Economic Crisis and State Autonomy: a Comparative Study of the Poiicy Responses of the United States, Britain, and Australia 1967 -1 982
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Economic Crisis and State Autonomy: A Comparative Study of the PoIicy Responses of the United States, Britain, and Australia 1967 -1 982 Elaine McCoy Politics Department The University of Adelaide January 1987 A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. A,u¡.e!,, ^l - l, /o" t'? -320- E1aine McCoY Part II lrl Part II State Enclave Government, Political Interests and Relative AutonomY InthisPartofthethesis,Iraisecertaintheoretical issuesreÌatedtotheconceptoftherelativeautonomyof thecapitaliststate.ArenewedinterestamongMarxist state began scholars regarding the theory of the capitalist Marx and with Louis Arthusser,s ,,phirosophical reading" of a Marxist his inquiry into the status of the state within problematic. Atthusser's aggressive critique of contemporary Marxist humanism led him to attempt to construct a scientificallybasedsocialtheorywhichcametobeknownaS aspects of "structural Marxism". Among the most important A].thusserianstructuralMarxismare]-)theexplicitclaim poriticar praxis for Marxism that in analytical method and' itreplacesideologywithscience(theformerconstitutesa 2) that theoretical revolution in the history of ideas) , and properly the Marxian notion of historical materialism' understood,providestherevolutj.onaryleapfrommere of ideoJ.ogy to a science of history' A proper understanding historicalmaterialismforA]-thusseremploysan ,,overdetermination thesis" which explains regime transformationatcertain"historicconj.unctures"'Attn." rootoftheconceptofoverdeterminationisanideaof muttiplestructuraldeterminationswithinthehistorica] processwhicharecombinedinhistoricallyspecificwaysto produce concrete expressions of history' Economic Elaine McCoY Part II -32L- determination is a fundamental part of thaprocess. Althusser interpretats the Marxian diatectic in a manner which has prompted a great deal of debate and theorízing around the role of the state in historical development. Most simply put, the debate has been around the extent to which any state, including capitalist ones, is constrained by a primary determination' usualty economic, or is relatively free. Is the state primarily political or a reflection of economic necessity? Are there "Ia\^/s" which exist, able to be scientifically discovered, and which govern the role of the state in a capitalist society? In Althusser's terms, does there exist a ,,structured totality" named capitalism?1 That, very briefty, is the beginning of the debate regarding the relative autonomy of the capitalist state. chapter 6 wiIl examine some representative examples of the debate as it evolved in more detail. It is my aim in the next three chapters to deal with the political constitution of the capitaList state' The present work uses the "state derivation" approach of contemporary German scholars to explore the question of state autonomy. This approach is outside the methodological and theoretical legacy of Althusserian structuralism which prompted a split between "structural" and "instrumental-" aproaches to state theory. Nevertheless ' I examine the structuralist/instrumentalist debate in order to discover the roots of the fallacy of "relative state autonomy" in Elaine McCoy Part II -322- both Marxist and liberal schoJ-arship on the state. The state derivation debate2 is largely concerned with the form of the state as it reflects the "anatomy of civil society", in this case, the anatomy of a civil society in crisis. The contextual elements of economic crj-sis and policy response have been developed in Part I. The fo]J,owing discussions of the deformation of the bourgeois constitution and the evolution of state apparatus toward increasingly centralized and i-nsulated institutions are concerned with the form of the capitalist state in crisis. Chapter 5 will express that fOrm aS an "enclave government" and buttreSS the preViouS empirical analysis with a theory of potitical reduction following the discussion of economism which has preceded Part II. The implications of encl-ave government for a theory of por^rer are dealt with in the second section of Chapter 5. In examining the "peak" formal institutions of national government in a bourgeois order, I address a generaJ. pattern of development which has occurred in most western l-iberal democracies uncludi-ng the three countries used in the present study. That pattern reflects the erosion of the political effj-cacy of the bourgeois order. The decLine of Iegitimacy enjoyed by the formal organs of bourgeois rule; the decline in the vitality of political parties ' and indeed, in the fundamental Processes of interaction within political parties; the atrophy of legislative representation; and the rise of fragmentary and oftenr