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Anarchism, Marxism and
the Bonapartist State
Saul Newman
This paper explores the question of state power and sovereignty
in radical political theory through an examination of the classical
anarchist critique of Marxism. It draws on the Bonapartist moment
in Marx’s thinking, seeing this as laying the groundwork for the
development of a theory of the state as autonomous from class, suggesting
that the implications of this argument are only fully realised in
anarchism. Anarchism was able to develop a wholly autonomous and
specific theory of state power and political authority — one
that was irreducible to the Marxist class and economic analysis.
I will argue that this had crucial consequences for contemporary
radical political theory as it allowed the political dimension to
emerge as a separate field of antagonism, demanding its own specific
forms of analysis. I then explore the implications of this theoretical
terrain through Agamben’s analysis of biopower and state sovereignty,
and Laclau and Mouffe’s ‘post–Marxist’ understanding of hegemonic
political identification, suggesting that there are important links
here with anarchism that could be developed.
Introduction
It would seem that today, in the conditions of late capitalism
and globalisation, the modern state is becoming more dominant in
political, social and economic life, rather than less so. This can
be seen particularly in the current preoccupation with security
and terrorism. The ‘war on terror’ serves as the latest ideological
justification for the massive centralisation and expansion of state
power. This new paradigm of state power opens the way for new political
and social conflicts radically different from those that have arisen
in the past. This suggests that the problem of state power can no
longer be explained in economic terms alone, but rather constitutes
its own specific theoretical and political conditions and terms
of reference. In other words, new domains and relations of power
are emerging — and indeed have been emerging for some time
— that can no longer be explained in economic terms, but rather
require different modes of analysis.
Because the problem of state power is more crucial now than ever
for radical politics, it would be worthwhile returning to one of
the most decisive theoretical and political debates over precisely
this question. The conflict between Marxism and anarchism over the
power, function and relative autonomy of the state, and its role
in a social revolution, was a pivotal debate that shaped nineteenth–century
radical political thought. This paper examines some of the key aspects
of this conflict, focussing on the ‘Bonapartist moment’ in classical
Marxism: that is, the emergence of the theoretical conditions for
the relative autonomy of the state. However, I shall show that,
despite this innovation, Marxist theory — Marx, as well as
subsequent Marxist interventions — was ‘in the last instance’
constrained by the categories of class and economic relations. My
contention here will be that classical anarchism took the theory
of Bonapartism to its logical conclusion, and was able to develop
a concept of the sovereign state as a specific and autonomous site
of power that was irreducible to capitalist economic relations.
In doing so, anarchism broke radically with Marxism. Therefore,
within the theory of Bonapartism lay the theoretical foundations
for an ‘epistemological break’ with Marxism itself, allowing for
the development of a new analytics of power: one that, to some extent,
contributes towards contemporary ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘post–Marxist’
approaches to this question.¹ In this paper, I will examine
the implications of Bonapartism by exploring and developing the
classical anarchist critique of Marxism, as well as examining its
relevance for contemporary radical political theory.
Bonapartism
Arguing against the Hegelian idea that the state embodies the general
good, Marx saw it always as a particular state, one which paints
itself as universal. Its universality and independence from civil
society are only a mask for the particular economic interests —
such as private property — that it serves (Marx 1970: 107).
Marx was later to develop from this the position that the state
represented the interests of the most economically dominant class:
the bourgeoisie. For Marx, it was the economic forces of society
that determined all historical, political, cultural and social phenomena:
‘the economic structure of society is the real basis on which the
juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite
social forms of thought correspond; that the mode of production
determines the character of the social, political and intellectual
life (1967: 182).
Marx therefore criticises Pierre–Joseph Proudhon for his suggestion
that political power could shape the economic system. According
to Marx, the state lacks this power because it exists as a mere
reflection of the very economic conditions that it is purportedly
able to change (‘The German Ideology’ in Marx and Engels, 1976,
vol. 5: 198).
However, while Marx saw the state as largely derivative of the
economic forces and class interests, he did at times allow it a
substantial degree of political autonomy. His work The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte describes a coup d’etat in France
in 1851, in which state forces led by Louis Bonaparte seized absolute
power, achieving not only a considerable degree of independence
from the bourgeoisie, but often acting directly against its immediate
interests. According to Marx, however, the Bonapartist state still
served the long term interests of the capitalist system, even if
it often acted against the immediate interests and will of the bourgeoisie:
that the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit other classes
and to enjoy undisputed property, family, religion and order that
their class be condemned along with other classes to similar political
nullity; that, in order to save its purse, it must forfeit the crown
(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in Marx and Engels
1976 vol. 7:143).
To what extent, however, does this account of the Bonapartist state
allow for the theorisation of the relative autonomy of the state
in Marxism? One of the central debates in Marxist theory has been
on precisely this question. David Held and Joel Krieger argue that
there are two main strands in the Marxist theory about the relation
between classes and the state. The first — let us call it (1a)
— exemplified by Marx’s account of Bonapartism, stresses the
relative autonomy of the state. It sees state institutions and the
bureaucracy as constituting a virtually separate site in society:
its logic is not determined by class interests and it assumes a
centrality in society. The second strand (2a),which Held and Krieger
argue is the dominant one in Marxist thought, sees the state as
an instrument of class domination, whose structure and operation
are determined by class interests (see ‘Theories of the State’ in
Bornstein, et al., 4, 1–20).
Held and Krieger also argue that these two contrasting traditions
in Marxist thought correspond to two different revolutionary strategies
in regards to the state. The first position (1a) would allow the
state to be used as a force for revolutionary change and liberation
(1b). Because the state is seen as a neutral institution in the
sense that it is not essentially beholden to class interests, it
can be used to revolutionise capitalism and topple the bourgeoisie
from its position of economic dominance. The second position (2a),
on the other hand, because it sees the state as essentially a bourgeois
state, an instrument of class domination, demands that the state
be destroyed as part of a socialist revolution (2b). This is the
position exemplified by Lenin in The State and Revolution. This
interpretation of the relation between the question of the autonomy
of the state, and its role in a socialist revolution, may be represented
in the following way:
A Marxist Model
1(a) Autonomous state > 1(b) State as tool of revolution
2(a) Determined state > 2(b) State to be destroyed in revolution
Now it is this dichotomy of state theories and their concomitant
revolutionary strategies that could be questioned from an anarchist
perspective. It could be argued that it is precisely the second
position (2a) — the view of the state as determined by class
— that entails the first revolutionary strategy (lb) which
allows the state to be used as a revolutionary tool of liberation.
Furthermore, one could see the first position (la) — which
allows the state relative autonomy — as entailing the second
revolutionary strategy (2b) which calls for the destruction of the
state in a socialist revolution. This inversion of the traditional
Marxist model would be characteristic of an anarchist position:
An Anarchist Model
1(a) Autonomous state > 2(b) State to be destroyed in revolution
2(a) Determined state > 1(b) State as tool of revolution
The reason for this radical overturning of the accepted logic is
that the first position (1a) comes closest to an anarchist theory
of the state. Anarchism sees the state as an autonomous institution
— or series of institutions — that has its own interests
and logic. It is precisely for this reason that the state cannot
be used as a neutral tool of liberation during the time of revolution.
