Variations of the capitalist state

*Variations of the capitalist state*

Recently this list has featured some discussion of the theory of the state, the postings of Anthony Teso on his idea of Patrimonial Bonapartism have especially sparked discussion.

I would like to step back a little bit to place this conversation in the broader context of the history of the state and revolutions, and of Marxist theory of the state.

In the epoch of the great bourgeois revolutions, which I would date from the Dutch War of Independence to the Latin American Wars of Independence (roughly 1565 to 1820), the bourgeoisies of the United Kingdom and what became the United States established the two most successful state regimes in the history of capitalism until the rise of the modern Chinese capitalist state.

Without discussing them, it is hard to understand where the failed French efforts to form a stable bourgeois regime, including the failure of Louis Bonaparte, fit. Without discussing them, it is hard to place all of the other variations of capitalist states that have risen, and fallen, in the time since.

In both cases, these states were based in large part on the successful expansion of precapitalist empires through military conquest (aided of course by diplomacy, treachery, and other minor dark arts.)

The state of the United Kingdom is the product of the successful transformation of the old absolutist monarchy’s institutions into what became the “king in parliament” and then the “constitutional monarchy” (which has no written constitution.)

The state of the United States of America is the result of a successful transformation of the colonial extensions of the king in parliament into the most self-consciously formed bourgeois republic in history. Both were revolutionary transformations that were made through civil wars, upheavals, and coup d’etats.

Both have been widely copied and emulated, although the emulations were not always voluntary.

The bourgeoisies of the two countries were trying to capture existing state structures and use them for their own purposes.

Leaving out a lot of history and detail, the problem of absolute monarchy for the British bourgeoisie was that the monarch could pick and choose which members of the bourgeoisie the state would favor, and then arbitrarily remove those privileges and bestow them on another. Making the house of commons paramount while subordinating the king and house of lords to the wealthy commoners did the trick.

It evolved into the current parliamentary system where the Prime Minister and her/his cabinet are part of, and subordinate to, the house of commons. Consequently, their autonomy from the representatives of the whole capitalist class is very limited.

The wealthy colonial commoners in North America had a similar, but more complex, problem to solve. They wanted to rid themselves of rule from across the Atlantic by the wealthy commoners and their captive king, and they wanted to conquer the continent that lay to the west of their little statelets on the Atlantic seaboard. To do both of those things, they needed to mobilize the commoners who were not wealthy, and they needed to maintain their own unity. Moreover, they faced deep internal contradictions especially over the complementary but competing productive systems of small-scale family production and slave production in the south and north.

After experimenting with a confederation in of state governments within which poorer white men sometimes could exert significant power, they imposed the current Constitution of the United States which created a complicated balance and separation of powers between state governments and the federal government, and among three major institutions within state and federal governments; the legislative, executive and judiciary branches.

The complexities of this system deprived the poorer white men of most real power, but not completely because their participation in the state was vital for mobilizing them for westward conquest. At the same time it allowed for the conflicting regional interests of the wealthy to be dampened by giving local groups control over state governments while making the federal legislative bodies a place for them to fight out and negotiate compromises.

Most importantly in the long run, it established an elected monarch with real powers greater than those of the hereditary monarchs back across the Atlantic. The real, but relative, autonomy of the President of the United States gave the system the ability to survive even when the legislative system and division of power among state governments failed to find suitable compromises. In fact, the system survived the Civil War for just this reason.

And this brings us back to Bonapartism. The USA never needed to resort to what Marxists now call Bonapartism because it has already included a limited kind of Bonapartism in its Constitutional system.

Now, something has changed. Donald J. Trump is way out of line. He does not fit into the mold of past presidents. He is more corrupt, more authoritarian, and more contemptuous of the country’s constitution than any past president.

A broader look at the world shows that Trump is not the only one who is out of line. The whole trend towards the emulation of, or imposition of, the state models of the US and UK that began in the Latin American Wars of Independence, accelerated in the aftermath of World War I, was temporarily reversed in the 1920’s and 30’s, and then accelerated again after World War II, seems to have halted and begun to move in the opposite direction.

We have the theocratic states of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the post Stalinist states of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and the “democratic backsliding” of various governments in Europe (e.g. Hungary), Latin America (e.g. El Salvador and Argentina), and the most notorious case of Trump in the USA.

What is going on? Why is this happening?

I would say that capitalism has hit the wall. In every country of the world, the contending factions of the ruling capitalist classes are failing to find acceptable compromises and beginning to fight each other much more seriously than in the long post World War II period.

More or more, the legislatures of the capitalist states have become dysfunctional, deadlocked bodies. They have no solutions for the common good of the whole ruling class (let alone for other social classes). In the absence of common solutions, each faction tries to capture the power of the state for its own benefit and the hell with the rest.

These new governments are working towards changing existing capitalist state regimes to more closely resemble the precapitalist monarchies they replaced. So far, they have not succeeded, although the special cases of the post Stalinist regimes have come closest.

I hope to continue this after others have chimed in.


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