Opening Up Open Marxist Theories of the State

8/8/2019 Opening Up Open Marxist Theories of the State

1/21

Opening Up Open Marxist Theories of

the State: A Historical Materialist

Critique bjpi_414 387..407

Andreas Tsolakis

Since the late 1980s, Open Marxism has focused on the conceptualisation of the relationship

between global capital, the international system and the statetherein lies its original contribution

to knowledge. This essay offers a sympathetic reflection on Open Marxist approaches to the state,

which emphasises the strength of the definition organisation of subjection, yet argues that its

validity is undermined by inadvertent structural-functionalist applications, by a tendency to view

organisations of subjection as unitary political forms and by assertions that the emergence of the

international system is necessarily correlated to the historical globalisation of capital. The article

offers a more nuanced alternative as fluid, contradictory organisation of subjection: as a social

relation constituting and constituted by broader production relations, the state is a terrain of

systematic intra-elite and class struggles.

Keywords: Open Marxism; neo-Gramscian theory; state theory; internationalsystem

Introduction

The Marxist intellectual tradition enjoys a long and rich past, driven by the dynamicconfrontation of a variety of perspectives, which have induced the constant rework-ing of its conceptual premises. Its historical development has nevertheless sufferedfrom a (sometimes self-)attributed association with Soviet socialism, and from thetheoretical shortcomings of hegemonic Marxist approachesthat is, economism(economic reductionism), historical determinism, structural-functionalism and anincipient positivism.1 Within this vast body of thought a heterodox movement has

persisted despite its marginalisation from Stalins capture of the Kremlin until thecollapse of the Soviet bloc: Open Marxism (OM).

Contemporary Open Marxists are thus adamant that their approach does notrepresent a new theory but rather seeks to revive the flame of Marxist currentssuppressed under the weight of Marxism-Leninism, and effectively attempts toretrieve the real Marx from the grave of really existing socialism (Bonefeld et al.1992a and 1992b; Burnham 1994a; Holloway 1995). Since the late 1980s, OMtheorists have consciously furthered and ameliorated the theoretical paths traced byso-called political Marxism and especially German state derivation approaches,which sprang up in the late 1970s in reaction to structuralism.2 They have also sought

to transcend the caricatured theoretical dichotomybetween Nikos Poulantzas (1968)early structural-functionalism3 and Ralph Milibands (1969) instrumentalism.4

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2010.00414.x B J P I R : 2 0 1 0 V O L 1 2 , 3 8 7 4 0 7

2010 The Author. Journal compilation 2010 Political Studies Association


2/21

Andreas Bieler and Adam Morton (2003) expounded appropriately the three con-stitutive elements of OM critiques of political economy: firstly, a rejection ofproblem-solving dichotomies between society and state, and between politics andeconomics. OM is open because it refuses to engage in the separation of the

political and the economicit refuses to speak the language of capital. Second isa reassertion of the class struggle as ontological presupposition and result of sub-stantive dialectical logic, which entails a rejection of the crude basesuperstructuremetaphor immanent in classical Marxism and a rejection of deterministic concep-tions of history. The third and most creative element of OM scholarship is itsreformulation of Marxist state theory via an understanding of national states asmultiple political manifestations of class relations of production in global(ising)capitalist form (Holloway 1995, 136). OM scholarship focuses on the internalrelationship between economic and political forms of class relations, which areconcurrently global and unified (the world market), and fragmented and partial(the international system) (Bonefeld 1991; Clarke 1991; Holloway 1995; Burnham2002). OM theorists have found a necessary contradiction between the worldmarket and the international system by asserting that global capital emerged andcan only exist in fragmented political form (Clarke 1991).

Bieler and Morton (2003, 469) reject OM on the grounds that it tends:

to obscure how class struggle is mediated through specific material socialpractices, to prioritise the dominant reproduction of capitalism over resis-tance, to refuse to distinguish between different forms of state whilst alsofrequently indulging in state-centric analysis; and to succumb to an overlytheoretical and abstract style of discussion.

They accordingly offer a neo-Gramscian (NG) alternative to OM, purposely incor-porat[ing] many of [its] positive aspects whilst at the same time overcoming itslimitations (Bieler and Morton 2003, 470). This alternative is a theory of the statethat draws extensively on the work of Gramsci and Poulantzas, to produce acombination of integral and relatively autonomous conceptualisations of thestate. Crucially, the state is not analysed by Bieler and Morton as a site of struggle. 5

In contrast, this article offers a response to OM that approaches the state inrelational terms. By recasting the state in relational terms, I seek to retrieve the

theoretical advances made by Poulantzas in his later work (1978b) while evading itsstructural-functionalist overhangshis continued consideration of the state as rela-tively autonomous from the contradictory production process, which has mostrecently been reiterated by Bruff (2008). Unlike existing theories, the state isunderstood here as a contradictory organisation of subjection that can never fullymanage the antagonistic content of capital accumulation because it is systematicallytraversed by concurrent intra-elite and class struggles.

The argument developed here is firmly grounded in the historical materialisttradition, but refuses to be categorised as OM or neo-Gramscian. It presents waysof opening up Open Marxist categories (Roberts 2003) by scrutinising OM

approaches to the state via an alternative that shares OMs own substantive dia-lectical method (Bonefeld et al. 1992a). It suggests that turning OMs methodologi-cal tools against it is the most effective means of problematising its assumptions on

388 A N D REA S T S O L A K I S


BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


3/21

its own terms, of opening its central categories to alternative theoretical andempirical insights and hence of potentially overcoming its limitations. In fact, thisarticle undertakes the reflexive labour that is often lacking in OM.

Implicit here is a critical assessment of neo-Gramscian scholarship as well as OM:

while not dismissing either completely, it draws on their positive aspects in the spiritof engagement heralded by Bieler and Morton.6 The present contribution integratesspecific arguments made by scholars whose theoretical approaches are mutuallyinconsistent. This may induce accusations of eclecticism. Nevertheless, the pointmade here is that precisely because each approach may reasonably be considered asincomplete and limited, it is valid to integrate compatible arguments into a specific,coherent whole.

The present discussion of OM and the suggested alternative conceptualisation of thestate are not esoteric but highly relevant to the broader disciplines of Political

Science and International Political Economy (IPE). The modest but relevant con-tribution of this article is its attempt to integrate a systematically relational approachof the state into historical materialist thinking through a critical engagement withOM. Seeing the state as a social relation is not unprecedented. The state is regularlyanalysed as a site of power relations in mainstream scholarship (in stark contrast tocritical research, which tends to overlook contradictions internal to the state toemphasise its class constitution);7 yet it is rarely analysed as an organisation ofrelations of production. However, the only elaborate attempt to analyse the socialconstitution of the state by emphasising the reproduction of class struggles withinthe states institutional apparatus was provided by Poulantzas in his later work

(1978b). The present article seeks to breathe life into Poulantzas unfinishedattempt to revise and possibly transcend his previous structural-functionalistapproach. I however reject the continued reliance, in Poulantzas work, of theconcept of relative autonomy in his State, Power, Socialism (Poulantzas 1978b).However, the suggested approach places far more emphasis on struggles betweendominant and subjugated social forces within the state than Bob Jessop (1990 and2007), who consciously obscured class in his strategic-relational conception of thestate.8 I do not see the state as fulfilling functions (including sustaining capitalhegemony) but rather as responding (often in an erratic and ad hoc fashion) to thecontradictions of capital accumulation. This dysfunctional response is conditioned

by the instability and contested nature of the state itself. This implies a rejection ofstructural-functionalism in both NG and OM forms, partly in order to renew thetranscendental (i.e. revolutionary) potential of historical materialisms critique ofpolitical economy by reviving an analysis of structureconstituted by and consti-tutive of the stateas struggle.9

