State Apparatus

Structures and Language of Legitimacy

Gordon L. Clark, Michael Dear

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000260663
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Originally published in 1984, State Apparatus contributes to the debate on the theory of the state through posing questions regarding the state's form, function, and apparatus.

The book begins by setting out the theoretical and methodological problems and reviewing the various Conservative, Liberal and Marxist theories in light of these. It discusses state activity, using specific case studies to clearly illustrate key points, such as the development of welfare systems in North America and Western Europe. It also explores the use of language under the state, the role of the legal apparatus within a capitalist system, and the "local state". The book concludes with a discussion of democracy and the crisis of legitimacy, and the issue of justice and the state.

State Apparatus is a detailed and comprehensive text, ideal for those with an interest in the history, theory, form, and function of the state.

1
Introduction

The question of the state

The purpose of this book is to examine how the state and the state apparatus structure the sociospatial organization of capitalist society. At the most general level, it is apparent that the state intervenes in virtually all aspects of everyday life. It provides the hospitals in which we are born; schools in which we are educated; jobs at which many of us labor; and social security which supports us until we are buried in a public cemetery. However, at a deeper level, there lies an uneasy suspicion held by many, radicals and conservatives, that the state does more than simply supply a range of public goods and services. There is an increasingly popular sentiment that it purposely controls, and even forms the fundamental processes and structures of society, such as patterns of social welfare, income distribution, and power.

For many people, the state appears as an all-embracing monolith, and they cannot be blamed for holding this perception. Consider for a moment a list of state activities, as reported in a typical daily news bulletin: several nation states have joined with the Commission of the European Economic Community to set new guidelines for the control of multinational enterprises operating within and beyond their territorial boundaries; at the same time, a new conservatism has led to sweeping electoral victories for parties committed to “less government;” but as public expenditure cuts begin to bite, many public services are threatened, leading to central state attempts to decentralize politically contentious responsibilities to lower tiers of government; the growing fiscal crisis of central cities is increasingly recognized as a geographical manifestation of the wider problems of capitalist economies, yet central governments portray themselves as reluctant saviors stepping in to “bail out” the cities; this leads to crises of federalism and arguments over the proper allocation of government duties and functions; and people secure in jobs and homes fight to preserve their status, especially resenting local government proposals to change local zoning laws, which threaten their property values and the possible future wellbeing of their children. This list could be extended but, as it stands, it gives a fairly accurate overall representation of the contemporary reality. State activities range over a multitude of functions, incorporating many different spatial scales: local, regional, national and supranational governments; diverse spheres of social life; economic, political, social and legal systems; and many levels ranging from individual through to aggregate processes. How, therefore, are we to comprehend and analyze the complex phenomenon called “the state”?

This book seeks to provide a systematic understanding of the capitalist state and its apparatus. What is the state? What does it do? How does it operate? What structures does it use to organize itself and society? And whence does it draw its legitimacy? It is obviously unreasonable to expect complete answers to all these questions in a single volume. Our particular interest here lies with understanding the spatial organization of the social system and the dominant characteristics of “western” capitalist societies and, in particular, North America. In what follows, we emphasize two themes which are at the core of our inquiry. The first concerns the theory of the capitalist state: how the forms of the state derive from the capitalist formation; what functions are performed by the capitalist state; and which apparatus are used in the execution of these functions. The second theme concerns the territorial manifestations of state involvement in national, regional and urban processes. In this instance, we focus on the spatial structure of capitalist society which occurs as a consequence of state actions. These two themes intersect throughout the book and, as a result, a concept emerges of geographical structure as a composite product of state action and sociospatial processes under capitalism.

The remainder of this chapter is devoted to outlining the problematic of the capitalist state. This preliminary statement takes the form of a simplified theoretical overview of the capitalist state; an account of our epistemological and methodological assumptions; and a statement on the requirements of a theory of the state.

Capital, the state and space

The theoretical viewpoint adopted in this book has its origins in historical materialism. One of the main precepts of this approach is that sociospatial processes are comprehensible only within the context of an historical analysis of the social relations of production and reproduction. It is also assumed that capitalism is as much a political system as it is economic, although the exact definition of the relative importance of these factors is open to debate. Finally it is also contended that state intervention in sociospatial processes is a social event, embedded within society and deriving its logic from society as a whole. These three precepts assume that human agency is contextual, that is, bound within the fabric of society and itself structured by social relations, both material and cultural. As such, human agency is socially conceived and has a past, a place, and an institutional image. In our terms, the theory of the state and sociospatial processes cannot be divorced from some wider concept of society itself

