Gabriela Segura-Ballar
Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

What is the state? The state is usually defined as an entity constituted by a population, a defined territory, and a government. This reductionist definition, however, could reproduce an essentialized understanding of the state which is then analyzed as a fixed idea and as a given unity or a coherent and static actor. As Bob Jessop analyzes, this could lead to distorted and frozen perceptions of a historical phenomenon such as the state. Jessop proposes an understanding of the state as a historical and complex social relation that exists at the level of social formations. As a social relation, the state can only be understood as a matter of power. For Jessop (2016), state power “is a relationship between social forces mediated through the institutional structures and selectivity of the state” (307). What is the capitalist state? According to Jessop (2002), “the capitalist type of state has a distinctive, form-determined strategic selectivity with major implications for the organization and effectiveness of state intervention” (37). Some of its features are the exercise of sovereignty, the rule of law, and the institutional separation between market economy, sovereign state, and a public sphere (civil society).

What is the role of the state for capitalism? Is it a functional instrument for reproducing capitalist relations of production? Is state intervention just a secondary activity for capital accumulation? From a state-theoretical perspective, Bob Jessop demonstrates the absolutely essential role of the state to capitalist production and market relations. First, the state provides important conditions for capital accumulation through extra-economic institutions such as “a formally rational monetary system, a formally rational legal system and the reproduction of labour-power as fictitious commodity” (Jessop 2002, 43). Second, as Jessop argues, structural contradictions and dilemmas are inherent in the capital relation and the state has a major role in managing these contradictions. Therefore, “Neither capitalism as a whole nor the capital-labour relation can be reproduced purely through market relations. Both require supplementary modes of reproduction, regulation and governance – including those provided through the operations of the state” (Jessop 2002, 11).

In The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (2012), Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2012) argue that “states need to be placed at the center of the search for an explanation of the making of global capitalism. The role of states in maintaining property rights, overseeing contracts, stabilizing currencies, reproducing class relations, and containing crises has always been central to the operation of capitalism” (1). Thus, from a theory of the capitalist state, Panitch and Gindin study the role of the American state in the making of global capitalism. As the authors explain, one of capitalism’s defining characteristics is the legal and organizational differentiation between state and economy. For them, “as capitalism developed states in fact became more involved in economic life than ever, especially in the establishment and administration of the juridical, regulatory, and infrastructural framework in which private property, competition, and contracts came to operate…Capitalism could not have developed and expanded unless states came to do these things” (Panitch and Gindin 2012, 3). The establishment of the rule of law and liberal democracy are characteristic of the capitalist state. These are precisely the two pillars that have added legitimacy to the American empire. As Panitch and Gindin (2012) argue,

just as the liberal democratic project of reconciling formal equality of citizenship with the inherently unequal social relations of capitalism obscured the realities of class, so did the attempt to reconcile national self-determination and the formal equality of states with the inherently asymmetric inter-state relations in a capitalist world economy likewise obscure the new realities of empire. (9)

The neoliberal economic and political project has become hegemonic. This involves a new accumulation regime along with institutional and discursive transformation. For Loïc Wacquant (2012), under neoliberalism the remaking and redeployment of the state is fundamental to the political project because the state is “the core agency that actively fabricates the subjectivities, social relations and collective representations suited to making the fiction of markets real and consequential” (68). In this context, according to Jessop (2003), “the state is actively involved in developing new accumulation strategies, state projects, and hegemonic projects based on the discourses of globalization and structural competitiveness” (15). However, this structural transformation has had an impact on democracy and national sovereignty. Although, according to Jessop (2002), democratic institutions are not a feature of the capitalist type of state (40), under neoliberalism it is difficult to maintain liberal democracy because democracy slows the dynamic of capital accumulation. For Jessop (2003), “The national state will remain a key political factor as the highest instance of democratic political accountability” (12), but at the same time, “we are seeing the authoritarian statism of neoliberalism” (Jessop 2016, 314). Changes in authoritarian control are evident through an increase in punishment under neoliberalism. According to Wacquant, the expansion and exaltation of the penal state and the culture of control are integral components of the neoliberal state. This could be explained for two reasons. First, neoliberalism has undermined the state’s role in social reproduction. Second, state sovereignty is being eroded; especially weaker states have lost power to legislate in their territories. Thus, as Wacquant (2012) argues, “the state restores the authority of the governing elite by reaffirming ‘law and order’” (76).

For Bob Jessop, a key role remains for the national state: its general political functions. In the same vein, Nancy Fraser (2014) argues that the role of the state and the international system is crucial for the processes of capital accumulation to constitute the “political conditions of possibility.” Additionally, Jessop (2003) argues that “the national state is still the most significant site of struggle among competing global, triadic, supranational, national, regional, and local forces” (12). Capitalism doesn’t only require state support for the valorization of capital and social reproduction, but also because of its political responsibility in maintaining institutional integration and social cohesion. Even under neoliberalism, “the postwar national state is acquiring new economic and social functions and remains significant as a general political force” (Jessop, 2003, 16).

Bibliography

Gindin, Sam and Leo Panitch. The Making of Global Capitalism: the Political Economy of American Empire. London: Verso, 2012.

Fraser, Nancy. “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode: For an Expanded Conception of Capitalism.” New Left Review 86 (2014): 55–72.

Jessop, Bob. “Capitalism and the Capitalist Type of State.” In The Future of the Capitalist State, 11-54. Cambridge: Polity, 2002, 

Jessop, Bob. “Narrating the Future of the National Economy and the National State? Remarks on Remapping Regulation and Reinventing Governance.” Lancaster U, Department of Sociology, 2003. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-papers/papers/jessop-narrating-the-future.pdf

Jessop, Bob. “Reading the Conjuncture: State, Austerity, and Social Movements, an Interview with Bob Jessop.” Interview by Mikkel Flohr and Yannick Harrison. Rethinking Marxism 28, no. 2 (2016): 306–321, doi: 10.1080/08935696.2016.1163988

Wacquant, Loïc. “Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism.” Social Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2012): 66–79, doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8676.2011.00189.x