I begin by expounding OM theories of the state, emphasising the strength of PeterBurnhams definition as organisation of subjection (which paradoxically hasWeberian undertones); 10 nevertheless I point out that the validity of this definitionis undermined by an implicit structural-functionalism and by an implicit traditionalrealist understanding as unitary formas emphasised by Bieler and Mortonand

accordingly suggest an avenue for the opening of OMs understanding of the state,which centres on the consideration of the state as constitutive of and constituted by

broader production relations, that is, as class struggle. I then briefly move from OMs

O P EN I N G U P O P EN M A RX I S T S T A T E T H EO RI ES 389


BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


4/21

conceptual inconsistencies to its empirical shortcomings by questioning the validityof OMs historical analysis of the relationship between the international system andthe world market. I engage with and ultimately reject, following Hannes Lacher(2002 and 2007), the OM argument that the state is necessarily multiple and

territorialised, and that the emergence of the international system has necessarilybeen correlated to the historical globalisation of capital. I then offer methodologicalreflections that help to operationalise an analysis of the state as contradictoryorganisation of subjection.

1. Open Marxist Theories of the State

Definitions

As always, writes John Holloway (1995, 116), any attempt to conceptualisesocialism must come to grips with the significance of the state and its relation tocapital. Therefore, providing a more robust and sophisticated Marxist alternative toinstrumentalist and structural-functionalist conceptualisations of the state has

been the fundamental purpose of OM theorists and the source of their originality.In a sense their attack on these two dominant currents within Marxist state theoryhas constituted a de facto rebuttal of neo-Gramscian theorisations of the state as anintegral or relatively autonomous political structure (Cox 1987, 100; Bieler andMorton 2003, 482). OM thus offers an organisational definition of the stateostensibly expunged of functionalism: the state is a social manifestation of the

essential contradictions of global capital, a particular and historically determinedpolitical form of the global class struggle (Bonefeld 1991; Clarke 1991; Burnham1994b and 1995; Holloway 1995).

OM theorists argue that the state cannot merely be an instrument of class rule: it isthe concentration of bourgeois society, hence a violent expression of its contra-dictions.11 As an expression of social contradictions, the state is divorced from thereal individual and collective interests, inducing an emphasis upon the limits ofstate action in the general interest of capital (Hirsch 1978, 62). The state is sociallyconstituted and hence a necessary political form of the prior contradiction-in-movement, the existence of capital in and through labour exploitation (Burnham

2001, 104). Whether understood as moment of coercion (Bonefeld 1991, 120;Holloway 1995, 117120), or as politically organised subjection,12 the state is notsimply seen as a corollary of the modern world and the complementary emer-gence of state discourses (Burnham 1994b, 1). The organisational state, monopo-lising legitimately coercive instruments of rule within a demarcated territory is anessential aspect of class societies since the emergence of civilisation (i.e. of classrelations) in Mesopotamia six thousand years ago (Burnham 1994b, 6). Stateauthority is thus elemental to global capital and entails the rejection of the simplisticliberal pluralist notion that state and market are interacting entities, which inducesdefective lines of reasoning concerning the dissolution or retreat of the state in the

face of the free market (Ohmae 1995; Strange 1996). OMs holistic approach tothe state is also set against atomism, which explains political developments simply

by focusing on and justifying the analysis of domestic national phenomena, and



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


5/21


6/21

imperative of the political economy of capital, the world market is the necessarypresupposition and result of capitalist production relations (thus of inter-staterelations and of every activity undertaken within and beyond the national realm)(Bonefeld 2000, 36). It is the nexus of everything that has come to be integrated in

its globalising social-territorial realm. Marx contended that the relations of indus-try and exchange within every nation are dominated by their intercourse withother nations and are conditioned by relations with the world market (Bonefeld2000, 37). The world market can thus not be conceptualised, as in Ricardianpolitical economy, as an international institution that competitively integratesessentially autonomous national markets through a mutually beneficial division oflabour founded on comparative advantage. The world market exists only as aninternational relation of production and division of commodified labour, and viceversa.

The global essence of capitalism and the vital composition that each and every

functional capital makes in the global accumulation process (capitals growthdepends vitally on the growth of all parts of the global accumulation structurea

break in one part of the global circuits affects all other parts) generates a realfreemasonry of bourgeois society, expressed in liberal pluralism and the cosmo-politan nature of production and consumption (Burnham 1995). Capital does nothave any overarching national or religious identity, because the exchange ofcommodities undertaken constantly by property owners explodes all barriers,whether institutional, religious or linguistic. Indeed, the language [of capital] isprice and its community is the abstract wealth that money represents. Its patriotismis money and its language is profit (Bonefeld 2000, 39).

Yet how does OM explain that capital is a world-system of national states, itsinternational fragmentation causing inter-imperialist conflicts and wars? ClaudiaVon Braunmuhls (1978) and Simon Clarkes (1988 and 1991) work has played apivotal role in the development of an OM perspective on the necessary relationship

between global capital, the international system and the national state. Accordingto them, the emergence of an inter-state system was embedded within the globalcontext of production and exchange, hence the world market was from itsinception integrated into the national economies (Von Braunmuhl 1978, 163,168). The violent emergence of a multiplicity of capitalist national states tradinginternationally necessarily complemented the struggles leading to the establish-

ment of a capitalist national-in-world market (Clarke 1988, 179). The historicaldeliverance of capitalist relations of exploitation from spatial constraints was con-current to a new form of coercive territoriality expressed in national states applyingthe law to protect the market and private property and constrain the mobility oflabour within (vagabondage), through and into its realm (illegal immigration).Thus international fragmentation expanded with the globalisation of the worldmarket: the creation in the sixteenth century of a world-embracing commerce anda world-embracing market was necessarily complemented by the globalisation ofthe international system of capitalist states.16 Capitalism has always existed and canonly exist as an international system constituting a multiplicity of interlocked

political forms, a multiplicity of political moments or nodes of global productionrelations (Von Braunmuhl 1978; Clarke 1991; Burnham 1995 and 2002; Holloway1995).



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


7/21

Capitalist society and state are therefore not coextensive but the former, global inessence, has been and can only be expressed in the competitive and fragmentedform of the latter (Holloway 1995). The national capitalist state, whose existence isever dependent on the global reproduction of capital (just as the latter is ever

dependent on the states active existence), is in constant competition with otherstates, not because capital is lodged in its territory, but precisely for the oppositereason: because it seeks to appropriate a portion of the surplus value generated byever-moving global capital. The systematic conflict between national states is there-fore not a conflict caused by the contradictory interests of nationally tied capitals,

but rather by their struggle to attract and/or immobilise capital on their ownterritory (Holloway 1995, 127). This explains the states efforts to provide theconditions for the reproduction of capital operating within its borders through theprovision of a stable investment environment: this is attempted (but never fullyaccomplished) first and foremost through the defence of private property (inWerner Bonefelds words, guaranteeing the foundation upon which bourgeoissociety rests (Bonefeld 2000, 39)); but also through the subjection and disciplin-ing of labour (with coercive, surveillance, educational and welfare instruments);the provision of transportation, communication andless conspicuouslysanitaryinfrastructure for the ever-more efficient movement of value; and the externalisedsupport (through military action, trade and monetary policy) of businesses tempo-rarily fixed on its territory (Holloway 1995).

