Is It Materialism to Suggest Changing the Economy by Changing/Overthrowing the State?

[¿Que?]

Deliberately in learning to minimize judgments based on my ignorance

1. The materialist conception of history tells us that the way humans organize labor determines the institutions that exist.

2. The State, as an institution, is determined by the relations of things like the mode of production, means of production, relations of production, productive forces etc. We also understand that these have different meanings, and that their relation is generally what is meant by the economy generally speaking. These terms should not, then, be used interchangeably.

3. Marxism advocates the overthrow of the State as the means to reorganize the economy. (And I am not advocating the overthrow of the State, btw).

Question: What is the significance of the State? How is it that having or not having a State (in the bourgeois or socialist sense) can affect the economy, when other structures and institutions can not?

[Martin Blank]

Question: What is the significance of the State? How is it that having or not having a State (in the bourgeois or socialist sense) can affect the economy, when other structures and institutions can not?

The classical communist definition of the state is the amalgamation of bodies of armed people whose primary task is to maintain the rule of a particular class. In a bourgeois (capitalist) society, without the state there to enforce the bourgeoisie's rule, its conception of "law and order", there is no way that they could continue to maintain their ruling position. They would be overthrown and disposed of very quickly. Thus, the state plays the role of linchpin for class society; it is the state that the ruling class turns to when it is threatened, whether that be in the political or economic arena. This is why Marx and Engels characterized the class struggle as a political struggle, because, in the end, we will have to face off against the capitalist state if we want to overthrow capitalist social relations.

[¿Que?]

The classical communist definition of the state is the amalgamation of bodies of armed people whose primary task is to maintain the rule of a particular class. In a bourgeois (capitalist) society, without the state there to enforce the bourgeoisie's rule, its conception of "law and order", there is no way that they could continue to maintain their ruling position. They would be overthrown and disposed of very quickly. Thus, the state plays the role of linchpin for class society; it is the state that the ruling class turns to when it is threatened, whether that be in the political or economic arena. This is why Marx and Engels characterized the class struggle as a political struggle, because, in the end, we will have to face off against the capitalist state if we want to overthrow capitalist social relations.
Thanks for the response.

I understand that the State protects capitalism by enforcing through jurisprudence class divisions. What I don't understand is how is this Materialism? Since with the materialist conception, the State is determined by the economy, not vice versa.

Another way to conceptualize the question would be: How does vulgar materialism/economism/economic determinism differ from a proper Marxian materialism.

Indeed, does not your answer suggest that production is determined by the State, rather than the State by production.

[Rjevan]

Question: What is the significance of the State? How is it that having or not having a State (in the bourgeois or socialist sense) can affect the economy, when other structures and institutions can not?

The state is a manifestation of class struggle, it arose from the need of the rich, ruling class to defend its interests against the exploited and oppressed class. Thus the state is there to maintain the current order (mode of production) and it is able to do so by holding the monopoly of violence (police, military). Sooner or later we face the following problem:

The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange, the productive forces are in rebellion against the mode of production which they have outgrown.
and Engels continues

Each new mode of production or form of exchange is at first retarded not only by the old forms and the political institutions which correspond to them, but also by the old mode of distribution
It is only logical that the ruling class is more than interested in maintaining the "old mode of distribution" as it keeps them the ruling class. They defend it by said "political institutions" which are obviously dominated by them because they are a result of the (e.g. capitalist) mode of prodution. This lead Marx and Engels to the conviction that the proletariat could not seize the "ready-made [bourgeois] state machinery and wield it for its own purposes" but has to overthrow and destroy it to effectively end the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie once and for all. The latter will never tolerate and significant changes which threaten their interests, it's delusional to think that they would sit there and watch the proletariat threatening (even by peaceful reforms) their very base of power, capitalist economy. The Spanish Civil War illustrated how the bourgeoisie reacts when feeling seriously endangered by a leftist government.

Therefore breaking the power of the ruling class has to be started by breaking their political rule by a revolution and then going for their economic rule by seizing the means of production during this revolution and defend the gains of the revolution by the socialist state, the dictatorship of the proletariat over the minority of former capitalists and reactionaries who seek to undo the revolution and its results and restore the old order. Trying to overthrow the capitalist mode of production by solely concentrating on the economy while the bourgeoisie still holds the state power and the monopoly of violence is impossible and will always fail. Sure, the state is determined by the economic system but this doesn't imply that the state can't affect the economic system. Things don't simply go one-way.

[penguinfoot]

I understand that the State protects capitalism by enforcing through jurisprudence class divisions. What I don't understand is how is this Materialism? Since with the materialist conception, the State is determined by the economy, not vice versa.

