Capitalist Society The State example essay topic

"The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie". (Communist Manifesto) In what ways does Miliband address the shortcomings of Marx's assertion regarding the framework of capitalist societies? Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848 as turmoil wracked Europe. Few people noticed this major work, even though Marx and Engels saw it as one of the most important documents ever written.

In writing the Manifesto, they were sure they had found the solution to most of the problems that plagued humankind. (Marx & Engels, p 7) When Marx made the statement in the Communist Manifesto that: .".. the Executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie", he also gave the bourgeoisie credit for historically playing a revolutionary role in changing society and in taking over that same society, replacing the hierarchy of the monarchy with the political power of the bourgeoisie. Marx saw this new capitalist class as using the state to administer, control and rule. (p 82) The idea that the executive of the modern state was there to look after the interests of the bourgeoisie comes up in many of Marx and Engels work as Miliband writes: .".. they never departed from the view that in capitalist society the state was above all the coercive instrument of a ruling class, itself defined in terms of its ownership and control of the means of production". This concept was accepted universally by Marxists but was too simplistic according to Miliband and not a good enough explanation as to what the state stood for. Although the early period of capitalism studied by Marx and Engels was not the Monopoly capitalism we know now, present day Marxists still attach themselves to Marx's explanation. (Miliband, pp 5-7) In criticising Marx, Miliband says that: "Marxists have made little notable attempt to confront the question of the state in the light of the concrete socio-economic and political and cultural reality of actual capitalist societies.

Where the attempt has been made, it has suffered from an over-simple explanation of the inter-relationship between civil society and the state". (p 6) Miliband examined countries which were highly industrialised and under private control, Marx and Engels never envisaged the state controlled bureaucracies such as Russia, Poland and East Germany where the workers did not have the same freedom as capitalist states. Marx and Engels had a completely different vision, they imagined eventually that when capitalism collapsed everything would be under workers' control. They did not foresee the technological advances and adaptation to economic crisis that would enable the super-industrialisation process to produce trans-national companies with their huge measure of wealth and power. With the advent of the new technologies and the march of progress of the main heavy industrialised countries Miliband saw that similar distinctions of political, economic and social outlooks existed between them. He saw that after several years of industrialisation there were many similarities: .".. these are societies with a large, complex, highly integrated and technologically advanced economic base, with industrial production accounting for the largest part by far of their gross national product and with agriculture constituting a relatively small area of economic activity". (p 8) - 1 - - 2 - He saw the progressive capitalist countries as having a large public sector in which the state has ownership of industries and services and acts as a regulatory body and more importantly: .".. the state is by far the largest customer of the 'private sector'; and some major industries could not survive in the private sector without the state's custom and without the credits, subsidies and benefactions which is dispenses". Even at the very beginning of capitalism, state intervention was quite common.

Miliband saw intervention as a way of steering companies in the right direction. When you observe it in the light of Adam Smith's l assez faire old-fashioned liberalism, state control, seems to contravene the very nature of the system but it is well understood that the state's hand within the important industries will always be present whatever the rigid capitalists think or say about it. (p 9) Marx and Engels looked at the bourgeoisie not only as rulers of the state but as looking to sustain this rule no matter what: "The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour". Part of Marx's argument is that the bourgeois class must maintain state rule by whatever means possible. (Marx & Engels, p 93) Yet Miliband recognises the state not as some monolithic power controlled by a certain class but as something that is necessary, for everyone is affected by the state even if they are not sure what it is.

The state is not necessarily an evil but does work that needs doing and maybe this is not always recognised. In advanced capitalist countries businesses go beyond state power anyway as the American multi-national companies have shown. Marx speaks of a capitalist class but in liberal democracies Miliband observes: "In opposition to this view, the theorists of liberal democracy (and often social democracy as well) have denied that it was possible to speak in any really meaningful way of a capitalist class at all, and that such economic power as could be located in capitalist society was so diffuse, fragmented, competitive, and so much subject to a multitude of countervailing checks as to render impossible its hegemonic assertion vis-'a-vis the state or society". (Miliband, p 23) Miliband addresses Marx and Engels in many different ways and looks at every aspect of how the state is run.

He examines the political nature of the state, how the civil servants run the state's affairs and concludes that the state endeavours to protect the social order but its actions does not always coincide with how the present bourgeoisie thinks it should be run...

Bibliography

1. Marx K. & Engels F., The Communist Manifesto; 1985, [Penguin Books] 2.
Miliband R., The State in Capitalist Society, 1972, [Redwood Press Ltd] 1.
Engels & Marx: The Communist Manifesto., 1985 Penguin Books.
2. Miliband R., The State in Capitalist Society, 1972, [Redwood Press Ltd].