The organizing principle of capitalism is the relationship of wage labor to capital within a system of specialized commodity production and exchange. This is a general social process whereby materials and equipment are combined with labor power to produce outputs which are then sold by their owners for profit. Capitalism is also a political system of power and domination, in which the surplus generated by labor is the source of profit, and more generally wealth. The exploitation of labor, defined as the ratio of unpaid to paid labor (see Roemer 1981, Ch. 2), is a key characteristic of capitalist production systems which depend on the fact that the value of surplus labor is withheld from labor itself. We assume a labor theory of value, although more as a basis for understanding the nature of exploitation than as a means of determining commodity prices (Harvey 1982). Here, the labor theory of value is a metric, or a criterion, for evaluating the substantive justice of exchange transactions and agreements between labor and capital (Dworkin 1981). In bilateral negotiation over the material conditions of work, employers may be willing to forgo some of their unilateral power of ownership and control. For example, a firm’s dependence upon a group of uniquely skilled workers may force it to provide special working conditions and rights of job tenure. Alternatively, a firm may have so many people applying for jobs that it can dictate wages and conditions without reference to the wishes of its employees.

Capitalist society thus has a specific economic and political structure of production relations. These production relations are embodied in the basic structure of state authority and power, since the state itself is both situated in capitalism and sustains its logic through a specific pattern of private ownership. Through property ownership, capitalists are able to use, dispose of, and hold as wealth the goods created in production. Through these rights and entitlements, defined by Calabresi and Melamed (1972) as “first-order” legal structures, capitalists are able to maintain their exploitative hold over wealth and their control over the means of generating wealth. Although there is extensive competition among capitalists over ownership, these rights give capitalists a great deal of unilateral power which does not require the consent of labor for its exercise. For example, ownership rights enable capitalists to relocate production facilities against the wishes of their workers and the citizens of communities in which they are located.

Two conditions are necessary for the continued viability or reproduction of capitalism. First, the accumulation and circulation problems endemic in decentralized processes of production, market exchange and distribution must be controlled or eliminated. Secondly, there must be a constantly renewed labor force which is socialized according to the existing structure of power and domination as well as the political nature of production and exchange relations. Neither of these conditions is automatically guaranteed. On the one hand, commodity production is frequently characterized by disruptive crises of overproduction, under-consumption, restrictive trade practices, and so on. Not only do firms seek to avoid the market by constructing elaborate oligopolistic devices, but these devices often tend to restrict consumption, impoverish the working class, and threaten the economic viability of the capitalist system as a whole. On the other hand, reproduction of the labor force is subject to unpredictable social and individual political vagaries which threaten to undermine the reproduction of a disciplined workforce. In sum, the smooth operation of commodity exchange is perpetually threatened by the anarchy of production and political conflict between workers and owners over the nature and allocation of entitlements.

The inability of capitalism to guarantee its economic self-regeneration and the continuing threat of class-related political disorder imply the need for some systematic mediating agency. This agency must maintain the vital production and reproduction institutions of capitalist society, and possess the necessary political authority to protect these institutions when they are threatened. Out of this imperative, the “state” appears as the guarantor of social relations in capitalist society. For example, the state sustains the processes of accumulation by ensuring, where possible, a rational system-wide allocation of resources and by direct investment in economic infrastructure, such as the transportation network. At the same time, the state intervenes to ensure social reproduction through housing, welfare, and similar programs. In doing so, the state is also promoting its own interests. It is an institution with its own objectives, as well as an instrument for sustaining the social relations of capitalism. Thus, it seeks to legitimize its own actions and the relationships between owners and workers.

We conceive of the state as deriving equally from the economic and political imperatives of capitalist commodity production. The state is ultimately implicated in the generation and distribution of surplus value as it seeks to sustain its own power and wealth. Thus the capitalist state cannot be neutral or unbiased. However, we should not necessarily conclude that the state is the exclusive domain of privileged élites. The state interacts with society in a continuous spiral of response and counter-response. As capitalist society encounters some new predicament, the state responds, and so society moves toward some further state of development, which in itself generates new difficulties, leading to yet a further round of state intervention.

A key aspect of the market organization of capitalist commodity production has been its particular spatial configuration. An initial trend towards the spatial concentration of industrial activity had its obverse in the spatial expansion of a decentralized commodity market. While firms clustered at the site of cheap power or resources, or took advantage of transportation nodes, commodity exchange was extended through the political integration of world and national markets. Inter-firm agglomeration economies often enhanced surplus-accumulation potentials. As workers were assembled in dense residential areas around the industrial cores, further consumption markets were created, and yet more firms gathered at the core. Through these economic and political mechanisms, a market-oriented spatial system was conceived with its own momentum for growth.