Even if it is in the hands of a revolutionary class like the proletariat
— as Marx advocated — it still cannot be trusted because
it has its own imperatives, beyond the control of the ‘ruling class’.
The time of revolution is when the state institution can least be
trusted: it will merely use the opportunity to perpetuate its own
power. To regard the state as neutral, then, as strategy (1a) does,
is dangerous. According to this anarchist logic, moreover, position
(2a) — that which sees the state as an instrument of the bourgeoisie
— fundamentally misconstrues the nature of state power, implying
that the state is merely a neutral institution subservient to the
interests of the dominant class. It is this position which would
actually entail revolutionary strategy (1b) — the use of the
state as a tool of revolution once in the hands of the revolutionary
class. It is really a dispute over the meaning of neutrality: according
to the Marxist logic, neutrality would mean independence from class
interests, whereas for anarchists, neutrality would imply precisely
the opposite — subservience to class interests. This is because
the view of state as determined by class interests does not allow
the state its own logic: it would appear as a humble servant of
class interests and could, therefore, be used as a neutral tool
of revolution if it were in the hands of the right class. On the
other hand, it is Marx’s Bonapartist version of the state that which
sees it as a neutral institution not beholden to class interests
— that is precisely the logic which, for anarchists, paradoxically
denies the neutrality of the state. This is because it allows it
to be seen as an autonomous institution with its own logic and which,
for this very reason, cannot be seen as a neutral tool of revolution.
It could be argued that anarchism pursues the logic of Bonapartism
much further than Marx himself was prepared to take it and, in doing
so, entirely turns on its head the Marxist conception of state and
revolution. The anarchist conception of the state and its relation
to class will be expanded upon later. However, it is necessary at
this point to show that while Marx was no doubt opposed to the state,
it is precisely the question of how he was opposed to it —
as an autonomous Bonapartist institution, or as an institution of
bourgeois domination — and the consequences of this for revolutionary
strategy, that is crucial to this debate. Nicos Poulantzas, who
wanted to emphasise the relative autonomy of the capitalist state,
argues that for Marx and Engels Bonapartism is not merely a concrete
form of the capitalist state in exceptional circumstances, but actually
a constitutive theoretical feature of it (258). This would apparently
question determinist interpretations of the sta te in Marxist theory.
Ralph Miliband, on the other hand, argues that for Marx and Engels,
the state was still very much the instrument of class domination
(5).
So what is one to make of this disparity in the interpretations
of Marx’s theory of the state? Marx himself never developed an entirely
consistent theory of the state, pointing perhaps to a theoretical
deadlock that he was unable to overcome. There are times when he
appears to have a very deterministic and instrumental reading of
the state, when he says, for instance: ‘the State is the form in
which individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests’
(The German Ideology in Marx and Engels, 1976 vo1.5: 90).
Nevertheless, the theory of Bonapartism opened the way for a more
heterogeneous approach to the question of the state and its relative
autonomy.
Autonomous or Determined State?
So how should we approach this central ambiguity in Marxism? There
is no clear answer to this. But at the risk of sounding like trying
to enforce some cohesion onto Marx’s thoughts on this subject that
he himself maybe never intended, perhaps one can say the following:
while one can clearly reject the crude functionalist reading of
the state, and while allowing the state a considerable degree of
political autonomy in certain instances, one could still say that,
for Marx, the state is in essence class domination. By this I mean
that while the state is by no means the simple political instrument
of the bourgeoisie and, indeed, as Marx himself shows, often acts
against it, the state is still, for Marx, an institution which allows
the economically powerful class — the class which owns the
means of production — to exploit other classes. In other words,
it is still the state that facilitates the bourgeoisie’s domination
and exploitation of the proletariat. This interpretation would allow
the state a significant degree of political autonomy: it could work
against the political will of the bourgeoisie, but it still would
have to protect the long–term structural position and interests
of the bourgeoisie. So rather than saying that, for Marx, the state
is the instrument of the bourgeoisie, it may be more accurate to
say that the state is a reflection of bourgeois class domination,
an institution whose structure is determined by capitalist relations.
Its function is to maintain economic and social order that allows
the bourgeoisie to continue to exploit the proletariat. By maintaining
the conditions of the capitalist economy in the name of the ‘common
good’, the state serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.
One can see in Marx’s account of the state — if there can
be said to be an ‘account’ as such — a continuation of the
Hegelian critique of the partial state, the state that serves the
interests of part, rather than the whole, of society. For Marx,
as we have seen, the state has an illusory, ideological character:
it parades itself as a universal political community open to general
participation, whereas in fact it acts on behalf of certain sectional
interests. It is an ideological veil behind which the real struggles
of economic classes are waged, behind which the real misery and
alienation of people’s lives is concealed. Like Hegel, Marx was
concerned with finding an ethical agency, a form of communal control,
a legitimate form of power which would transcend the partial state
and embody the interests of the whole of society — something
which would, in other words, overcome the contradiction between
public and private life. For Marx, the capitalist state was an expression
of the alienation in civil society, and the only way this alienation
could be overcome was through an agency that did not reflect existing
economic and property relations. Unlike Hegel, Marx believed that
this agent could not be the modern state as it stands, because it
was essentially the state of bourgeois relations. While Hegel saw
this unifying agent in the ethical principle behind the liberal
state, Marx found it in the proletariat.
The proletariat is Marx’s version of the universal agent sought
within the Hegelian tradition: the subject that would overcome the
contradictions in society. Because of its unique place in the capitalist
system, the proletariat embodied the universality of this system,
and therefore, for Marx, the emancipation of the proletariat is
synonymous with the emancipation of society as a whole: ‘a class
which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which
has a universal character because its sufferings are universal’
(‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’
in Tucker: 538, 16–25).
The proletariat represents the possibility of exercising a legitimate
and universal ethical authority over society: a society characterised
by a lack of public — as opposed to private — authority;
a society in which people were alienated from each other and from
the public sphere. Marx therefore saw this exercise of public authority,
of social power, as a necessary stage in the ushering in of communism
— a ‘transitional’ stage. This social power would be organised,
moreover, in the apparatus of the state: ‘There corresponds to this
also a political transition in which the State can be nothing but
the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Critique of the Gotha Program
in Marx and Engels, 1968: 327, 315–331). Marx called, furthermore,
for the workers to strive for ‘the most decisive centralisation
of power in the hands of State authority’ (Address of the Central
Council to the Communist League in Tucker: 509, 501–511). So
the state, controlled by the proletariat, has become, for Marx,
albeit temporarily, the vehicle which would liberate society from
bourgeois domination by representing society as a whole. Thus the
aim of the revolution, for Marx, was not initially to destroy state
power, but rather to seize hold of, and in the transitional period
perpetuate, it. Of course, it must be remembered that Marx sees
this proletarian state as a temporary arrangement, and Engels argued
that it would ‘wither away’ when no longer necessary (1969: 333).
