McMurtry
Above the economic structure stands the state or, as Marx more precisely puts it, "the legal and political superstructure" ("the police, the army, the courts and bureaucracy," RZ, 193-94). This state or superstructure is the "official stratum" of society, which "arises upon" the economic structure as its sanctioned and coercive regulator.
In general, what distinguishes the legal and political superstructure or state from the "underlying" economic structure to which it "corresponds" is that all its content is or has been consciously constructed by some form or other of recognized social authority. On the other hand, the more fundamental content of the economic structure obtains "independently of the will of individuals" (GID, 357), and is only "scientifically discoverable" (CI, 542). Marx maintains this general distinction in all his discussions of the legal-political superstructure and the economic base.
Clarifying this general distinction between the economic structure (E) and the legal-political superstructure (S) is a set of specific distinctions. These are:
We can see, then, that the conventional criticism of Marx' s distinction between
economic substructure and legal-political superstructure is false. The distinction here,
contrary to standard objections (see the Introduction), is both precisely securable and
substantial in character. The really contentious point here is not Marx' s distinction
Marx suggests a number of mutually reinforcing answers to this query, which we can summarize by the following propositions:
1
Marx' s claim here of exhaustive dependency of the state or superstructure on antagonistic relations of production/economic structure does not, we might add, rule out a central planning and distributing agency for production in communist society. Such an agency is not a state or superstructure because it is wholly integral to the dynamic of needs and production. Distribution, for instance, is not dictated by ownership or juridical right, but by the principle of "to each according to his needs."
2. Except in revolution (where the economic base is proximately altered by the
operations of the legal and political superstructure),
3. Since men cannot live on the content of the legal and political superstructure, whereas they can and do live on the productive-force content of the relations of production/economic structure, they act in accordance with the latter rather than the former:
Material interests preponderate. . . . The Middle Ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics and there Catholicism played the chief part (CI, 82).
Insofar as men act in accordance with their relations to the material means of human life rather than their relations to the stuff of law and politics as such, the relations of production/economic structure are more "basic" than the legal and political superstructure. In this sense, which underlies sense (2), the former, again, has primacy.
To this point we have seen that Marx distinguishes the legal and political superstructure, or state, from the production relations/economic structure in a number of ways, and that on empirical grounds he regards it as a superstructure in its relationship to the latter.
The superstructure arises because, and only because, of antagonisms of material
interest inherent in the economic base. It is a social mechanism for dealing with the
problems of these antagonisms and would disappear or "wither away" with the
removal of these latter in a communist society. We now ask, precisely how does the
superstructure or state relate to the economic antagonisms it is "raised" to
deal with? Marx's answer, reduced to formula, is this:
That is, far from being the resolving mechanism of common interest it is conventionally
held to be, the state, for Marx, merely maintains the collective interests of the ruling
class intact and, thereby, perpetuates the economic antagonisms it is raised to deal with
by protecting their underlying structural cause from alteration or change. What it is
claimed to be is thus an "upside-down" version of what it is. Thus, says Marx,
the state is "a fraud." And thus, he says in defining its "real" as
opposed to "pretended" function, "The bourgeois state is nothing but a
mutual
There is a wide variety of ways in which the state is conceived by Marx as protecting the ruling-class economic base and its inherent antagonisms of material interest. We can resolve his myriad descriptions and asides in this connection into thefollowing set of propositions:
i.by its voluntaristic language, which masks economic compulsion by a vocabulary of personal "will" and "agreement" (that is, men do not personally "will" or "agree" to enter their various economic relations, as the voluntaristic language of legal and political contract pretends. On the contrary, they are generally "compelled" to enter such relations as a matter of practical necessity);
ii. by the "abstract" nature of its legal and political rights, which imply universal equality (capitalism) or mutuality (feudalism), while in fact permitting the opposite of these; that is, the abstract and equal right of all to private property in capitalist society permits in fact the virtual propertylessness of the vast majority (see CI, 583 ff.); while the universal mutuality of obligation in feudal society permits, in fact, the lord's extraction from the serf of surplus labor "without any compensation" (CIII, 790 ff.).
iii. by the community of interest or "illusory community" (GID, 45-46) it purports to represent, when a minority or ruling-class interest is in fact what it protects; that is, the modern state purports to be securing the "public interest," when in fact its law is merely "the will of the bourgeois class made into a law for all" (CM, 67), and its political mechanisms "merely the organized power of one class oppressing another" (see CM, 74).