According to Burnham (1990, 1991 and 1995), the capitalist essence of the stateprecludes its manipulation in the interest of elite fractions or alliances of socialforces for the elaboration of a particular regime or strategy of accumulation. The

fragmentation of capital into a multiplicity of interconnected and contradictoryinterests, through which patterns of collaboration and competition operate globally,compels the state to define and organise society in the interest of capital-in-general rather than private or fractional interests. The national state thereforeconstantly (both reactively and dynamically) engineers policies conditioning theglobal accumulation of capital. The imposition of the market as the only formthrough which capital and labour, but also capitalists themselves relate, alwaysconstrains state action and its organisational functions. The allocation of statepower ... between territorial entities entails that the competition between indi-vidual capitals is constantly reproduced in inter-state relations (Burnham 1995,

94);17

yet the interlocking of every state (just as all individual capitals) inhibitsinter-state competition to the extent that it cannot imperil global capital accumu-lation. Hence the general interest of capital globally constrains inter-imperialistcompetition, and sustains the complementarity of competition and collaboration inpolicy strategies (Burnham 1995, 109).

2. Scrutinising OM Conceptualisations of the State

OMs original contribution to IR and IPE, that is, the theorisation of the relationshipbetween global capital, the international system and the state, has unfortunately

been neglected too long by other theorists, despite its sophistication and relevance.This section emphasises the strength of OMs definition of the state, yet identifiestwo significant and inter-related conceptual shortcomings: its incipient structural-



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


8/21

functionalism; and a tendency to present the state as a unitary political form,moment of coercion or organisation of subjection devoid of internal contradic-tions. Accordingly a conceptualisation of the state that opens up OM, but wouldequally serve to consolidate other historical materialist perspectives, is suggested

here.

Structural-Functionalism and the Unity of the State

The most conspicuous shortcoming of OM approaches is rooted in their unwittingreproduction of structural-functionalism in their conceptualisation of the nationalcapitalist state. The critique engineered so efficiently by OM theorists against func-tionalism is immediately undermined by their own functionalist understanding ofthe state; in other words, they effectively shoot themselves in their own conceptualfeet in the process of critique and redefinition.

Bonefeld thus provides two incongruous understandings of the state within thesame article, one (open) as a socially constituted concentration of bourgeoissociety, which internally relates society to its contradictory and fluid organisation,the other reductionist and functionalist: the states time-honoured role and func-tion is to guarantee and protect the bourgeois rights of property which, themselves,obtain at the international stage of an all-penetrating freemasonry (Bonefeld 2000,39). Burnhams understanding as organisation of subjection also lapses in func-tionalism: the state, as a regulative, well-defined complex of institutions, alwayssustains the abstract discipline of the world market by upholding the general

interest of capital against particular corporative interests and against labourdemands. Indeed, Burnhams critique of functionalism can be turned against hisown understanding of the state. The basic flaw of functionalist approaches, in hisview, is that they define the state by its consequences: the state is a bearer of socialfunctions such as the maintenance of order and the reproduction of capital, andknows best what these functions are (Burnham 1994b, 2). Hence there is no spacefor struggle within the institutions of the capitalist state, since the logic of accumu-lation and class domination always structures state behaviour and functions. Yetthis is precisely the criticism that can be levelled at his organisational approach;Burnhams state has a capitalist purpose, a functional requirement: the coercively

underpinned management of labour and capital circuits (Burnham 2000 and2002). This function is indeed regulative or organisational (rather than merelycoercive), yet it remains an accumulative function, which subjects labour in theinterest of capital in the last instance. I concur with Lacher, who suggests thatdespite assertions to the contrary, state managerial action is always functionallydetermined by the need to maintain the conditions for global capital accumulationin OM (i.e. the state is capitalist rather than within capitalism, and always sustainsthe general interest of capital).18

Furthermore, OM all too often conceptualises the state as unitary and free frominternal contradictions and struggle (a territorial entity). It offers the metaphor of

a managerial institution removed from the contradictions of the capitallabourrelation by virtue of its own disciplining by world money. This is particularlyevident in Burnhams empirical application of the concept of depoliticisation, a



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


9/21

class strategy determined by state functions: according to him, state managers havedetached themselves from the capitallabour dialectic by improving rationally theefficiency of state regulation. They have plac[ed] the political character of decision-making at one remove via the use of new governing strategies ... involving a shift

from discretion to rules in economic policy, a reassertion of the boundaries sepa-rating legitimate political, economic and industrial activity and a fragmentation/devolution of decision-making in numerous arenas (Burnham 2000, 10). Thequestion is: how can one concurrently argue that the state is socially constituted(against the notion of relative autonomy) and assert that its necessary manage-ment of accumulation has distanced it from the contradictions of society? It isdifficult to pin down Burnhams conceptualisation of the state and to identify whatdistinguishes it substantively (beyond a rejection of fractionalism) from Poulantzasdefinition as a relatively autonomous superstructure systematically upholding thegeneral interest of capital through reproductive functions. Robert Coxs (1996,106107) critique of neo-realisms understanding of the state as a unitary actor,which posited the alternative that states are internally fragmented by social forcesstruggling not merely against it but within its institutional midst may very wellapply to the political form in OM.

Opening OMs Conceptualisation of the State

In order to open up OMs understanding of the state, one must build on itscompelling argument that the state is a social relation by rejecting its tendentialstructural-functionalism. An appropriate way to achieve this is to understand thestate as a contradictory organisation of subjection, a necessary coercive and regu-

latory expression of relations of dominationwhich are the premise and result ofproduction relations. Thus the state is a complex set of social relations embeddedwithin broader relations (as suggested by Bieler and Morton (2003): it reproducesand coercively expresses the power relations between the social forces constitutingit and that it necessarily organises; hence it is the organisational and coerciveconstitution of domination itself.

All relations of domination exist through and as organised subjection. As such,whenever relations of domination have historically arisen, they have been organ-ised by a distinct institution or set of institutions attempting to legitimise theserelations and to monopolise authority and the means of coercion: in other words,

a state. Societies defined by domination have historically been state societies. Thestate is internally related and conceptually indispensable to the underlying reality ofstructural domination: it is social content, rather than social form. The state is, asemphasised by Burnham (1994b), always presupposed in relations of domination,always a specific apparatus of coercive and regulatory institutions, of which thegovernment, the legislative apparatus and the judiciary system in capitalist formare a part but not the whole. By clearly delineating the institutions constituting thestate, it is possible to avoid the aforementioned shortcomings of the Gramscianintegral state. Crucially, however, and in order to evade statolatry (Gramsci 1971,268), the state cannot be understood independently from broader social struggles:

it simultaneously is shaped by and shapes them.This approach however rejects the tendency in OM to conceptualise the state as aunitary entity. To paraphrase Holloways capital is class struggle, form-as-relation



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


10/21

is form-as-struggle; hence organised subjection must be reflexively examined, aspointed out briefly but eluded subsequently by Holloway (1995). The fact that thestate most often acts in the interest of capitalist forces (and appears not only toprovide social stability but also to be stable itself) is indeed a reflection of their

structural (economic, ideological, institutional) power, but does not negate thereality of institutions as loci of antagonism and instability. Social organisation isalways contested, always a movement of struggle, in which the power of a socialforce is expressed in its ever-unstable control of (or influence on) state institutionsas well as civil society organisations. Hence the contradictory, unstable and fluidexistence of its historical forms.