However if the state is always a reflection of class domination,
how then can Marx see the transitional state as acting on behalf
of the whole of society? Anarchists saw this as a major flaw in
Marx’s thinking. Marx, on the other hand, believed that because
the state in the ‘transitional period’ was in the hands of the proletariat
— the universal class — it would act for the benefit of
society as a whole. According to Marx, it was no longer a partial
state, as it had been in bourgeois society — it now a universal
state. In fact, according to Marx, state power will no longer even
be political power, since ‘political power’ is defined by its reflection
of the interests of a particular class. In other words, because
there are no more class distinctions in society, because the bourgeoisie
has been toppled from its position of economic and, therefore, political
dominance, there is no longer any such thing as political power:
‘When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared
and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast
association of the whole nation, public power will lose its political
character’ (Communist Manifesto in Tucker: 490). Marx also
says in response to anarchist Mikhail Bakunin’s objections to the
transitional state: ‘ ... when class domination ends, there will
be no State in the present political sense of the word’ (After
the Revolution: Marx debates Bakunin in Tucker: 545, 542–548).
For Marx, because political domination and conflict are an expression
of class domination, once class domination disappears, then so will
political domination: the state will become a neutral administrative
apparatus to be used by the proletariat, until it simply ‘withers
away’. Let us follow Marx’s logic: because political power is the
derivative of class and capitalist relations, once these relations
are abolished, then, strictly speaking, political power no longer
exists. However, the anarchists saw this claim as dangerously naive.
It neglected what they saw as the fundamental principle of state
power (or, for that matter, any form of institutional or centralised
power): that it is independent of economic forces and has its own
imperative of self–perpetuation. As I have shown, Marx does allow
the state some autonomy and self–determinacy, particularly in his
theory of Bonapartism. However, my argument is that he did not develop
the implications of this argument to their full extent, falling
back into the position of class and economic reductionism. By contrast
anarchism sees the state, in its essence, as independent of economic
classes, thus radicalising the Bonapartist argument and taking it
to its logical conclusion.
The Anarchist Theory of the State
The idea that the state can be used for revolutionary ends is the
result of the Marxist analysis which sees the state as derivative
of social forces, namely the economic power of the bourgeois class.
Anarchism works the other way round: it analyses from the state
to society. It sees the state and centralised political power as
determining the social and constituting the fundamental site of
oppression. Marxist theory also sees the state as an evil to be
eventually overcome, but it is an evil derived from the primary
evil of bourgeois economic domination and private property.²
The state, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what
form it takes. Bakunin argues that Marxism pays too much attention
to the forms of state power while not taking enough account of the
way in which state power operates and its structural predominance
in society: ‘They (Marxists) do not know that despotism resides
not so much in the form of the State but in the very principle of
the State and political power’ (1984:221). Peter Kropotkin too,
argues that one must look beyond the present form of the state:
‘And there are those who, like us, see in the State, not only its
actual form and in all forms of domination that it might assume,
but in its very essence, an obstacle to the social revolution’(9).
Oppression and despotism exist, then, in the very structure and
symbolic location of the state: in the principle of sovereignty
that lies at its heart. The state, in other words, constitutes its
own locus of power: it is not merely a derivative of class power.
The sta te has its own specific logic, its own momentum, its own
priorities: these are often beyond the control of the ruling class
and do not necessarily reflect economic relations. For anarchists,
then, political power refers to something other than class and economic
relations.
The modern state has its own origins too, independent of the rise
of the bourgeoisie. Unlike Marx, who saw the modern state as a creation
of the French Revolution and the political ascendancy of the bourgeoisie,
Bakunin saw the state as the child of the Reformation. According
to Bakunin, the crowned sovereigns of Europe usurped the power of
the Church, creating a secular authority based on the notion of
divine right. Hence the birth of the modern state: ‘The State is
the younger brother of the Church’ (1985:20). Kropotkin also attributes
the state’s emergence to non–economic factors such as the historical
dominance of Roman law, the rise of feudal law, the growing authoritarianism
of the Church, as well as the endemic desire for authority (1943:28).
Furthermore, it could be argued that the political forces of the
state actually determine and select specific relations of production,
rather than the other way round. This is because they encourage
particular forces of production that are functional for the state,
allowing the development of the means of coercion required by the
state. This turns the base–superstructure model of the state on
its head, seeing the determining forces going from top to bottom
rather than from the bottom to the top.³ According to this argument,
to see the state as derivative of class power is to fall victim
to the state’s deception. The state apparatus in itself appears
to be faceless: it appears to lack any inherent values or direction.
Marx sees it as an illusory reflection of the alienation created
by private property, or as an institution of the bourgeois class.
In reality, however, the state has its own origins and mechanisms,
and operates according to its own agenda, which is to perpetuate
itself in different guises — even in the guise of the worker’s
state. For anarchists, state power perpetuates itself through the
corrupting influence it has on those in power. This is where the
real domination lies, according to Bakunin: ‘We of course are all
sincere socialists and revolutionists and still, were we to be endowed
with power . . . we would not be where we are now’ (1984: 249).
Therefore, the fact that the proletariat is at the helm of the state
does not mean, as Marx claimed, an end to political power. The state
would simply re–instantiate itself at this new Political juncture.
The Marxist program would only mean a massive increase in political
power and domination. Moreover, Bakunin believed that Marx’s revolutionary
strategy would lead to a new stage of capitalist development. The
Marxist workers’ state would only perpetuate, rather than resolve,
the contradicts in capitalist society: it will leave intact the
division of labour, it will re–instate industrial hierarchies, and
furthermore it will generate a new set of class divisions between
workers and peasants, and the new governing class (Bakunin 1980:
336–337).
Bakunin perhaps represents the most radical elements of Marxist
theory. He takes Marx seriously when he says that the state is always
concomitant with class divisions and domination. However there is
an important difference. To put it crudely, for Marx, the dominant
class generally rules through the state, whereas for Bakunin, the
state generally rules through the dominant class. In other words,
bourgeois relations are actually a reflection of the state, rather
than the state being a reflection of bourgeois relations. Unlike
Marxism, the emphasis in anarchist theory is on the state itself
— a term which includes economic exploitation — rather
than on economic relations specifically. Anarchism would seem to
have a much broader concept of the state than Marxism. The ruling
class, argues Bakunin, is the state’s real material representative.