As (i), (ii), and (iii) suggest, the legal and political superstructure has an important ideological dimension. That is why Marx describes it as "practico-idealist" in nature (GID, 85). However, because the ideological factor as a whole encloses considerably more area than that covered by (5), Marx generally extends separate treatment to it (which we analyze in Chapter 5).
Before proceeding further with our exposition of Marx's theory of the state, we attend
to what has often been highlighted as a problem. That is, how can the superstructure be
conceived of as an "expression" or "reflex" of the economic base, when
it itself may have been a necessary condition of the latter's formation? For example, how
can the capitalist legal and political superstructure be said to be an expression or
reflex of capitalist economic structure when (as Marx himself indignantly affirms
throughout his section on the "Primitive Accumulation" in
But once this period of epochal transition is achieved, once the economic order is so
transformed that it is no longer a "fetter" on the productive forces, but a new
"form of their development," then the superstructure is
In summary, the legal and political superstructure operates always as an "expression" or "reflex" of the economic infrastructure, except in periods of epochal transition, such as that between feudalism and capitalism or that between capitalism and socialism. Here, exceptionally, but in strict accordance with the "laws" of technological determinism, it is "seized" by a rising new class and used to alter the old economic order into "another, higher form" that conforms to society' s current stage of productive force development. Once this revolution occurs, the rising new class becomes society's ruling class, with the state, again, as the mechanism whereby the underlying economic order is maintained intact.
There is another
The first thing to be made clear here is that Marx claims only that the state
superstructure maintains
However, Marx emphasizes in this case that not even the particular interests of a
ruling-class sector (albeit a preeminent sector) were in fact compromised by this or any
other form of factory legislation. Despite the ideological rhetoric of a number of
industrial capitalists (such as earthenware manufacturers),press organs (such as
So what appears to be the derogation by the superstructure (that is, factory legislation) of the interests of a central ruling-class sector is here, in fact, the maintenance and, indeed, promotion of its interests. In this case, ruling-class interests are distributively as well as collectively secured by superstructural phenomenon. Such a course of affairs is typical, in Marx's view. Hence, even though a crucial distinction must be made between the collective and particular interests of the ruling class, with the former, as always, primary in the relationship between base and superstructure, both sorts of interest are, in Marx's view, typically held intact, despite appearances to the contrary.
So far we have focused upon the way in which Marx conceives the state as reflecting ruling-class economic interests. Now we look at the way in which he conceives the state as indispensable to the maintenance of these ruling-class economic interests. Consider his metaphor of "reflex'' here. A "reflex" not only reflects the anatomy of the organism out of which it arises, but it is also indispensable to the maintenance of this anatomy. (Marx, we note, not only conceives of the state superstructure as "reflex," but of the economic infrastructure as "anatomy.") Thus, though Marx regards the "reflex" mechanism of the state as depending for its very existence upon a ruling-class economic "anatomy," he considers the persistence, though not existence, of this "anatomy" as, in turn, requiring the "reflex" mechanism of the state to preserve it.
Leaving aside Marx's explanatory model of "reflex'' and "anatomy," we now identify the two general requirements of any stable ruling-class economic order, which Marx conceives the state to systematically fulfill:
We have already treated these in finer detail above. What we are concerned to do here is to consider them briefly from the point of view of their necessity as defense mechanisms for the stability of the economic order, from which we will be in a better position to make sense of the central role Marx ascribes to the superstructural phenomenon of class struggle.