The most significant consequence of this growth dynamic was the creation of two complementary dimensions of spatial organization: first, a “core” area, a complex, integrated hierarchy of predominantly urban centers which formed the major locations of commodity production; and secondly, a “periphery,” a variety of hinterlands subordinate or incidental to the demands of the core area for resources and consumption of commodities. In this way, a spatial system was created which was at once uneven but integrated in terms of growth and exchange. Because this spatial system was founded on a process of social organization for private profit, the pattern of uneven development created its own tensions and dilemmas. These “problems” have included political movements of devolution and questions of the core’s legitimacy, as well as economic impoverishment and marked spatial inequality. Such predicaments have often demanded specialized state intervention, as, for example, in urban and regional planning. Regional development plans have been initiated in the United Kingdom and the US to arrest the decline of obsolescent industrial areas, to bolster flagging consumption and to coordinate the spatial map of resources and economic activity.

In recent years, a new spatial map of capitalism has emerged in North America and, to a lesser extent, in Western Europe. Spatial decentralization of production has occurred, reversing some of the earlier trends of agglomeration and concentration. As a result older industrial centers have declined, and growth in smaller centers has increased costs of providing public infrastructure and brought new problems of economic coordination. The penetration of the capitalist system into less developed countries has also created tensions in regard to external political control and economic exploitation. Not only is the state the facilitator of economic and spatial transformation, but it is also a necessary actor in ameliorating and legitimating the shifting fortunes of areas and their residents. It is not simply the planned actions of the state that are at issue; more significant, but less understood, is the state’s role in structuring the general economic and political environment within which capitalist production relations are set.

In summary, the problematic of the state, as conceived in this book, consists of two major dimensions: an economic imperative derived from the nature of decentralized commodity production, market exchange and the necessities of sustaining accumulation; and a political imperative derived from the need to legitimate class-based divisions of surplus value and the state’s own rôle in protecting an inherently exploitative set of production relations. The historical and spatial specificity of these issues, coupled with a need to develop an understanding of the state itself, implies significant methodological problems.

A note on methodology

We have made a deliberate choice to utilize a historical materialist mode of analysis because this approach accords with our epistemological objectives. These objectives are that any analysis of the state (a) should be embedded within a wider theory of society, viewed as an evolving historical entity; (b) should elucidate the mechanisms whereby society, state and space are connected and evolve; (c) should demonstrate how individual human actors and state agencies impinge upon and determine specific spatial outcomes in the real world; and (d) should be capable of illuminating and thereby guiding social action. Our objectives indicate a concern with the state as an institution, an organization with its own ambitions, but at the same time embedded in a capitalist society. They also indicate a concern with the development of a theoretical perspective guided by historical specificity, but nevertheless focused upon the principles of capitalist organization.

By adopting a theoretical and historical materialist approach, we do not intend to convey acquiescence in a simple marxism or a crude economic determinism. As will become apparent, this inquiry is aligned with recent theoretical advances which are causing a resurgence of interest in historical materialism in the social sciences. Although we are not always in agreement with the neo-marxists and critical theorists, we seek a more developed debate over social science theory and method, including a reassessment of the Weberian contribution and the emerging school of structuralism. As we conceive it, a major thrust in current social theory is the search for what may be called a “middle-level” theory. This aims to link the level of appearances of society, often ideologically perceived, with the underlying social reality which produces those appearances. This gap is rarely bridged, since conventional empirical analysis usually remains at the level of appearances and takes as given the categories of social life, while theoretical analysis is often abstract to the point of analytical intractability and only tenuously related to the real-world context. The issue is then to find a method that allows us to move between levels, from the abstract to the concrete and back again. In this book, we aim to develop a set of theoretical categories in order to understand contemporary political outcomes and debates.

We recognize that our methodological tools may be anathema to some research traditions, conservative and radical alike. Furthermore, they risk producing a confusion of different interpretations of real-world events. However, we remain convinced of the need for, and rich potential of, this broadly based attack on the problems of analyzing the state. This is especially important at a time when research in many social science disciplines is converging, and when issues relating to society, state and space are yielding to the penetrating insights of the interdisciplinary assault of new methodologies.

It has been suggested that many social sciences, including geography and urban studies, have been committed to a positivist epistemology which has profoundly isolated them from capitalist society and its culture. This isolation is cause for concern, since it makes “… social science an activity performed on rather than in society” (Gregory 1978, p. 51). Progress toward a critical social science, and away from the empirical-analytic traditions of positivism, depend upon the application of what Habermas has called the historical-hermeneutic approach in social science. This approach is premised upon a rejection of the possibility of an autonomous nonsocietal social science, insisting instead that concepts of science depend upon determinate social context and practice. Progress in understanding the principles of social organization thus depends upon an emancipatory dialogue between the analyst’s internal and external theoretical frameworks. These ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of tables
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The problematic of the capitalist state
• 3 The capitalist state apparatus
• 4 State apparatus and everyday life
• 5 The language of the state
• 6 Law and the state
• 7 The local state
• 8 Democracy and the crisis of legitimacy
• 9 Justice and the state
• Bibliography
• Author index
• Subject index