ralph miliband, the capitalist state: reply to poulantzas (1969)

(55): absolutely spot on (first problem, method)--"To put the point plainly, I think it is possible, in this field at least, to be so profoundly concerned with the elaboration of an appropriate ‘problematic’ and with the avoidance of any contamination with opposed ‘problematics’, as to lose sight of the absolute necessity of empirical enquiry, and of the empirical demonstration of the falsity of these opposed and apologetic ‘problematics’. Poulantzas declares himself not to be against the study of the ‘concrete’: I would go much farther and suggest that, of course on the basis of an appropriate ‘problematic’, such a study of the concrete, is a sine qua non of the kind of ‘demystifying’ enterpiise which, he kindly suggests, my book accomplishes. After all, it was none other than Marx who stressed the importance of empirical validation (or invalidation) and who spent many years of his life in precisely such an undertaking; and while I do not suggest for a moment that Poulantzas is unaware of this fact, I do think that he, and the point also goes for Louis Althusser and his collaborators, may tend to give it rather less attention than it deserves. This, I must stress, Is not a crude (and false) contraposition of empiricist versus non- or anti-empiricist approaches: it is a matter of emphasis—but the emphasis is important."

(56): cannot ignore the behaviors of managers, which doesn't mean that you think they are constitutive of capitalism: "I think myself that one must refer to both not because managerial ‘motivations’ are in themselves critical (and Poulantzas is mistaken in believing that I think they are) but precisely in order to show why they are not. By ignoring them altogether, one leaves a dangerous gap in the argument which needs to be put forward against managerialist apologetics."

(57): key, the crux of difference on the nature of the state (second problem)--"For what his exclusive stress on ‘objective relations’ suggests is that what the state does is in every particular and at all times wholly determined by these ‘objective relations’: in other words, that the structural constraints of the system are so absolutely compelling as to turn those who run the state into the merest functionaries and executants of policies imposed upon them by ‘the system’. At the same time, however, he also rejects the ‘long Marxist tradition (which) has considered that the State is only a simple tool or instrument manipulated at will by the ruling class’ (p. 74). Instead, he stresses the ‘relative autonomy of the state’. But all that this seems to me to do is to substitute the notion of ‘objective structures’ and ‘objective relations’ for the notion of ‘ruling’ class. But since the ruling class is a dominant element of the system, we are in effect back at the point of total subordination of the state élite to that class; i.e. the state is not ‘manipulated’ by the ruling class into doing its bidding: it does so autonomously but totally because of the ‘objective relations’ imposed upon it by the system. Poulantzas condemns the ‘economism’ of the Second and Third Internationals and attributes to it their neglect of the State (p. 68). But his own analysis seems to me to lead straight towards a kind of structural determinism, or rather a structural super-determinism, which makes impossible a truly realistic consideration of the dialectical relationship between the State and ‘the system’."

(58): clearly this is not what happens to Poulantzas, but the point is fair: "The political danger of structural super-determinism would seem to me to be obvious. For if the state élite is as totally imprisoned in objective structures as is suggested, it follows that there is really no difference between a state ruled, say, by bourgeois constitutionalists, whether conservative or social- democrat, and one ruled by, say, Fascists."

(58): important--"It is perfectly true that all states are in some degree ‘autonomous’, and Poulantzas misreads me when he suggests that I ‘finally admit this autonomy only in the extreme case of Fascism’ (p. 74). What I do say is that Fascism is the extreme case of the state’s autonomy in the context of capitalist society, which is not at all the same thing— and that between the kind of autonomy which is achieved by the state under Fascism, and that which is achieved by it under the conditions of bourgeois democracy, there is a large gulf, which it is dangerous to underestimate."

(59): critical (the third problem, ideology)--"But I also think that, just as it is necessary to show that the institutions mentioned earlier are part of a system of power, and that they are, as Poulantzas says, increasingly linked to and buttressed by the state, so is it important not to blur the fact that they are not, in bourgeois democracies, part of the state but of the political system. These institutions are increasingly subject to a process of ‘statization’; and as I also note in the book, that process is likely to be enhanced by the fact that the state must, in the conditions of permanent crisis of advanced capitalism, assume ever greater responsibility for political indoctrination and mystification. But to suggest that the relevant institutions are actually part of the state system does not seem to me to accord with reality..."