The first requirement provides the protection of "mask" to the economic base (a mask that ideology compounds). It constitutes for Marx the overall "illusory" quality of the legal-political superstructure, which in all societies of man' s history conceals the true nature of its ruling-class economic system. Though he never directly says so, Marx generally implies this sanctification by the legal-political superstructure to be a required cover-up mechanism for the persistence of any ruling-class economic order, without which it would be exposed (in the long run, ruinously) for the systematic exploitation system it is. Though in considering this indispensable "veil" function of the superstructure we unavoidably introduce ideology into our ambit of inquiry, the mere official institutionalization of economic power by the state organization must be appreciated as itself a hallowing of that power. That is, the state's very nature as a ceremonialized bureaucratic system officering the whole of society accords the economic order it overlays the mystique of elevated, awful status. This sanctification of the economic order by the state is, indeed, a fundamental, if unremarked, component of the routine of mystification Marx analyzes in "The Fetishism of Commodities" (CI , 71 -83): the apparent magical autonomy of commodities deriving from the very nature of the state as a vast, consecrated order of ranks, regulations, offices, and protocols standing like the armies of Yahweh over the ownership and exchange of goods. We have here, in other words, the phenomenology of Kafka in historical materialist form. Sanctified by the terrifying aspect of the state, the economic system grinds as if by the ordinance of the Lord, and its products shuttle and move in inexorable pattern as if ruled by His "invisible hand."
The second requirement, on the other hand, is a straightforward organizational requirement. The ruling-class economic structure requires more than the particular relations of ownership constituting it in order to survive intact. Some additional collective coordinator, adjudicator, adjuster of enforcement in the interests of the ruling class as a whole must exist - that is, a legal and political superstructure - or the economic order in question will be ill equipped to maintain its hold for long. In the first place, individual interests of the ruling class are not necessarily consistent with the interests of this class as a whole; therefore, some way of resolving possible conflicts between these particular interests must be established "on top of" the production relations/economic structure. The state or superstructure that thus arises is, in traditional terminology, the expression of a "Social Contract" among ruling-class members to be governed by a common representative of their interests as a whole in order to protect themselves from class-destructive internecine strife.
In the second place, individual economic powers of members of the ruling class are easier to resist or usurp than these powers enlarged in a collective form; therefore, some combination of these powers in the unified body of a superstructure is necessary to ensure the maximum security required to sustain the systematically exploitative and antagonistic economic order beneath. The state might that is thereby raised is, to sustain the language of Social Contract theory, the "Leviathan" of the ruling class: the latter's combination of power into a single, sovereign body presiding over the economic system underneath as the unbrookable "organized power of one class for oppressing another" (CM, 74).
"Social appearance of sanctity" and "collective agency for enforcement of ruling-class interests" would seem, then, coincident requirements for the persistence of the ruling-class economic order. Otherwise put, they are the indispensable shields of any durable system of exploitation - holist "fraud" and "force," respectively. Of course, Marx believed that a nonclass economic order would require no such superstructure or state, insofar as there would be no intrinsic antagonisms of material interest to mystify or enforce. But so long as the economic order is class-ruptured, an "active, conscious, and official expression" of this base contradiction, the state, must for Marx preside over the former to ensure the preservation of its ruling-class ownership pattern and "laws of motion" of surplus-labor extraction.
It is only when this indispensability of the legal-political superstructure to the preservation of the ruling-class economic order is clearly comprehended that we can understand why Marx counts superstructural class struggle - and all class struggle for Marx is "political" or superstructural - as so important in history: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle" (CM, 45). We can formulaMarx's argument here as follows:
This underlying argument of Marx's theory of the state and class struggle is guided by several important supportive beliefs that it is crucial to identify. Assuming (1) to be true, for example, (2) as a whole is true only if one believes, further, that there is no other practicable way of altering the ruling-class economic order than by seizing its indispensable mechanism of defense, the state. Yet the ruling class itself or its superstructural agents, or some combination of these, might evolve the state away from its historical function of ruling-class protection and into conformity with its long-pretended general interest function, with no such seizure "from beneath" required (a possibility in which social democrats believe). Or, again, the economic order might be altered by bypassing superstructural mediation altogether - with state repression at the same time effectively resisted and negated - through workers and others taking over, slowly or rapidly, the means of production directly (a possibility to which anarchists are commited). Or whatever. There are more ways than one to skin a cat, more ways than one to subvert the economic order than by seizing its superstructural armor from ruling-class control. But these alternative possibilities Marx must - and does - believe to be impracticable in inferring the latter part of (2) from (1). Then, even assuming all of (2) to be true - notwithstanding alternative possibilities like the above - (3) is true if and only if one believes, still further, that great groups of men in society cannot be enduringly united on grounds (such as humanist) other than class relations of production or material interests. This sort of alternative Marx in one way or another certainly entertained, but - again - firmly rejected as lightheaded, if not downright reactionary.