As a contradictory relation, the state is constantly torn, as is society, by socialantagonisms: hence state policy is never perfectly implemented in the interest of thedominant class, is always an expression of struggle (however silent, invisible andapparently non-violent) and hence is constantly subject to dissolution by social

forces outside and within it. This proposition is not inconsistent with Jessops(1990) strategic-relational approach, but places much greater emphasis on system-atic class struggles within the state: the state is always an expression of broader classstruggles and of the organisational capacities of social forces (currents of opinion).Fluid, conflict-ridden hierarchical relations underlying society are reproduced in allstate institutionswhether formally (clearly defined positions and functions) orinformally (influence and tacit authority of particular collective agents in an organi-sation). Fiscal policies, such as the reduction or increase in public spending (onservices, investment and wages) and in direct and indirect taxes (on businessesand/or labour in the formal economy), reflect multiple contradictions and demands

within the statefor instance between the judiciary, the executive and thelegislaturebetween the state and supranational institutions and between the stateand civil society. Government initiatives are never implemented in a politicalvacuum but are responses to global and national social pressures, constraints andconflicts.

Assuming that the national state is a paradoxical form and hence locus of struggle,as suggested by Poulantzas (1978b) and later Cox (1996, 107109), it may betemporarily dominated by fractions of capital (in particular, transnationalisedcapital fractions) or indeed by dominant fractions of labour unwittingly reproduc-ing domination through their own organic appurtenance to the global hierarchy of

social forces and states. The unstable and ever-shifting balance between labour andcapitalist forces is expressed through complex organisational manifestations, someattempting formally to control the executive and legislative agencies of states(political parties), others attempting to influence state policy-making informally,through economic and ideological pressure (lobbies, business associations, researchinstitutes, trade unions). State legislation itself reflects institutional struggles: theinstitutionalisation of organised labour induces political struggles generating legalcompromise limiting the capital accumulation process and precluding absolutesubjugation by dominant social forces. The state necessarily expresses the social(economic, ideological, organisational, coercive) power of elite forces (whether

national or transnational) and/or organised labour at a particular moment of itshistory: in capitalism, it is therefore not functionally related to the capital accu-mulation process and hence is not inevitably a capitalist state.



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


11/21

The difficulty for a national social space to be perfectly autarchic constrains itscontinued integration in the global capital structure and hence constrains statesto implement policies that condition capital accumulation. Nevertheless, despiteattempts by technocratic and capitalist forces to achieve a functional relationship

between state activities and capital accumulation, state policies, as reflections ofstruggles, may not inevitably favour capital accumulation and may indeed generatefiscal and monetary crises; they may also potentially change production relations.

3. Capital Globalisation and the International System

The aforementioned conceptualisation of the state as contradictory organisation ofsubjection, however, seeks to overcome OMs un-problematised attachment to aterritorial/national form informing assumptions that the form that the capitaliststate takes is the national state. Social relations necessarily exist and are tempo-

rarily fixed on territories upon which states have been constructed and uponwhich social organisation occurs. Yet considering that this temporary fixity isexpressed in highly fluid shifts in national territories (from shifting boundaries tothe creation and erasure of states), the notion of a national state as the necessaryexpression of global capital is highly problematic because it incidentally reifies thecapitalist state as national political form (Burnhams territorial entity). The ques-tion is: why should the capitalist state necessarily be a national organisation ofsubjection elemental to an international system?

This question makes it imperative to complement the analysis of OMs conceptu-alisation of the state with a critical focus on its empirical applications. Lacher (2002and 2003) brought to light the significant theoretical and empirical issues arisingfrom OMs un-problematised attachment of the state to a necessary national form.Accordingly, one may question OMs argument that global capital has emerged andcan only exist in an internationally fragmented and competitive political form. Thenecessary multiplicity of states entails that the national state was, is and will be theultimate organisational form of global capital: the competition between capitalsfixed on national spaces is functionally reproduced in the rivalries between nationalstates.19 Lacher (2002, 153) has thus posed fundamental questions that OM has notanswered satisfactorily: why is the general interest of capital realised and opera-tionalised at the level of territorial segments of this world society? ... Why is

capital-in-general territorially fragmented and thus only partial? In other words, ifcapital-in-general is global and capitalist society a world society, why would thenational state be an expression of its general interest, since it is territorially definedand, hence, a necessarily incomplete expression of a globally oriented interest?Nothing in the OM argument that the emergence of capital generated a separationof political and economic relations explains that the latter (global and unified) wasexpressed in the formers fragmented form. That the capitalist state does not existin the singular but as one among many is thus not directly given by the capitalrelation (Lacher 2002, 153). The un-problematised association of the national statewith the general interest of global capital leads OM, as pointed out by Bieler and

Morton (2003, 469), to indulge in state-centric analyses and to neglect the dia-lectical institutional and ideological transformations generated by and impacting ontransnational capital concentration.



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


12/21

Holloway (1995) argues that global political fragmentation historically emerginghand in hand with capital decomposes labour despite its constant struggle toemancipate itself from the appropriation and containment of its power by capital.Unwittingly the international system is thereby construed as a functional pre-

requisite for the dissolution of labour struggles. There is purpose in internationalfragmentation, and capital (and state managers) thus seem, from that perspective,to have historically known best what the function of global fragmentation is: inthat light all national states have, since the very emergence of capitalism, whichcreated their rigidified existence, participated concurrently, actively and con-sciously in a constant process of fetishising or rigidifying social relations, effectivelydecomposing labour through assertions of national sovereignty, through exhorta-tions to the nation, through flag ceremonies, through the playing of nationalanthems, through administrative discrimination against foreigners, through war(Holloway 1995, 124).

From that point of view, the national cannot have historically preceded capital,and the fluid historic movement of national state formation is necessarily given acapitalist and fetishising purpose. The result of this logic is a reductionist under-standing of the causes of the formation of the international system and precludes anarguably valid question: why would the national not historically precede capital,and hence be unrelated to its functional relation with fetishisation? It is difficultto believe that the national elites leading the decolonisation process in the capitalistperiphery invented nations for fetishising purposes. This would indubitablyattribute an embroidered Machiavellian power both to early capitalist and periph-eral elites.

OM assumes a systemic relationship between global capital and the internationalsystem. Is there? Sophisticated scholarly discussions on whether the integrativelogic of capital contains its necessary internal contradiction in the continued frag-mentation of the social world have perhaps obscured an alternative argumentwhich must be considered as potentially opening up critical debates on capitalglobalisation and its relationship with the international system (Callinicos andRosenberg 2008). Hannes Lacher and Benno Teschke (2007) have convincinglyrefuted Marxist and world-system arguments that the capitalist structure and theinternational system arose in tandem, as two supportive yet contradictory pro-

cesses. They demonstrated that capital as a complete structure of production inte-grating productive, financial and commercial circuits expanded from its British basewithin and through a pre-existing (European) fragmented international system ofmodern absolutist states.