In this sense, ruling classes are essential to the state, rather
than the state being essential to ruling classes. The bourgeoisie
is only one of the state’s specific forms of articulation (Bakunin
1984: 208). When the bourgeoisie is destroyed the state will create
another class in its place, through which it can perpetuate its
power, even in an allegedly classless society. In the wake of a
Marxist revolution, a new bureaucratic class will come to dominate
and exploit the workers in much the same way as the bourgeoisie
did. Behind every ruling class of every epoch there looms the state:
an abstract machine with its own logic of domination. As Bakunin
shows, the state fully realises itself as a machine when the Marxist
revolution installs the bureaucratic class at its helm: ‘when other
classes have exhausted themselves, the class of bureaucracy enters
upon the stage and then the State falls, or rises, if you please,
to the position of a machine’ (1984: 208). It is precisely this
machine–like character of the state — this structural imperative
of self–perpetuation — that is dangerous, and which Marxist
theory, because o f its economic and class reductionism, could not
account for. It is for this reason, anarchists argued, that revolution
must be aimed not at seizing control of state power, even if only
temporarily, but at destroying it and replacing it with de–centralised,
non–hierarchical forms of social organisation. It is also for reasons
mentioned before that anarchists argue that the state cannot be
trusted simply to ‘wither away’. For anarchists it is extremely
naive, even utopian, to believe that entrenched political power
— and Bakunin’s analysis has shown the workers‘ state to be
precisely this — will simply self–destruct just because old
class divisions have disappeared and relations of production have
been transformed.
The Problem of Economic Reductionism
For anarchists, Marxism has great value as an analysis of capitalism
and the relations of private authority which it is tied to. However,
in focusing on this, Marxism neglected other forms of authority
and domination, primarily that of the state, but also technology,
religious institutions and party hierarchy (see Bookchin: 188).
This was because it had a tendency to reduce them to the conceptual
categories of class and economics, and to regard them as secondary
to, and derivative of, these. Marxism is caught, one could argue,
in a reductionist logic that cannot adequately account for the specificity
of political domination. According to Elizabeth Rappaport, ‘His
(Marx’s) tendency to regard all political conflict as grounded in
class antagonism led him to underestimate the importance of the
political dimension of socialist development’ (343).
This reductionist logic extends to more contemporary forms of Marxism.
For instance, while Louis Althusser proposed a concept of society
radically different from the classical Marxian notion of the social
superstructure strictly determined by the economic essence or structure,
he nevertheless saw social relations as being determined, in the
last instance, by the economy. Althusser’s intervention did, however,
extend the logic of Bonapartism, once again engaging with the possibility
— within Marxist discourse — of theorising the autonomy
of the political. He proposed that the economy acts on the social
only indirectly: economic forces were part of the social whole,
and did not constitute a privileged core outside the social superstructure.
In other words, political formations can act on the economy, just
as they can be acted on by the economy. He calls this symbiotic
relationship overdetermination (1977: 101).
Moreover, Althusser explored more complex and decentralised constellations
of power: ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses) that included not
only the state bureaucracy, but also institutions such as the Church
and schools, as well as other forms of social and political domination,
which largely functioned autonomously from the workings of the capitalist
economy. This rejection of the base–superstructure thesis has much
in common with classical anarchism. Althusser would seem, then,
to be approaching the anarchist position because he allows for a
greater emphasis to be placed on the autonomy of the state apparatus,
and other non–economic forms of power. However, despite this, Althusser
structured his conception of the social around the economy: the
economy, for Althusser, is the ‘structure in dominance’, the organising
principle in society (see ‘The Object of Capital’ in Althusser and
Balibar: 188, 71–182). While political and social formations were
not directly, in every insta nce, determined by the economy, they
were still dominated by it. The prerogatives of the economy still
took precedence, in the last instance — in a time of revolution,
for example — over other social formations.
Alex Callinicos, on the other hand, has sought to defend classical
Marxism against the potential challenge it faced from Althusser,
and from structuralism generally. For Callinicos, Althusser’s rejection
of the Hegelian social whole culminates in an affirmation of difference:
a multiplicity of social practises that cannot be dialecticised
back into an original unity (62). It is this potential openness
to the notion of difference and plurality, according to Callinicos,
which has caused the ‘crisis of Marxism’.. Instead, what must be
reaffirmed is the classical Marxist notion of the social totality,
centrally determined by the economy. It is only this perspective,
Callinicos argues, that allows for the possibility of the Class
Struggle. However it is precisely this perspective, that negates
the possibility of other sources of power in society, which has
been challenged by anarchism.
Bob Jessop tries to develop, within the Marxist framework, a contingent
theory of political power and the state. He argues that in Marxist
theory there are three main ways of approaching this question. The
first sees the relationship between economic interests and institutional
systems purely in terms of function. The second approach stresses
the way in which the institutional form of different systems reflects
or corresponds to the structural needs of economic systems. The
third approach rejects the economic determinism of the last two,
and sees the relations between institutions and economic systems
to be based on ‘contingent articulatory practices’ (80). The second,
and possibly even the first, approach is represented by Callinicos,
who sees the social and political as centrally determined by economic
relations. The third strand of Marxist thought is perhaps best reflected
by Althusser, who, on one level at least, seems to put forward a
contingent approach to the relations hip between the political and
the economic, allowing the political considerable degree of autonomy.
However, as I have shown, even in this sort of analysis, the political
is still ultimately determined by the economy. Therefore, it could
be argued that for a genuinely contingent and autonomous theory
of political and non–economic power to emerge, it means going beyond
the conceptual limits of Marxism. As Rappaport says: ‘It does ...
require going beyond Marx in developing a theory capable of explaining
political relationships which do not have their foundations in material
scarcity’ (343).
Sovereignty and Biopolitics
The classical anarchist critique therefore showed that Marxism
was incapable of grasping centralised political power in its truly
autonomous dimension. The major theoretical achievement of anarchism
was precisely to unmask this autonomous dimension of power and authority,
as well as highlight the dangers of their reaffirmation in a revolution
if neglected. In other words, political power was now seen as a
phenomenon that could no longer be reduced to its different class
articulations. Rather, it was to be seen in terms of an abstract
position or place in the social, and as having its own structural
logic which articulated itself in different ways. Anarchism therefore
exposed the limitations of Marxist theory in dealing with the problem
of power. Blinded as it was by its economic determinism, it failed
to see power as an autonomous phenomenon that was irreducible to
economic factors and that required its own specific forms of analysis.
It is precisely this need to examine power as a separate and autonomous
phenomenon that is reflected in contemporary poststructuralist theory,
in particular that of Michel Foucault. Foucault also criticised
the economic and class reductionism of Marxism, precisely because
it prevented one from examining power relations on their own terms:
‘So long as the posing of the question of power was kept subordinate
to the economic instance and the system of interests which this
served, there was a tendency to regard these problems as of small
importance’ (Truth and Power in 1980: 109–133). For Foucault,
power cannot be reduced simply to the interests of the bourgeoisie
or capitalist economics: power does not flow from the bourgeoisie,
but from institutions, practices, and discourses that operate independently
of it – such as the prison, the family, psychiatric discourse –
which have their own specific logic.
