by
Geoff Mann
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When we think of state power over territory, we think precisely of what defines the state as the state. In sociologist Max Weber's classic definition, the state is that set of institutions which enjoys "the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." This power is coercive: the state, by virtue of its control over the police, law, military, etc., has the power to coerce you, if you are inside its territory, to do or not do certain things, and to punish you if you don't follow the rules, which the state itself determines. Virtually all capitalist states limit these powers via laws, constitutions and "bills of rights," for example requiring the police to have a warrant to enter and search your home. But the state (at least in theory) remains the sole possessor of this territorially defined coercive power.
from From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (essay "Politics as Vocation")
This is not to say that the coercive part goes away. You might think, quite reasonably, that since coercion is always hovering in the background, the consent part is a bit of a joke: if you don't consent, you get coerced, meaning the consent is not all that consensual. At the level of the isolated individual, this is true. But if you think about it at a collective level, the consent part is much more evident. If every single person refused to consent, the state's coercive power would almost certainly be insufficient. The stability of the liberal democratic state as an institutional complex depends on the often tacit, sometimes explicit endorsement of its citizenry. Modern state power is constituted by a complicated, shifting, and contingent combination of coercion on the part of the state and consent on the part of the population.
[...] it is not only the state that can coerce. Private economic power rarely lacks some coercive aspect. [...] Banks can push through laws in their interest because the can use their market power to disrupt the whole economy--to coerce the government to meet their demands. [...]
The combination of coercion and consent (operated by both capital and the state) produces a relation known as "hegemony," a term first elaborated in this sense by a justly famous pre-World War II Italian communist named Antonio Gramsci. [...]
Gramsci worked out his idea of hegemony while he was reading the work of Lenin [...] capital's hegemony, its power to shape the "common sense" we tacitly share about the state, the ruling classes, and their power: that those relations are natural, that they serve a necessary function, that they are the only way to keep the peace. Those in power construct an effective hegemony when the existing order appears to be not only in their interests, but in everyone's interest. It is the practices that render a given social formation ideologically "normal".
oh man this is so good
Ingham [...] says there are three main ways the state interacts with "the economy," and, although they are not so easily separated, the distinctions are useful. They are:
- State provision/production of social peace;
- State maintenance of capitalist social relations (often via "liberal democracy"); and
- Direct and indirect state participation in the economy.
on Geoffrey Ingham's book Capitalism
also, Ingham says that the state and the capitalist class are thought of as separate, autonomous spheres precisely because they depended on each other and thus let the other operate independently
Successful hegemonic projects necessitate both coercive capacity on the part of the governors and consent on the part of the governed. In other words, the state and the social relations it protects must be granted, at least by a significant part of the population, sufficient legitimacy. Capitalism requires legitimacy. What is not so clear, however, is the means through which it acquires legitimacy: are we fooled into acquiescing to capitalism by cultural institutions like the church, or by transactions that cheat us in ways we don't understand? Are we "bought off" by the welfare state, basic amenities, and the possibility of upward mobility? Is capitalism the "best possible" or "least bad" system, thus meriting our reasoned endorsement? Furthermore, to what extent does the state participate in the legitimation process? If we are dupes, is it the state that dupes us? Capitalists? Both? If we are bought off, surely the state is important, but in whose interest is it acting? Is it extracting from capitalists in the interests of workers? Or is it appeasing workers in the interests of capitalists? There is, of course, no one universal answer to these questions.
this paragraph is so good
[...] Consider the following: even if it were true that capitalism and democracy have always gone together (and it is definitively not true), this would in no way justify the claim that they will go together until the end of time. Transhistorical claims originating in particular historical modes of production have never proven true [...]
[...] It is not a mere tool of any particular class or interest, but is linked in different ways to them all, while enjoying some independence at the same time. It is the "factor of cohesion": its relative autonomy from any one class or class fraction is what makes hegemony in capitalism possible.
Citing Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes and The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law, and the State)
[...] relative autonomy allows the state to protect capitalism when capitalists themselves threaten to tear it apart. The state is the ideal institution to protect capitalism from the capitalists, who, when they each act on their own, tend to cause more than minor bumps in the market-mediated road. The state can legitimately coordinate and regulate their actions, and keep information on their actions in ways that the capitalists might hate, but that nonetheless are often the only reason the system works at all.
[...] In standard introductory economics textbooks, money is commonly said to perform four functions: (1) It is a medium of exchange that facilitates the exchange of qualitatively different commodities. (2) It is a means of payment or transaction settlement, the thing with which you settle a debt, and usually legally defined as such. (3) It is a store of value; you can hold it as an asset in the form of abstract or potential purchasing power. (4) It is a unit of account; i.e., the standard unit by which all "economic" values are calculated and compared.
[...] classical and neoclassical economic analysis suggests that all of these functions from an original and primary function, (1) medium of exchange. [...] However, when examined in a more historically sensitive--and analytically adequate--manner, it is clear that as capitalism evolved, money became central primarily because of its key function as a standardized unit of account, which at least in capitalism is the most important role money plays. [...] as a unit of account it represents an abstract claim on or in circulation as a whole. Money measures and stores abstract purchasing power, and transports it through space and time. [...]
his explanation of money is very good here (there are a few more paragraphs on debt creation and the like)
[...] Contract to the impression one gets from the media, just because the market is essential to capitalism, does not mean that capitalism is the market. [...] In truth, markets are only part of the capitalist system, a substantial and essential part to be sure, but there are others: state, family, nonmarket institutions like community groups and teams, and so forth. Nor are markets neutral realms in which supply and demand coolly intersect via the logic of competitive prices, as the harmonious classical and neoclassical models suggest. Markets are principal sites of conflict in capitalism, usually between actors who are not themselves organized according to market logic. If you think about it, even though the capitalist enterprise, the family (however defined), the state, and workers' organizations are among the key participants in capitalist markets, and some of them (especially firms and the state) are the loudest proponents of the benefits of market organization, not one is organized internally according to market principles. Internal relations in firms are not determined by atomistic competition any more than internal distribution of incomes in the civil service are determined by individual marginal contribution to productivity.
hence, much of capitalism is comprised of (and depends on) nonmarket relations
Orthodox economists do not walk the Earth naively believing all markets are actually perfect, if only the rest of us could see it. They know full well they are not. But orthodox capitalist analysts do not assume perfection because it accurately represents the world, but rather because without it, the formal modeling they do is impossible.