From that perspective, national states are therefore not multiple political formstaken by globalising capital: their preceding historical existence as non-capitalistinstitutions precludes any necessary correlation with capital, and precludes theaffirmation that the international system of territorialised states is the only andultimate imperialistic form taken by global capital, as suggested by state-centricapproaches. The logic of capitalist relations is essentially distinct from, although it

has historically overlapped with, the territorial logic defining the internationalsystem.20 Therefore the globalisation of capital, albeit congruent during a specificphase of its history with inter-state rivalries (the apparently long yet ephemeral era



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


13/21

of national imperialisms in which capital concentration had become relativelycoextensive with the boundaries of national states and required its coercive andprotective apparatus to expand against other national capitals), has increasingly

become contradictory to territorial divisions. Just as the international system of

modern absolutist states preceded the emergence of capital, the transnationalconcentration of capital has outgrown the fragmented logic of international terri-toriality and dialectically generated its supranationally and transnationally con-strained restructuring (Overbeek and Van der Pijl 1993; Van der Pijl 1998; Overbeek2000; Robinson 2005).

4. Some Methodological Considerations

If one accepts the contention that the state is not necessarily multiple and territo-rialised, and that the emergence of the international system has not necessarily

been correlated to the historical globalisation of capital; and if one endorses theneo-Gramscian argument that global restructuring driven by transnational capital-ist forces has defined the latest phase of capital globalisation, the question is howto use these theoretical concrete foundations to study the state as a contradictoryorganisation of subjection.

I emphasised that as a social relation constituting and constituted by broaderproduction relations, the state is a terrain of intra-elite and class struggles. It thusnever fully achieves a depoliticised and functional management of the antagonisticcontent of capital accumulation. I also pointed out that a greater emphasis on

struggles between dominant and subjugated social forces within the state should beattempted. The question then is, how do we delineate these social forces (Gramsciscurrents of opinions)? How can we systematically identify and measure them, ina qualitative sense? Delineationwith a view always to understand forces asmovements and processes in order to avoid reificationis indispensable in order tooperationalise research. Once the synthetic reality of class relations has been estab-lished, the movements or forces (the two terms are used interchangeably here)that shape its contours must be concurrently conceptualised and analysed empiri-cally. This is the fundamental precondition of any analysis of the national state,

because it links generalising principles (worldwide labour relations) to contextual

(local, national or regional) specificities. The notion of movement provides ametaphor for apparent social forms as fluid, socially constructed and undergoingconstant changes. It also problematises the positivistic undertones of much Marxistthought, which understands the class struggle not merely as essential social reality

but all too often as directly observable also in the forms taken by the confrontationof capital and labour, perceived as a conflict between two rigid class blocs (Bielerand Morton 2003).

Yet using the terms force and movement interchangeably forces an engage-ment with the social movements literature, which in turn induces a clarificationof the concepts under focus: what characterises a social movement/force? What

are its attributes? What unites, or distinguishes it from more precisely defined(yet equally contentious) concepts such as class? The social movements litera-ture conventionally confines movements (and civil society by implication) to



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


14/21

subalternity and resistance (Tarrow 1998; Eckstein 2001; Tilly 2004).21 SidneyTarrow (1998, 34) thus defines a social movement as collective challenges bypeople with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites,opponents and authorities. He explicitly distinguishes social movements from

political parties and interest groups. Charles Tilly (2004, 3), on his side, under-stands social movements as vehicles for ordinary peoples participation in thepublic sphere (in reactive form, through public displays of resistance to specificpolicies and in proactive form through specific demands). These public displaysare manifested in various ways (a repertoire of political actionincluding publicmeetings, solemn processions, rallies and demonstrations, campaigns, special-purpose associations and coalitions, vigils, petition drives, statements to the mediaand pamphleteering campaigns).

These definitions beg the questions: resistance to what and whom, in the firstplace? Are owners of capital and dominant social forces (i.e. elites) to be consid-

ered as something that exists beyond the realm of social movements and henceof resistancewhat do we make of struggles between elite forces, conspicuous innative elite resistance to colonialism and to restructuring, for instance? Toreduce the notion of movement to subalternity implicitly confines administra-tive and business elites to a condition of permanence and stability. More impor-tantly perhaps, conventional approaches to social movements beg the samequestion as Weberian pluralism: how do we distinguish between relevant andirrelevant movements? In other words, how can we operationalise the investi-gation of social movements by avoiding a focus on transient or meaninglessissues? Ontological pluralism forces an arbitrary choice of objects of study (social

movements), but it also potentially negates the primacy of class-relevant socialforces in politics. A study underpinned by the substantive abstraction of classmust distinguish between relevant and irrelevant movements in this chaoticmultitude, in part because social analysis cannot rely on an aggregation of anyone of these movements but rather on the social relations of production as atotality.

Studies of the rise of social movements are problematic because the questionsraised above are brushed aside to analyse any civil society conflict with or resis-tance to the state (see Eckstein 2001 on Latin America; Espasandn and Iglesias

2007 on Bolivia). Social movements in the literature are necessarily outside of anddominated by the state (Garca Linera et al. 2000). Social elites, in contrast, are thegovernment or, in other words, they effectively instrumentalise the state. Thisinvolves a regression from the advances made in the theorisation of the state byimplying the autonomous and static existence of state and elites. Yet substantivedialectics demonstrates that elite forces exist precisely by virtue of their exploitationof labour power (Burnham 2001).

For our research purpose, a broader and more comprehensive understanding ofsocial movement is suggested here: social movements are forces in the sense thatthey are involved in politics, in power struggles to impose or defend collectively

constructed interests and identities. They may or may not act within the confines ofclass discourses, and may or may not coalesce and find an organisational expres-sion. Yet, for the purpose of measurement, a study of the state ought to place in



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


15/21

relation social forces coalesced in social organisations, and focus on class-relevantorganisations. The issue of conceptualisation and its adequate measurement iscentral to this definition (Brady and Collier 2004), and affects every abstraction,from democracy and democratisation (Mainwaring 1992; ODonnell 1992) to

internationalisation (Cox 1996). After all, collective action is effective only asorganised action and the notion of social forces has little meaning if it cannot bemeasured in one way or another (Adcock and Collier 2001). Identifying socialorganisations helps to identify forms of collective action and helps the empiricalmeasurement of a social movements attributes.22 However, social organisationsmust also be relevant to a historical materialist ontology: this entails a focus onorganisations that act within the framework of class struggle by consciously seekingto control or to dominate state institutions, or even to eliminate the state, in orderto maintain a particular order or generate a new one (Tapia 2002, 3234). Socialforces must be related to class because the relation between classesincluding butnot restricted to the extraction of surplus valueis the underlying mechanismdefining the specific forms through which social forces emerge, are reproduced andeventually disappear.