What you are describing is, in a way, one of the key debates that has taken place around recent interpretations of Marx's theory of history, namely whether the base, which is defined as the relations of production, themselves determined by the level of development of the productive forces, can be adequately distinguished from superstructure, especially the state, given that the state seems to define the relations of production by enforcing some types of property law over others. The solution to this apparent problem is that there is a difference between the legal expression of the relations of production as defined and implemented by the state and what the relations of production actually happen to be, because what really defines the relations of production in a given society is not whether the constitution recognizes the right to, say, own capitalist private property, but what the relations of production mean in concrete terms, as relations of economic power, over the means of production and human labour power. In a capitalist society the relations of production involve producers being totally excluded from ownership of the means of production whilst having the ability to sell their labour power and it is partly for this reason that the societies that rhetorically rejected private property were actually capitalist societies with nothing to do with socialism.


2. The State, as an institution, is determined by the relations of things like the mode of production, means of production, relations of production, productive forces etc. We also understand that these have different meanings, and that their relation is generally what is meant by the economy generally speaking. These terms should not, then, be used interchangeably.

These are definitely not terms that should be used interchangeably. There is debate about whether it is right to define these terms in precise ways and whether the fact that Marx does not seem to have done so reflects something about his method and the relations he saw obtaining between these terms, but, broadly speaking: the means of production are the tools and machinery that human beings use to exercise control over the natural world and to diminish the labour time required for the production of our material existence, the productive forces involve the means of production but also include human labour power and knowledge and together reflect the extent of mankind's historical evolution as a thinking and rational species who seeks to control the world around him, the relations of production are the concrete relations of power that obtain in a given society, and the mode of production is a given set of relations of production. The main thrust of Marx's thought is that the relations of production correspond to the forces of production in the sense that relations of production rise or fall depending on whether they promote the growth of the productive forces - so that the basic story of human history is that it is about the growth of man's productive powers.


The state is a manifestation of class struggle, it arose from the need of the rich, ruling class to defend its interests against the exploited and oppressed class

Not really, in The German Ideology as well as in Engels' later study it is made to seem as if the state or some kind of body involving public administration arose first as a response to the development of the sexual division of labour and population growth as a way of managing concerns that were important for the whole community and that only at some later point did it become a state in the full sense of the word, that is, a state in the sense of being a set of institutions based on the enforcement of relations of production based around class antagonism - or there may have been element of overdetermination whereby the emergence of the state as a solution to problems of collective and community concern happened at the same time as the emergence of class antagonisms. The basic point is that neither Engels or Marx considered the origin of the state to be a plot by the ruling class (in fact, in some versions the existence of the state is seen as a precondition for the emergence of a ruling class) and so their understanding of where the state comes from is a lot more nuanced than you suggest. See Draper and Avineri.

[Rjevan]

Not really, in The German Ideology as well as in Engels' later study it is made to seem as if the state or some kind of body involving public administration arose first as a response to the development of the sexual division of labour and population growth as a way of managing concerns that were important for the whole community and that only at some later point did it become a state in the full sense of the word
Yep, you're right. I oversimplified the emergence of the state, it only took the role I described as class differences developed, before that it was there to administrate common interests and ensure defence, as it is noted in the very Anti-Dühring. ;)

[Jimmie Higgins]

I understand that the State protects capitalism by enforcing through jurisprudence class divisions. What I don't understand is how is this Materialism? Since with the materialist conception, the State is determined by the economy, not vice versa.The particular form of the capitalist state, the nation-state, reflects the needs of the capitalist mode of production: it is centralized to enable ease of trade and business, it has institutions for preserving property rights. These states can be more or less parliamentary or autocratic, but from everything from the French Revolutions to the Kaiser, creating a strong nation with a unified legal code and military (and more recently police) are all features needed by capitalism. A feudal state on the other hand is much different because the ruling class basically just has the land divided up amongst themselves and so centralization is not as paramount, a unified trade and commerce laws are not needed, laws are designed to uphold caste hierarchy rather than universal laws etc. This is how the economic root of society impacts the form that the organization of that society takes.

In Capital, Marx talks about how the enclosures developed in England and in his explanation (if I am remembering correctly), it's the changes in the dominant mode of production that push the landed nobility to slowly abandon the feudal structure in favor of "privitized (i.e. enclosed) land". So it's not like the ruling class thought, hey, let's kick out the peasants and yeomen and make them all workers, it was a process towards production for profit that made land more valuable as a commodity for profit than as merely a means producing goods (a portion of which is exploited production from the peasantry) that led to the enclosure laws and then vagrancy laws and so on.