However, despite his general
To begin with, the possibility of specific superstructural agents not in fact protecting the ruling-class economic pattern, but being quite "free from partisanship," is not only allowed by Marx but described by him as having actually obtained, at the height of industrial capitalism (CI, 9).
Then again, he was well aware of the possibility that ruling-class members (such as the
young capitalist Robert Owen) could disengage from their present economic interests; and,
indeed, he openly called for, in his Preface to
Still again, he occasionally remarked on the possibility that the class struggle need not be violent, and that power might change hands from the capitalists to the proletarians peacefully: "We know of the allowances that we must make for the institutions, customs and traditions of the various countries: and we do not deny that there are countries such as America, England, and I would add Holland if I knew your institutions better, where the working people may achieve their goal by peaceful means" (OB, 494).
All these qualifications, however, are quite compatible with Marx's line of thought as we have formulated it. He recognizes and applauds superstructural agents, such as the "courageous" factory inspector Leonard Horner, who honor the state's claim to be the protector of the interests of all. But men such as Horner, he holds, are the exception, not the rule. He is impressed by the young millionaire Robert Owen's rising above economic interests to devote his life to industrial communes, but he observes that Owen remains elitist in his theory, and is not emulated, but vilified, by an increasingly defensive ruling class. He calls for "the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones" to promote through the state the working class's "free development." But his appeal is not at all inconsistent with his line of thought, as it might first appear. He emphasizes the possibility that "working people may achieve their goal by peaceful means," such as voting ruling-class representatives out of political office; but such possibility, so far as it effectively occurs or is allowed to occur, is still for him a "seizure" of the state from ruling-class hands, as it also is for them. In short, none of Marx's important qualifications here is inconsistent with his underlying argument. Rather, they disclose an openness and sophistication to his concept of the state that are not generally appreciated.
In summary, then, Marx conceives of the state as the indispensable "mask" and "weapon" protecting the ruling class's economic hegemony; holds that its existence
as such requires its control by the ruling class to sustain this hegemony, and by some other class(es) to alter it; and maintains, in turn, that political class struggle is the only effective way of keeping or getting this control. This is, in brief, Marx's firm line on the legal and political superstructure and its disposition in all periods of history .
As we can readily discern, the importance granted to the superstructure in Marx's theory is very considerable. Indeed, he lays such great emphasis on it in his social philosophy (an inversion of Hegel's notion of the state as the bearer of the Universal) that one of the most moving criticof his position - exemplified by the anarchist Bakunin' s opposition - is that he is an authoritarian, who betrays the working-class struggle in his German love for the state. But whatever the merits of his position on the significance of the legal and political superstructure, we can see that - for all its dependence on the economic infrastructure - it is of central importance to Marx as a socio-historical factor. That it is normally in a "reflex" relationship with the economic "anatomy" underneath does not - as many have thought - render it somehow impotent or superfluous for him as a mechanism or phenomenon. On the contrary, the state is as vitally important for Marx in the ordinary life process of a society as defense mechanisms are for Freud in the ordinary life process of an individual. It is the historically constructed and visible hold whereby internal conflict is maintained in the grip of unseen (economic) structure; the so-to-say conscious "ego-formation" of society overlaying, regulating, and repressing the hidden contradictions beneath, in the defense of established but unacknowledged interests and their enslaving pattern.
1.Sometimes Marx uses the term "superstructure" to refer to just legal and political institutions, and sometimes he uses it to apply more broadly to these as well as ideology and forms of social consciousness as a unitary whole. We use the term in the same permissive way, with the context rendering its precise referent evident.