It has been emphasised before that the state is constituted by and shapes class-relevant social organisations. How does this translate into a concrete case study?A tentative methodological model is suggested here, which has been used in astudy of the Bolivian case (Tsolakis (forthcoming)). Although the dialecticalmethod predisposes the researcher to apply reflexively a grand theory of elites,labour and the state to the longue dure of social relations in any local, nationalor macro-regional context, it is beyond the scope of most studies to attempt suchgeneralisation. Conversely, historical materialist research seeks to generate theo-retical propositions that may be coherently integrated into an approach foundedon the synthetic, substantive abstraction of social relations of production (Van derPijl 1998; Overbeek 2000; Van Apeldoorn 2004). It has been established convinc-ingly that class struggle is defined by and in turn defines pre-existing relations ofproduction, which are often located in the longue dure of world society and ofits localised forms of domination (Braudel 1980; Cox 1996). Hence a constantprocess of primitive accumulation and its dialectical destruction of, and recon-figuration by, pre-existing production relations defines the refracted and dialecticalglobalisation of capital (Van der Pijl 1998 and 2002; Bonefeld 2000). Upon this

abstract yet historically rooted basis, an analysis of the state in the 20th centuryand beyond may begin by identifying and deciphering formal organisations(whether locally, nationally or transnationally grounded) driven historically by theexplicit aim to sustain the capitalist structure, to change it or to isolate socialspaces from itsuch as political parties, business organisations and trade unions.23

It should then identify collective agency within and beyond both the state andmultilateral organisations, and trace historical relationships of forces within and

between contradictory organisations of subjection, before analysing howlegislationwhether national or internationaland policy implementation, asexpressions of struggle, in turn redirect the production process. The research

process should involve grounding abstractions in historical facts and transformingthem in the processattempting a movement back and forth between conceptualpropositions and empirical evidence.



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


16/21

Conclusion

This essay has attempted to do justice to an unjustifiably ignored strand in criticaltheory, OM, by scrutinising its original contribution to knowledge: its theory of the

state. It began by arguing that OMs otherwise compelling critique of structural-functionalism can and should be turned against it; and that the tendency to presentthe state in monolithic form negates the social constitution of the state and henceundermines OMs own definition as a concentration of bourgeois society.It problematised its quasi-theological invention of a necessary, historicalcorrelationif not causal relationbetween global capital and its fragmented,territorialised political forms, suggesting that this correlation is empirically dubiousand sometimes induces a reduction of the latter to a functional requirement for thereproduction of the former.

It therefore suggested avenues for a viable opening of the OM concept of the state

via an alternative approach which is well embedded in historical materialism butalso draws strength in Weberian thought, without lapsing into methodologicalpluralism. The state is seen as a contradictory organisation of subjection, a necessaryconstituent of underlying production relations. It is a social relation, a constitutiveelement of broader struggles, and its historic reproduction of capitalist relations istherefore a contingent process rather than the consequence of its functions.

This alternative approach to the state provides the conceptual means to investigateempirically state formation since the late 20th century. Such empirical analysis

builds on the insights of neo-Gramscian scholarship on the central role of transna-

tionally integrated elites in the global process of social restructuring since the 1970s.The institutional expression of global restructuring has been the formation of anembryonic global organisational complex. Global governance reflects the socialpower of transnational elite forces and attempts to attenuate, if not transcend, thefundamental contradictions between accelerating globalisation and national terri-torial rivalries. This attenuation is undertaken via the regulation of global capitalmovements and the attempt to solve constraints on the reproduction of capitalrelations (international labour movements, transnational organised crime andglobal ecological destruction). Yet the global organisation of subjections reproducesclass and intra-elite struggles within the institutions constituting it. These institu-

tional relations fundamentally transform the international competitive system,and consolidate both supranationally and transnationally the capitalist form ofnational states against systematic subaltern and elite resistance. However, as a socialrelation not inevitably taking a capitalist form, global organisation does not deter-mine a functional relationship between state activities and the reproduction ofcapital. It provides the institutional frame for subaltern struggles within capitallabour relations: class struggles do not only unfold in the streets and in the work-place, but also within (and not simply against) state institutions.

About the Author

Andreas Tsolakis, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7HS, UK,email: [email protected]



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


17/21

NotesI would like to express my thanks to the Institute of Advanced Study and the Department of Politicsand International Studies at the University of Warwick for their institutional and financial support.I am grateful for the helpful comments made on earlier versions of the article by Andreas Bieler and

anonymous reviewers for BJPIR.1. For neo-Gramscian and OM critiques of world system theory, classical and structural forms of

Marxism, see Holloway and Picciotto 1978; Cox 1987 and 1996; Bonefeld et al. 1992a and1992b; Burnham 1994a and 1994b; Rupert 1995; Robinson 1996 and 2005.

2. Political Marxism is embodied in the work of Brenner (1977) and Wood (1981 and 2002).Prominent participants in the German debates include Gerstenberger (1978), Hirsch (1978)and Von Braunmuhl (1978).

3. In Poulantzas (1975) view, since the bourgeoisie is divided along capital fractions (industry,banking, commerce), it is incapable of acting as a cohesive class. In order to sustain growth(capital accumulation), state managers sometimes have to reject the short-term demands ofspecific capital fractions in the bourgeoisies general interest, thereby fostering the relative

autonomy of the state, functionally related to capital.4. Instrumentalism conceptualises the state as permeable, and immediately responsive to the

interests of the ruling class (Lenin 1965 [1917]; Miliband 1969; Mandel 1975). For a criticaloverview of the PoulantzasMiliband debate, see Hay (1999). For a compelling early OMcritique of structural-functionalism and instrumentalism, see Holloway and Picciotto (1978).

5. For a more in-depth discussion of the inconsistencies between an integral view of the state,which perceives the latter as absorbing civil society institutions to secure capitalist class rule,and a relatively autonomous approach that distances the state from civil society (from thespecific interests and requirements of capitalist fractions and labour) to secure the reproductionof capital, see Tsolakis (2009, ch. 2).

However, Gramscis notion of the integral state has been briefly criticised by Burnham(1994b, 2).

6. For instance, the eclectic meta-theoretical foundations of Coxian IPE (embodied in the work ofRobert Cox, Stephen Gill and William Robinson) are rejected here. OMs critique of Cox andSchechters (2002) argument that Weberian pluralism can be used as a methodological toolalongside dialectics to focus on the synchronic is regarded as valid. For an account of debates

between OM and neo-Gramscian approaches, and for a distinction between TransnationalHistorical Materialism and Coxian IPE, see Overbeek (2004).

Arguably OM has brushed aside rather dogmatically the neo-Gramscian conceptualisation ofstructure and agency as a historically grounded dialectical totality: human agency can con-sciously reflect upon and change the actions (re)producing the social structure that he or sheconstitutes. Hence on the one hand, analyses of ideological relations and the concept ofhegemony, silenced in OM, should become a central part of historical materialist research

projects, as constitutive of economic and institutional forms; on the other, formal and struc-tural change should not be perceived as necessarily given by the class relation: social changeis not predetermined by the underlying reality but has historically been generated also bystruggle (expressed in domestic and foreign wars, in imperialistic relations) between con-tending elite forces (Overbeek 2004).

Neo-Gramscian theoretical propositions have sustained two audacious theses on the latedevelopment of the global political economy (GPE): firstly, transnational elite formation andthe emergence of a US-centred transnational historic bloc; secondly, that under the impetusof this highly contradictory bloc of elite forces facing global crisis-as-rupture in the early 1970s,global relations of production were radically restructured. Economic change involved thetransnational concentration of capital and the emergence of more flexible forms of economicorganisation; ideological struggle was manifested in the substitution of neo-classical liberal

(neo-liberal) hegemony for Keynesian and state capitalist ideologies; and institutionalrestructuring binding these processes involved the formation of global, supranational regu-latory institutions expressing co-operative behaviour among transnationalised managerialstrata of national states. See Gill 2003; Van der Pijl 1998; Overbeek 2004.