Foucault would agree, then, with the anarchist position that the
Marxist revolution is only a changing of the guard: it only changes
the form and distribution of power in society, rather than subverting
it. For Foucault, a Marxist revolutionary politics that neglects
the autonomy of state power by reducing it to an economic analysis
is bound to perpetuate this power:
One can say to many socialisms, real or dreamt:
Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea
of its future withering away, there is a missing term: the analysis,
criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself
(1976: 453–466).
Like the anarchists, then, Foucault believes that power must be
studied in its own right, not reduced to a mere function of the
capitalist economy or class interest. If it is continually subordinated
to an economic analysis, then the problem of power will never be
addressed and will continue to perpetuate itself.
However, Foucault’s reconfiguration of power went not only beyond
Marxism, but also beyond anarchism itself, undermining the paradigm
of sovereignty that not only inscribed anarchist theories of power,
but those of classical political philosophy generally. That is to
say, that, according to Foucault, not only was power irreducible
to the class position of the bourgeoisie, but it was also irreducible
to the central apparatus of the state itself. Indeed, Foucault argues
that the state is a kind of discursive illusion that masks the radically
dispersed nature of power and the way it has pervaded social relations
at every level. In other words, power relations can no longer be
seen as emanating from a centralised institution like the state,
or indeed from any institution. Rather, power is a force relationship
that is exercised at the level of everyday interactions, and permeates
a multiplicity of infinitesimal discourses, practices and strategies.
Indeed, government itself is not an institution but a series of
practices and rationalities that Foucault calls governmentality
or the ‘art of government’. The state, ‘no more probably today than
at any other time in its history, does not have this unity, this
individuality, this rigorous functionality, nor, to speak frankly,
this importance’ (Governmentality in Gordon 1991: 103, 87–104).
Indeed, according to Foucault, political philosophies — including
anarchism — that enshrine power in the state, are part of an
outmoded ‘juridico–discursive’ framework of sovereignty which is
no longer valid today: ‘what we need ... is a political philosophy
that isn’t erected around the problem of sovereignty ... need to
cut off the King’s head: in political theory that has still to be
done’ (1978: 93). This is because the sovereign mode of power –
symbolised by the right to to take life or let live — has been
superseded by the modern mode of biopower — symbolised by the
right to sustain life or to let die. In other words, in contrast
to sovereign power, biopower has extended its reach over biological
life itself. It is a form of power that takes life as its object
and sustains it, regulating its flows and movements, and intensifying
its capacities and powers, thus more effectively controlling a dominating
it. It is a much more subtle and pervasive form of power than that
pr eviously exercised by the sovereign over his subjects.
Now it is precisely this notion of biopower that contemporary continental
philosopher Giorgio Agamben takes up and develops into a coherent
theory of biopolitics. However, where he differs from Foucault is
that, rather than seeing the principle of sovereignty and state
power as having been superseded by biopower he sees the two modes
as coinciding to form the political nexus of the modern age. As
Agamben argues, there is a hidden point of intersection or indistinction
between juridico–institutional and biopolitical models of power,
and that therefore investigation of sovereignty and state power,
rather than being obsolete, is never more relevant than today: ‘It
can even be said that the production of a biopolitical body is the
original condition of sovereign power’ (1998: 6). Indeed, as Agamben
shows, there is a blind spot in Foucault’s work surrounding the
point at which techniques of individualisation and totalising strategies
actually converge. In other words, what is missing from Foucault’s
account of power is the question of how the individualising power
of biopolitics is exercised, which institutions exercise it, and
by what principles it is legitimated. What this refers to is precisely
the principle of state power or sovereignty — and without this
Foucault’s theory is incomplete. Moreover, as Agamben comments,
Foucault’s theory has neglected any analysis of the exemplary instances
of biopower — twentieth–century totalitarian states (1998:
119).
So it would seem that political theory, if it is to fully grasp
the new ways in which power is exercised today, needs a theory of
state sovereignty. Indeed, rather than dismiss the notion of state
sovereignty, or see it as a discursive illusion, Agamben sees it
as the central problem for contemporary politics. He shows the way
in which sovereignty, in its biopolitical articulation, is the hidden
matrix of the politics of modernity, underlying different political
ideologies and the transformations from totalitarianism to liberal
democracy. There is a certain resonance here with the anarchist
argument about state sovereignty: that it is the secret logic that
underlies its different articulations, from monarchy, to parliamentary
democracy, to the Marxist workers’ state.&sup4 At the heart of sovereignty,
according to Agamben, is the state of exception — that is,
the principle by which the state can stand both inside and outside
the juridicial order, simultaneously (1998: 15). This is the paradox
of state authority: that the sovereign provides the foundations
of the legal order and, precisely because of this, is also beyond
its limits and has the power to suspend it at certain moments. Therefore
the principle of sovereignty consists in the power of the state
to suspend the normal legal system and declare a state of emergency.
The state of emergency is the exception that proves the rule: rather
than being an aberration of the normal functions of state power,
it is where state power shows its true face, where it can operate
with impunity and in a zone of indistinction in which the normal
legal limitations and protections no longer apply. If this state
of exception is the fundamental principle of state power, then the
law no longer offers us any protection from it. The law has, in
other words, abandoned us to sovereignty. This space of exception
is also marked by a certain violence: ‘the sovereign is the point
of indistinction between violence and law, the threshold in which
violence passes over into law, and law passes over into violence’
(1998: 32).
This hidden intersection of violence, law and sovereignty was also
unmasked in the classical anarchist critique of the state, in which
the theory of the social contract — which serves as the standard
liberal justification of the state — is shown to be false.
Bakunin thus dismissed the notion of the social contract as an ‘unworthy
hoax’ because it masks a logical contradiction: if, as social contract
theorists claim, people live a savage existence in the state of
nature, without rationality or morality, then how can they have
the foresight to come together for their common ends (1984: 136)?
Political authority cannot, therefore, be based on a rational and
free agreement between individuals; rather it is based on a founding
gesture of violence that arbitrarily brings into being the symbolic
institution of the law, and which is concealed by the ideological
fiction of the contract. In other words, the social contract serves
only to mask the true nature and function of the state — self–perpetuation
and the violence with which this in ensured: ‘And since all States,
ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned
to perpetual struggle — a struggle against their own populations,
whom they oppress and ruin’ (Bakunin 1984: 139).