2. Even the "gradual accretions" of law are consciously constructed, each
accretion itself being the result of a process of formal deliberation, judgment, and
codification. It is by virtue of being a conscious construction
3. This favorite claim of Marx that relations of production obtain "independently of the will of individuals" is often wrongly interpreted as a denial of free will. Marx is, however, making no such metaphysical claim, but is merely stating the empirically incontrovertible truth that the economic order carries on independently of the will (as opposed to actions) of individuals (as opposed to groups). See GID. 357 ff.
4. Note here the similarity in principle to Locke's notion of the state as an "umpire" arising to resolve disputes over individual property. Like Marx, Locke (not to mention Hobbes and others) takes it as obvious that the erection of the state depends upon already existing antagonisms of interest. However, unlike Marx, these philosophers do not discern a ruling-class pattern to such antagonisms of interest, which for Marx renders the "umpire" or "Leviathan" of-the state ultimately subordinate rather sovereign in its function.
5. Marx's theory of the genesis of the state seems superior to the Social Contract
theory of Hobbes, Locke, and others inasmuch as the latter cannot explain how individuals
first come to submit to this body except by an as-if fiction of universal consent. Marx's
theory, on the other hand, requires no such as-if posit. People's submission to the state
is originally accomplished by organized force, whose function is to protect a ruling-class
economic order (cf. the early Rousseau's less developed, but similar account in the
6. Marx's theory of communist society must, however, be rigorously distinguished from the subsequent putative practice of it in "communist countries." See our Marxian critique of state socialism in Chapter 7.
7. Note the telling satire of Social Contract theory informing Marx's declaration here (Marx-Engels-Werke, VII. 288).
8. What about proprietary disputes among productive workers themselves?
9. These requirements of productive force development are what enable a new ruling class to supplant the old. The state does not cease to be a "class weapon" here. It changes from the "class weapon" of an old ruling class (such as feudal or capitalist), whose rule does not correspond to the technological requirements of the day, to the "class weapon" of a new ruling class (capitalist or proletarian, respectively) whose rule does correspond to the technological requirements of the day. Revolutionary political class struggle, then, is only the social medium whereby a necessary transfer of state power occurs in accordance with productive force requirements. It remains, thus, superstructural, even in its revolutionary function (a point that "Marxists" who fix only on class struggle have perilously, and we think world-historically, missed for a century).
10. Society's revolution from a capitalist to a socialist economic order is historically unique for Marx in that:
i. the new ruling class is constituted of the "immense majority of society" (its productive workers), not, as in the past, "a small minority";
ii. its ruling-class order is only "transitional," not, as in the past, epochal; and iii. the legal and political superstructure that protects this rule of the productive workers does not remain, but, with the dissolution of society's "bourgeois remnants," withers away altogether. In short, with the full achievement of communal ownership of the forces of production, there are no classes and, thus, no state required to protect the ownership of one. (For our analysis of the precise requirements of this movement, and the failure to meet them in state-socialist societies, see Chapter 7.)
11. Marx frequently draws attention to the inadequate formulation and application of parliamentary legislation (e.g., CI, 479-80, 494-95), which ensures that little or nothing is, in fact, changed by such except official documents. This is one of the common duping features of the legal-political superstructure that occasions Marx's general description of the latter as "illusory".
12. This is not to say, certainly, that Marx is suggesting that legislation such as the ten-hour bill should have been opposed by the working class, or was even possible without their militant pressure for it. On the contrary, Marx's dialectical position here is that it is in precisely this sort of way that the seed of revolution is nourished within the bosom of the established order: what is good for the latter is also at the same time nurturing the agencies of its future destruction.
13. Consider here the standard inscription on American coinage: "In God We Trust".
14. It is also implied by Marx (e.g., CI, 15) that the
15. Thus Marx says such things as "the struggle of class against class is a
political [i.e., superstructural] struggle" (P
On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and tries to coerce them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempts in a particular factory or even in a particular trade to force a shorter working day out of individual capitalists by strikes etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand, the movement to force through an eight-hour, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way out of the separate economic movements of the workers, there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of enforcing its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially coercive force (SC, 328).
16. G. A. Cohen, in personal correspondence, makes the following point here, worth
citing
The
17. Marx says, in a canonical text: "The movement of the proletariat is the
self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the
immense majority." (CM, 59-60). That is, the proletarian class struggle is a struggle
of: i. the