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


18/21

7. Yet struggle tends to be reduced to the high spheres of governancegovernment, parliament,between legislative and executive powersin other words, it has been seen as a relationshipof elite forces (this typifies analyses of democratisation in Latin American specialist circles; seefor example ODonnell and Schmitter 1986).

8. Jessop (1985, 341) interpreted Poulantzas (1978b, 43) contention that although class division

is not the exclusive terrain of the constitution of power ... in class societies all power bears aclass significance as a residual penchant for essentialism and class reductionism.

9. Both NG and OM have criticised each other for their structural-functionalist tendencies(Burnham 1991and 1994a; Lacher 2002; Bieler and Morton 2003; Bieler et al. 2006). OMsultimate purpose is positive in the sense of seeking to develop a critique of political economythat is appropriate for a transcendental (i.e. revolutionary) critique of capitalism. The problemwith structural-functionalism is its inherent conservatism, which means that the thrust of NGsown critique is reformist. Yet the point made here is that OM also inadvertently lapses intoconservatism by overemphasising the capacity of the state (through coercive and organisa-tional functions as well as depoliticisation strategies) and indeed, of the international systemitself (Holloway 1995; see also Wood 2002) to sustain the reproduction of global capital.

10. This article focuses on the work of Simon Clarke (1988, 1991 and 2001), Werner Bonefeld(1991 and 2000), John Holloway (1995; Holloway and Picciotto 1978) and Peter Burnham(1994b, 1995, 2000 and 2002). Their return to the real Marx involves mutually coherentunderstandings of the state, and the OM body of work is arguably riddled with few internalcontroversies. Consequently, and in the interest of simplicity and comprehensiveness, I buildmy critique by consciously silencing possible differences between authors.

11. Marx, The Gundrisse, cited by Bonefeld (2000, 36).

12. This definition is embedded in the historical materialist tradition that finds its roots in the moreopen work of Marx. The definitions offered by theorists from sometimes incompatibleapproaches are surprisingly similar; thus Bonefeld (1991, 120) appropriates Marxs definition

of the state as the concentrated and organised force of society. Abrams (1988, 63) understandsthe state as politically organized subjection. This definition is adopted by Burnham (1994b, 2),who sees the state as a set of distinct institutions, grounded within particular social relations,whose specific concern is with the organisation of domination (in the name of commoninterest), within a delimited territory. Ironically, Burnhams Marxist definition of the state ishighly congruent (despite his recurrent criticism of Weberian pluralism) with Webers (1991,8283) own conceptualisation as a compulsory association which organises domination, andmonopolises the legitimate use of physical force as a means of domination within a territory.Jessop (1990, 341), on his side, reinterprets the work of Poulantzas by defining the state as adistinct ensemble of institutions and organizations whose socially accepted function is todefine and enforce collectively binding decisions on the members of a society in the name oftheir common interest or general will.

13. This tendency is evident in Gramscian thought (Gramsci 1971, 176177, 240).

14. Coxian IPE has reproduced this understanding of globalisation. See Bonefeld (2000) for aneffective critique.

15. For similar neo-Gramscian accounts see Van der Pijl (1998, 3739) and Morton (2007, 144145).

16. Marx, Capital Vol.1, cited by Bonefeld (2000).

17. Burnhams usage of the term entity unwittingly reifies the state, thereby undermining OMsargument that global production relations should be viewed as the substantive entity.

18. Disappointingly, however, Lacher (2002) fails to provide an alternative conceptualisation of the

state.

19. Burnham (1995, 95) suggests that in response to the latest and deepest crisis of postwar globalcapitalism we have not yet witnessed the extinction of the national state but the concerted and



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


19/21

paradoxical attempt to retain the national form of the political through schemes aimed at theregionalisation of the world market. Bonefeld (2002) equally reasserts the necessary politicalfragmentation of global social relations of production in contemporary capitalismas a systemof national moments of coercion. Thus European integration has developed as an institutionalframework perpetuating international competition through price systems differentials.

20. For a similar argument, see Harvey (2003).

21. For a convincing critique of the social movements literature, see Cohen and Rai (2000).

22. It ought to be clarified that potentially various movements constitute and thus may divideorganisations: one organisation does not equal one movementthe institution is twisted bythe social contradictions defining it and may or may not accommodate these contradictions. Ifit fails to do so, a scission occurs.

23. It is not incidental that meaningful historical forces emerge only from the moment that theytake the organised form of trade unions and political parties (Zavaleta 1983).

Bibliography

Abrams, P. (1988) Notes on the difficulty of studying the state, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1:1, 5889.

Adcock, R. and Collier, D. (2001) Measurement validity: A shared standard for qualitative and quanti-tative research, American Political Science Review, 95:3, 529546.

Bieler, A. and Morton, A. (2003) Globalisation, the state and class struggle: A critical economy engage-ment with Open Marxism, British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 5:4, 467499.

Bieler, A. et al. (2006) Introduction, in A. Bieler, W. Bonefeld, P. Burnham, and M. Adam (eds.), GlobalRestructuring: State, Capital and Labour (London: Palgrave), 19.

Bonefeld, W. (1992) Social constitution and the form of the capitalist state, in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn andK. Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism, Vol. 1: Dialectics and History (London: Pluto Press), 93132.

Bonefeld, W. (2000) The spectre of globalization: On the form and content of the world market,in W. Bonefeld and K. Psychopedis (eds), The Politics of Change: Globalization, Ideology and Critique(Basingstoke: Palgrave), 3168.

Bonefeld, W. (2002) European integration: The market, the political and class, Capital and Class, 77,117142.

Bonefeld, W., Gunn, R. and Psychopedis, K. (1992a) Introduction, in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn andK. Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism, Vol. 1: Dialectics and History (London: Pluto Press), ixxx.

Bonefeld, W., Gunn, R. and Psychopedis, K. (1992b) Introduction, in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn andK. Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism, Vol. 2: Theory and Practice (London: Pluto Press), ixxviii.

Brady, H. and Collier, D. (2004) Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield).

Braudel, F. (1980) On History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

Brenner, R. (1977) The origins of capitalist development, New Left Review, 104, 2592.

Bruff, I. (2008) The continued relevance of Nicos Poulantzas State, Power, Socialism. Paper presented atthe BISA annual conference, University of Exeter, 1517 December.

Burnham, P. (1990) The Political Economy of Postwar Reconstruction (London: Macmillan).

Burnham, P. (1991) Neo-Gramscian hegemony and international order, Capital and Class, 45, 7393.

Burnham, P. (1994a) Open Marxism and vulgar international political economy, Review of InternationalPolitical Economy, 1:2, 221231.

Burnham, P. (1994b) The organisational view of the state, Politics, 14:1, 17.

Burnham, P. (1995) Capital, crisis and the international state system, in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway

(eds), Global Capital, National States and the Politics of Money (Basingstoke: Macmillan), 92115.Burnham, P. (2000) Globalization, depoliticization and modern economic management,

in W. Bonefeld and K. Psychopedis (eds), The Politics of Change: Globalization, Ideology and Critique(Basingstoke: Palgrave), 930.