This violence, directed by the state against its own population,
is embodied in Agamben’s figure of homo sacer. Homo sacer
means literally ‘sacred man’, and is defined by the act of legal
homicide. According to an ancient principle of Roman law, one who
is declared homo sacer is excluded from normal legal protections
and can therefore be murdered by anyone with impunity (see Agamben
1998: 7174). This figure is characterised by an ambiguity surrounding
the word ‘sacred’: implying not only what is holy and consecrated,
but also what is untouchable. That is to say, if one is declared
homo sacer, according to this law, it means that he cannot
be formally sacrificed or executed, because this would confer upon
him a symbolic status. Rather, he is flung into a state of exclusion
and abandonment, and left to the mercy of others. In Agamben’s analysis,
homo sacer is the ultimate subject upon whom the violence
of the state is exercised with impunity. For instance, modern examples
of homo sacer may be refugees, who are denied any
sort of formal legal protection and who are at the mercy of governments
all around the world. The Jews in Nazi Germany were perhaps the
ultimate homo sacer: before they could be deported to the
murder and concentration camps, they had first to stripped of their
German citizenship and the legal rights and protections guaranteed
by it. Moreover, because homo sacer is denied any symbolic
and political significance, his status is reduced to that of naked
or ‘bare’ life itself — zoe5 — providing the perfect
subject of biopolitics, upon whom the power over life its can be
exercised without limit. Indeed, as Agamben shows, the camp is the
exemplary biopolitical space of modernity precisely because it provides
a certain extra–judicial zone in which sovereign power can be exercised
without restriction over the body and biological life of the detainee:
‘this is the principle according which everything is possible’ (1998:
170). Homo sacer can be seen, then, as dimension of subjectivity
that emerges when sovereign power coincides with biopolitics, as
it has done in an unprecedented way in the modern age. More alarmingly,
according to Agamben, it is this subjectivity that we are all becoming
increasingly reduced to.
One of the more recent articulations of the biopolitical state
has been the new security paradigm that has emerged in the wake
of September 11. Indeed, it could be argued that the ongoing ‘war
on terror’ and the obsession with security that is part of this,
provides the new ideological justification for the aggressive reassertion
of the sovereign power beyond the formal limits normally imposed
by law an liberal–democratic frameworks. In other words, the modern
state is showing its true face by moving closer and closer to a
state of emergency or exception. Already we have seen, in the name
of combating terrorism, unprecedented infringements on civil liberties
and undreamt–of powers of surveillance being accrued by governments
and security apparatuses. This is combined, of course, with an increasing
militarisation of the state, and the preemptive use of force against
external enemies, real or imagined. We have also seen the emergence
of contemporary forms of the biopolitical sp ace, in the detention
camps such as Camp X–Ray in, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram Air
Base in Afghanistan. These camps are, strictly speaking, outside
normal legal jurisdiction, thus allowing the government almost complete
impunity in the power they exercise over the detainees. Moreover,
the designation ‘illegal combatant’ highlights the ambiguous status
of the detainees — the fact they are beyond normal legal protections,
their subjectivity being that of homo sacer. According to Agamben,
‘The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception
begins to become the rule’ (1998: 168–169). We can see this clearly
in the informal, extra–legal structures and practices that are emerging
as a result of the ‘war on terror’ becoming a permanent feature
of political life. Agamben suggests that security, which was one
amongst several functions of the sovereign state, has now become
its single, overriding function, the ‘basic principle of state activity’
(2002: 1). Central to this security paradigm, however, is not the
prevention of emergencies, but their production: the state has a
vested interest in sustaining a certain level of disorder, violence
and catastrophe, precisely in order to legitimise its increased
incursions into social life. The problem with this new security
paradigm of the state is that, as Agamben argues, ‘it can always
be provoked by terrorism to turn itself terroristic’ (2002: 1).
Agamben’s analysis has therefore unmasked the hidden matrix of
biopolitics, sovereign power and subjectivity that underlies contemporary
politics. In many ways he goes beyond the classical political paradigm
of anarchism, pointing to new modalities of biopower which anarchism
would simply not have the conceptual language to grasp. However,
Agamben’s emphasis on the sovereign power of the state and the way
that it increasingly dominates life today, directly reflects the
anarchist argument that insisted on seeing sovereignty as an irreducible
principle of power and domination that transcended its various concrete
articulations. Moreover, the anarchists argued that the central
division in politics was not between the proletarian and bourgeois,
as Marx claimed, but rather between humanity and the state, which
for Bakunin is ‘the most cynical and complete negation of humanity’
(1984: 138). This looming conflict is also echoed by Agamben, who,
perhaps pointing to the increasingly anarchist nature of radical
politics, contends that ‘the novelty of coming politics is that
it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the
State, but a struggle between the State and the non–State (humanity)
...’ (1993: 84).
Anarchism and Post–Marxism
Anarchist theory, in its emphasis on the sovereign state as an
autonomous and specific dimension of power, has uncovered new arenas
of radical political antagonism that are no longer overdetermined
by economics or class. To further explore these new fields of struggle,
and the way that political identities arise from them, I shall turn
to the interventions of key post–Marxist thinkers Ernesto Laclau
and Chantal Mouffe. I shall suggest that not only does the post–Marxist
project have important links with classical anarchism, but that
anarchist theory can itself be extended through an analysis of the
relations of hegemony and political identification central to the
post–Marxist argument.
In their work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and
Mouffe attempt to address the theoretical and political crisis of
Marxism, evident not only in the abject failure of Marxist–Leninist
projects, but also in concrete social conditions of the shrinking
working class in post–industrial societies, the fragmentation of
the political domain and the rise of the ‘new social movements’.
Added to these factors are the cultural and epistemological conditions
of ‘postmodernity’, which entail a scepticism about the universal
essentialist identities and positivistic categories that Marxism
based itself on. The theoretical premise for the post–Marxism problematic
is the contention that the failure of Marxism as a political project
was due to its general neglect of politics — to its insistence
that the political is subordinated to the economy. Laclau and Mouffe
argue that the potential political radicalism contained in Marxism
was vitiated by its class essentialism, economic reductionism and
blind faith in rational science and the dialectic. Therefore, using
and developing insights from poststructuralism, deconstruction and
psychoanalysis, Laclau and Mouffe have sought to radically rethink
Marxism in ways that are non–essentialist, pluralistic and avoid
the deterministic logic of the dialectic.
For Laclau and Mouffe, economic and class determinism constitute
the central problem in Marxist theory, preventing it from being
able fully to grasp the political — the field of political
identities, power relations and antagonisms — in its specific
autonomy and contingency. They argue that the contemporary political
field is longer held together by the struggles of the proletariat,
and that for some time has been fragmented by a whole series of
different and competing identities and struggles: those of blacks,
feminists, gays, ethnic minorities, students, environmentalists,
consumers, to name but a few. Class is no longer the dominant category
through which radical political subjectivity is defined. As Laclau
and Mouffe argue, ‘The common denominator of all of them would be
differentiation from workers’ struggles, considered as ‘class’ struggles’
(159). Moreover, these identities are no longer overdetermined by
the struggle against capitalism, but they are rather struggles over
a number of different issues that can no longer be explained in
economic or class terms: for instance, environmental degradation,
differential cultural identity, institutional surveillance, and
welfare rights.
