Block or Skocpol explain how this actually happens and what conditions are necessary for this process to be successful.⁷ Institutions become substituted for state managers. Such neo-Weberian theories talk about institutions acting “as if” these institutions were thinking, calculating agents even though the Weberian assumptions they share place the methodological emphasis on state managers qua individuals and not on institutions as such.⁸ In this way, neo-Weberian theories of the state as subject are guilty of presupposing and reifying the state.

⁷ Skocpol makes some attempt to overcome this in her latter work when she stresses the necessity that state officials share “a unified sense of ideological purpose” for the state to be an autonomous actor (Skocpol 1985). This, however, remains “outside” of her theory since she is unable to examine how this happens. It remains an unexplained external variable that, at best, qualifies claims to state autonomy by positing certain conditions that are necessary but not sufficient for such autonomy to exist. ⁸ “For sociological purposes, however, the phenomenon ‘the state’ does not consist necessarily or even primarily of the elements which are relevant to legal analysis; and for sociological purposes there is no such thing as a collective per...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Great Barrington Books
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Don’t Take It Literally
• 1 The Spontaneous Theory of the State and the State as Spontaneous Theory
• 2 From The King’s Two Bodies to the Fetish of the Public: The Foundations of the State Abstraction
• 3 Political Corruption as Symptom of the Public Fetish; or, Rules of Separation and Illusions of Purity in Bourgeois Societies
• 4 The National Individual and the Machine of Enjoyment; or, The Dangers of Baseball, Hot Dogs, and Apple Pie
• 5 The Constitution of the Greek Americans: Toward an Empirical Study of Interpellation
• 6 Tentative Conclusions and Notes Toward Future Study
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author