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


20/21

Burnham, P. (2001) Marx, IPE and globalisation, Capital and Class, 75, 103112.

Burnham, P. (2002) Class struggle, states and global circuits of capital, in M. Pupert and H. Smith (eds),Historical Materialism and Globalization (London: Routledge), 113128.

Callinicos, A. and Rosenberg, J. (2008) Uneven and combined development: The social-relational sub-stratum of the international? An exchange of letters, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21:1,

77112.Clarke, S. (1988) Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State (Aldershot: Edward Elgar).

Clarke, S. (1991) The state debate, in S. Clarke (ed.), The State Debate (London: Palgrave), 169.

Clarke, S. (2001) The globalization of capital, crisis and class struggle, Capital and Class, 75, 93101.

Cohen, R. and Rai, S. (2000) Introduction, in R. Cohen and S. Rai (eds), Global Social Movements (London:Athlone), 117.

Cox, R. (1981) Social forces, states, and world orders: Beyond international relations theory, Millennium,10:2.

Cox, R. (1987) Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press).

Cox, R. (1996 [1981]) Social forces, states, and world orders: Beyond international relations theory, in

R. Cox and T. Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 85123.Cox, R. and Schechter, M. (2002) The Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals

and Civilization (London: Routledge).

Eckstein, S. (2001) Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press).

Espasandn, J. and Iglesias, P. (2007) Bolivia en Movimiento: Accin Colectiva y Poder Poltico (Madrid: El ViejoTopo).

Garca Linera, ., Gutierrez, R., Prada, R. and Tapia, L. (2000) El Retorno de la Bolivia Plebeya (La Paz: Mueladel Diablo).

Gerstenberger, H. (1978) Class conflict, competition and state functions, in J. Holloway and S. Picciotto(eds), State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (London: Edward Arnold), 148159.

Gill, S. (2003) Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Basingstoke: Palgrave).

Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers).

Hannes, L. and Teschke, B. (2007) The changing logics of capitalist competition, Cambridge Review ofInternational Affairs, 20:4, 566580.

Harvey, D. (2003) The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Hay, C. (1999) Marxism and the state, in A. Gamble, D. Marsh and T. Tant (eds.), Marxism and SocialScience (Houndmills: Macmillan), 152174.

Hirsch, J. (1978) The state apparatus and social reproduction: Elements of a theory of the bourgeois state,in J. Holloway and S. Picciotto (eds), State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (London: Edward Arnold),57107.

Holloway, J. (1995) Global capital and the national state, in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway (eds), GlobalCapital, National States and the Politics of Money (Basingstoke: Macmillan), 116140.

Holloway, J. and Picciotto, S. (1978) Introduction: Towards a materialist theory of the state, inJ. Holloway and S. Picciotto (eds), State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (London: Edward Arnold), 131.

Jessop, B. (1985) Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist Theory and Political Strategy (London: Macmillan).

Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place (London: Polity).

Jessop, B. (2007) State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Lacher, H. (2002) Making sense of the international system: The promises and pitfalls of contemporaryMarxist theories of international relations, in M. Rupert and H. Smith (eds), Historical Materialism andGlobalization (London: Routledge), 147164.

Lacher, H. (2003) State centrism and its limits, Review of International Studies, 29:4, 521542.

Lacher, H. (2007) Beyond Globalization: Capitalism, Modernity and the International Relations of Modernity(London: Routledge).

Lenin, V. (1965 [1917]) The State and Revolution (Moscow: Progress).Mainwaring, S. (1992) Transitions to democracy and democratic consolidation: Theoretical and com-

parative issues, in S. Mainwaring, G. ODonnell and S. Valenzuela (eds), Issues in Democratic Consoli-dation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 294335.



BJPIR, 2010, 12(3)


21/21

Mandel, E. (1975) Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books).

Miliband, R. (1969) The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

Morton, A. (2007) Unravelling Gramsci (London: Pluto Press).

ODonnell, G. (1992) Transitions, continuities and paradoxes, in S. Mainwaring, G. ODonnell and S.Valenzuela (eds), Issues in Democratic Consolidation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press),

1756.

ODonnell, G. and Schmitter, P. (1986) Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions aboutUncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press).

Ohmae, K. (1995) The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies (London: HarperCollins).

Overbeek, H. (2000) Transnational historical materialism: Theories of transnational class formation andworld order, in R. Palan (ed.), Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories (London: Routledge),174191.

Overbeek, H. (2004) Transnational class formation and concepts of control, Journal of InternationalRelations and Development, 7:2, 113141.

Overbeek, H. and Van der Pijl, K. (1993) Restructuring capital and restructuring hegemony: Neoliberal-ism and the unmaking of the post-war order, in H. Overbeek (ed.), Restructuring Hegemony in the GlobalPolitical Economy: The Rise of Transnational Neoliberalism in the 1980s (London: Routledge), 127.

Poulantzas, N. (1975) Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London: New Left Books).

Poulantzas, N. (1978a) Political Power and Social Classes (2nd edn) (London: Verso).

Poulantzas, N. (1978b) State, Power, Socialism (London: New Left Books).

Roberts, J.M. (2003) From reflection to refraction: Opening up Open Marxist categories, Capital and Class,78, 87116.

Robinson, W. (1996) Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press).

Robinson, W. (2005) A Theory of Global Capitalism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press).

Rupert, M. (1995) Producing Hegemony: The Politics of Mass Production and American Global Power (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press).

Strange, S. (1996) The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press).

Tapia, L. (2002) Movimientos sociales, movimiento societal y los no lugares de la poltica, in R. Gutirrez(ed.), Democratizaciones Plebeyas (La Paz: Muela del Diablo), 2472.

Tarrow, S. (1998) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press).

Tilly, C. (2004) Social Movements 17682004 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers).

Tsolakis, A. (2009) Globalisation and the reform of the Bolivian state, 19852005. Unpublished PhDthesis, University of Warwick, 31 March 2009.

Tsolakis, A. (forthcoming) The Reform of the Bolivian State: Domestic Politics in the Context of Globalization(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner/First Forum Press).

Van Apeldoorn, B. (2004) Theorizing the transnational: A historical materialist approach, Journal ofInternational Relations and Development, 7:2, 142176.

Van der Pijl, K. (1998) Transnational Classes and International Relations (London: Routledge).

Van der Pijl, K. (2002) Historical materialism and the emancipation of labour, in M. Rupert and H. Smith(eds), Historical Materialism and Globalization (London: Routledge), 129146.

Von Braunmuhl, C. (1978) On the analysis of the bourgeois nation state within the world market,in J. Holloway and S. Picciotto (eds), State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (London: Edward Arnold),160177.

Weber, M. (1991) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge).

Wood, E. M. (1981) The separation of the economic and the political in capitalism, New Left Review, 127,6695.

Wood, E. M. (2002) Global capital, national states, in M. Rupert and H. Smith (eds), Historical Materialismand Globalization (London: Routledge), 1739.

Zavaleta, R. (1983) Las masas en Noviembre, in R. Zavaleta (ed.), Bolivia, Hoy (Mexico: Siglo XXIEditores), 159.



BJPIR 2010 12(3)

Documents

Opening Up Open Marxist Theories of the State