It could be suggested, moreover, that these new struggles and antagonisms
point to the anarchist moment in contemporary politics. As Laclau
and Mouffe argue, these ‘new social movements’ have been primarily
struggles against domination rather than economic exploitation,
as the Marxist paradigm would contend: ‘As for their novelty, that
is conferred upon them by the fact that they call into question
new forms of subordination’ (160). That is not to say that they
do not contest capitalist exploitation, but rather that economic
exploitation would seen here as an aspect of the broader problem
of domination. In particular, permutations of the state over the
past fifty or so years — from the welfare state and its increasing
bureaucratisation, to neo–liberal state privatisation, to many contemporary
forms of security–driven biopolitical sovereignty as discussed above
— have generated new relations of subordination, domination
and surveillance, as well as concomitant forms of resistance: ‘In
all the domains in which the state intervened, a politicisation
of social relations is at the base of numerous antagonisms’ (Laclau
and Mouffe: 162). In other words, they are struggles against specific
forms of state power and relations of domination instigated by it.
In sense, they are anti–authoritarian, anti–state — that is
‘anarchist’ — struggles.
Laclau and Mouffe also show the way in which the struggles of workers
and artisans in the nineteenth century tended to be struggles against
relations of subordination generally, and against the destruction
of their organic, communal way of life through the introduction
of the factory system and new forms of industrial technology such
as Taylorism. They did not conform to Marx’s notion of the proletarians
embracing the forces of capitalism in order to radicalise it (Laclau
and Mouffe: 156). This refusal to reduce the struggles of workers
to the specific Marxist vision of the proletarian struggle against
capitalism would also be characteristic of the classical anarchist
position, which emphasised the heterogeneity of subaltern subjectivities
and antagonisms (the crucial role of the lumpenproletariat,
for instance, which had been dismissed by Marx) and their primarily
anti–authoritarian character. There is an important theoretical
link here between anarchism and ‘post–Marxism’: both positions reject
the economic and class reductionism of Marxist thought, insisting
that it cannot account for the specificity, complexity and heterogeneity
of political struggles.
The Politics of Contingency
Given the theoretical proximity between anarchism and post–Marxism,
it is perhaps surprising that this connection is not explored by
Laclau and Mouffe — particularly since, as I have suggested
above, classical anarchism was able to offer, as a radical alternative
to Marxism, a wholly autonomous theory of the state and political
power. Moreover, while anarchism could be used to inform post–Marxism,
perhaps post–Marxism can also be used here to inform anarchism.
In particular, Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony could be developed
here as a way of understanding the processes of political identification
characteristic of contemporary antiauthoritarian struggles.
Hegemony is a concept used by Laclau and Mouffe to describe a radically
synthetic political relationship that goes beyond the confines of
the Marxist understanding of class struggle. It refers to a political
and theoretical problematic that emerged from the central crisis
of Marxism — the widening gap, already apparent in the nineteenth
century, between, on the one hand, the empirical reality of the
shrinking of the working class and the transformations in capitalism,
and, on the other, Marx’s predictions about the polarisation of
society into two opposed classes and the inevitable collapse of
capitalism. There were various attempts to patch up this gap through
synthetic political articulations — interventions which seemed
momentarily to invoke the autonomy of the political and the contingency
of the social, only to re–inscribe these once again within the parameters
of economic determinism and class reductionism, thus foreclosing
their radical potential. Indeed, it was only with the introduction
of the concept of ‘hegemony’ that the political domain started to
be considered in its own right. The solution proposed by the Russian
Social Democrats to the specific problems in Russia during the nineteenth
century was a hegemonic one: because of the situation of ‘combined
and uneven development’, the proletariat would have to take upon
itself the political tasks of the bourgeoisie. This was extended
to Lenin’s notion of the class alliance, in which the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat would unite to achieve common democratic political
ends. In both these positions, there is a conscious construction
of a political unity, which involves one class ‘standing in’ synthetically
for the demands of other classes. Gramsci took this synthetic political
construction the furthest with his notion of ‘collective will’,
in which radical alliances or ‘historic blocs’ could be formed from
different sectors and classes in society through ideology, intellectual
leadership and shared ‘values’ and ‘ideas’ (Laclau and Mouffe: 66–67).
What is crucial about this concept of hegemony is that it designates
a distinctly political relationship. That is to say, radical political
identities are seen here as being constructed contingently and strategically
to suit the specific situation, rather than being the inevitable
outcome of historical or economic forces. In other words, it is
assumed here that there is no necessary or essential relationship
betwee the proletariat and other social identities: there is only
a synthetic relationship between them that develops out of political
expediency and is entirely contingent. It suggests that radical
political struggles can no longer be limited to the proletariat
alone, and must be seen as being open to other classes and social
identities. This is similar to the anarchist position, which sought
to include other classes and strata in the revolutionary struggle
alongside the industrial proletariat: peasants, intellectuals, declasses
and the lumpenproletariat. Indeed, Bakunin preferred the
word ‘mass’ to ‘class’ to characterise this heterogeneous revolutionary
idea, ‘class’ implying hierarchy and exclusiveness (1950: 47).
This notion of hegemony, if it is taken to its logical conclusion,
breaks the link that had always been assumed in Marxism between
class position and political outlook, showing that identities, alliances
and radical positions are constituted contingently through engagement
in political struggles themselves, rather than being predetermined.
Laclau and Mouffe argue that when a number of different identities
are engaged in different political struggles, ‘chains of equivalence’
can be formed between them as they become united around a common
struggle or in opposition to a common enemy. For instance, we can
imagine a situation in which there is an authoritarian government
that antagonises different groups in society: a government that
denies workers their rights also denies students their rights, and
so on. Despite their different specific aims and identities, a certain
relation of equivalence would be formed between workers and students
as they become united against a common foe. In this situation, a
certain identity will ‘stand in’for or embody the universality of
this political struggle, thus ‘suturing’; or temporarily holding
together the political field.
To understand this hegemonic relationship more formally, we can
think of in structural terms. For Laclau, the political field is
constituted by two irreducible poles or principles — the universal
and the particular — and the dynamic that operates between
them. Because there is no longer any universal subject — the
position which was once held by the proletariat — this dimension
of the universal is ‘empty’; that is, it can no longer be embodied
in an objective content. The universal remains as the empty horizon
of politics — the ‘empty signifier’ — that cannot be filled
and yet, precisely because of this, generates the desire or structural
imperative in political identities (the particular) to fill or embody
it. It is this political operation attempting to fill the ‘unfillable’
place of politics that is precisely the logic of ‘hegemony’ (Laclau
in Butler, et al., 58). In other words, there is a political dimension
that is symbolically empty and which can only be articulated through
a contingent relation of representation, in which a particular political
identity comes to partially embody it, thus generating the very
contingency in the social and political identities that are constitutive
of it.