ineffective, patterns of dissent aI 1 of these have Elaine McCoy Part II -323- motivated a number of political analysts to address the "crisis" of politics in the last two decades.3 I characteríze these developments as an erosion of poJ.iti-cs, and emphasise the importance of this erosion's having occurred at a time when economistic policymaking, discussed j-n the previous chapters, is increasingly evident in all three countries under study. Chapter 6 analyses the "interest-orientation" of both liberaL and Marxist variants of the autonomy argument. That analysis wilt expose the presuppositions about the state that both schools share, and explain how those presuppositions distort a theory of the capitalist state. There is one fundamental characteristic which comprises the main context of policy making within the present crisis in the development of capitalism. That characteristic is the preemption of political struggle the functional requisite for just government within a capitalist state by crisis management.-Ã This occurs as a direct consequence of the increased economism which a protracted recession/depression might be expected to provoke. Those who employ the autonomy-problematic in analyses of the capitalist state have underestimated this contextual influence upon both the functional requi-sites of governmental institutions within capitalism, and the new configuration of peak institutions and political processes. The discussion of political interest is included to Elaine McCoy Part II -324- accomplish two objectives. First1y, it aims to distinguish state activity and the form of the state from the behaviour of persons. Secondly, it provides a critique of existing theories of the state which rely upon behavioural assumptions and methodologies in their explanations of the contemporary capitatist state. The concept of political interest aS it relates to the shape of modern government and the nature of policy outcomes Seems to me the lynchpin of much contemporary state theory. That concept, of necessity' estabLishes a behavioural category for analysis. These are the very categories which I believe have distorted a modern theory of the capitalist state. When the unique identity of the capitalist state in crisis is reconsidered without the behavioural freight, preparation for a full discussion of relative state autonomy can be undertaken. I shall employ the concept of áutonomy as a "disclosing" tool, viz. , to establish autonomy as a developmental category which exhibits directionality. Furthermore, I wish to locate state autonomy within a notion of institutionaL "independence" versus "capture". This presupposes a theory of power based on class domination. I want to incorporate temporal variables which are pertinent to my analysis of the capitatist state' during the years 7967-LgB2, of two different sorts: acute and chronic crises. The notion of acute crisis establishs a threshold which might provide both opportunity and structural accommodation to state autonomy. Chronic crises as described in Part I of Elaine McCoy Part II -325- the present work are shown to establish an imperative toward economism and decreasing state autonomy. Elaine Mccoy Part I I -326- Footnotes 1 The present work wil,l not attempt a thorough investigation of the work of Louis Althusser nor of the school of writing on the state which might come under the rubric of "structural Marxism". For the most important writing of Althusser and representative writing of and about structural Marxism see Louis Althusser Essays in Self-Criticism, trans. Graham Lock (London: New' Left Books' 1,976) ¡ Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London:A1Ien Lane, L969)' ¡ Althusser' Lenin and Phi I osophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New left Books, I97L), Althusser, and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New left Books, 1970). See also, Perry Anderson, umen s Within En Iish Marxism (London: New Left Books, 19B0); Norman Geras' À t USSCT S Marxismt An Account and Assessment", New Left Review' /.7r (I9721 , p. 20¡ Leszek Kolakowski, "ÀIthusser's Marx". Socialist Re ister (197f) ; John Lewis, "The Àlthusserian Case , Marx SM oda , L (L972) ¡ Frank Parkin, "The Academici z ng of Marx , Dissent, 2 (l-980 ) p. 3 ; Mark Poster Existential Marxism in France: From Sartre to Althusser' ( Prrnceton New Jers P rl_nce ton UnÍversit Press, I975) ¡ and Steven S ma t ,Rê ngA t usser i An SSA on ruc ura Marxism (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984). 2S". John Hol J-oway and So1 Picciotto, State and Capital; A Marxist Debate (London: Edward Arnold L97B) , especially Bernhard Blanke, Ulrich Jurgens, and' Hans Kastendiek, "Chapter 6: On the Current Marxist Discussion on the Analysis of Form and Function of the Bourgeois State", pp. l0B. 3th" idea of "crisis" is commonplace in contemporary writing about l¡'lestern liberal