Laclau shows that the political field can be reduced neither to
essentialist determinacy nor to a complete ‘postmodern’ dispersal
of identities; neither, in other words, to absolute universality
nor absolute particularity. Both are reductionist paradigms that
deny a properly political domain. Rather, politics must be seen
as involving a contamination of the universal and the particular.
Political identities are split between their own particularity,
and the dimension of the universal that constitutes them in their
particularity. Political identities, no matter how particular, cannot
exist without a dimension of universality that contaminates them.
It is impossible for a group to assert a purely separate and differential
identity, because part of the definition of this particular identity
is constituted in the context of relations with other groups (Laclau,
1996: 48). For instance, the demand of a particular minority for
cultural autonomy always bears reference to a universal dimension.
The demand for the right to be different is also a demand for equal
rights with other groups. It is also the case, however, that the
universal is contaminated by the particular. The universal is formally
empty, so that it can only articulate itself if it is represented
by a particular political identity. However, it is also the case
that because the universal is formally empty, no identity can completely
represent or embody it. In other words, the universal, for Laclau,
is an ‘impossible object’ in that its representation is, at the
same time, impossible and necessary. While no particularity can
fully symbolise this universal, its partial symbolisation is crucial
if we are to have any notion of politics at all.
So in this hegemonic relationship of mutual contamination, the
universal is split between its universality and its need to be represented
through a concrete particularity; while the particular is split
between its particularity and its reference to a universality which
constitutes its horizon (see Laclau in Butler et al., 56). As I
have shown, even the most particular of identities, if it is to
engage in any form of political activism or to articulate a series
of political demands, has to refer to some universal dimension and
form ‘chains of equivalence’ with other identities and groups. In
this way, the groups in this chain are increasingly unable to maintain
their own particularity, as they become united in opposition to
a common enemy.
It is important to note here that this hegemonic political relationship
is not determined in an essentialist way. There is no a priori link
— as there was in Marxism with the proletariat — between
the universal position and the particular identity that comes to
incarnate it. According to Laclau, the relation of incarnation is
entirely contingent and indeterminate. The ‘stand in’ is decided
in an open field of discursive articulation and political contestation.
Theoretically, any identity, if it manages to articulate adequate
chains of equivalence, can come to represent a common political
struggle. Furthermore, the particularity that ‘stands in’ for the
universal does so only temporarily, and its identity is destabilised
by the universality it ‘represents’ (Laclau, 1996: 53). Because
this link is indeterminate and contingent, this opens the political
field to other identities to attempt to fulfil this incarnating
function.
Let us apply this logic of hegemony to contemporary radical political
struggles. One of the most important developments in radical politics
in recent years has been the emergence of what is broadly termed
the ‘anti–globalisation’ movement, a protest movement against the
capitalist and neo–liberal vision of globalisation that so dominates
us today. What is radical about this movement is not only the breadth
of its political agenda, but the new forms of political action it
entails. It is fundamentally different from both the identity politics
that has recently prevailed in Western liberal societies, as well
as from the Marxist politics of class struggle. It may be seen as
a hegemonic political movement because while it unites different
identities around a common struggle, this common ground is not determined
in advance, nor is it based on the priority of particular class
interests, but rather is articulated in a contingent way during
the struggle itself. Chains of equivalence and unexpected alliances
are formed between different groups and identities who would otherwise
have little in common. In other words, the anti–globalisation struggle
involves a contamination of the universal and the particular. It
is a form of politics that is no longer confined to the particular,
separatist demands of excluded minorities, but rather puts into
question the global capitalist state order itself. At the same time,
though, it problematises capitalism precisely from the perspecive
of the identities and minorities that are excluded and dominated
by it, targeting specific sites of oppression: corporate power and
greed, G–M products, work surveillance, displacement of indigenous
peoples, labour and human rights abuses for example. In other words,
it doesn’t transcend these identities and demands from the perspective
of a universal epistemological position, such as that of proletariat,
for instance; rather it is a universal politics that emerges in
a contingent way prec isely through these particular identities
themselves. Moreover, it transcends the particularity of these identities
only from a position that is formally empty. The different identities
that come to represent the struggle at different times — students,
trade unionists, indigenous groups, environmentalists — do
so only temporarily, thus leaving the political field constitutively
open to a plurality of identies, positions and perspectives. So
while this movement is universal, in the sense that it invokes a
common emancipative horizon that interpellates the identities of
participants, it also rejects the false universality of Marxist
politics, which denies difference and heterogeneity, and subordinates
other struggles to the central role of the proletariat; or, to be
more precise, to the vanguard role of the Party.
In many ways, then, the anti–globalisation movement may be seen
as an anarchistic form of politics: it is not confined to a single
class identity, having the character more of a ‘mass’ than a ‘class’
struggle, and it highlights different relations of political, social
and cultural subordination, rather than just economic exploitation
alone. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that anarchist groups
feature prominently in these protests. Moreover, it is a movement
that rejects centralism and hierarchy, preferring structures that
are more democratic and pluralistic.; All of these strategies and
forms of activism suggest a contingent hegemonic style of politics,
in political identities and positions, rather than being determined
at the outset, are constituted and reconstituted through their engagement
in the struggle itself.
Conclusion
The anti –globalisation movement might be seen, then, as not only
a form of hegemonic politics in action, but also as a contemporary
expression of an anarchistic politics. In this sense, post–Marxism,
poststructuralism and anarchism share a similar politico–theoretical
terrain — one that is characterised by contingency, heterogeneity
and the specificity of the political itself. I have tried to explore
the emergence of this terrain, suggesting that it may be seen as
arising from the crucial innovation of classical anarchist theory
itself: the theorisation of an autonomous and specific political
sphere that was irreducible to a Marxist class and economic analysis.
As I have shown, anarchism took Marx’s notion of the Bonapartist
State to its logical conclusion, thus developing a theory of state
power and sovereignty as an entirely autonomous and specific domain,
around which different political struggles could be constellated.
Notes
1. Some of these connections have been explored
in Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti–authoritarianism and the
Dislocation of Power (2001).
2. This point of difference is summed up by Engels:
‘While the great mass of the Social Democratic workers hold our
view that the State power is nothing more than the organisation
with which the ruling classes — landlords and capitalists —
have provided for themselves in order to protect their social privileges,
Bakunin maintains that it is the State, which has created capital,
that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the State.
As, therefore, the State is the chief evil, it is above all the
State which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to
blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital
... and the State will fall away of itself’ (see ‘Versus the Anarchists’
in Tucker: 728, 728–729).
3. Alan Carter argues that because many Marxists
have neglected the possibility of political forces determining economic
forces, they have fallen into the trap of the state: ‘Marxists,
therefore, have failed to realise that the State always acts to
protect its own interests. This is why they have failed to see that
a vanguard which seized control of the State could not be trusted
to ensure that the State would ‘wither away’. What the State might
do, instead, is back different relations of production to those
which might serve the present dominant economic class if it believed
that such new economic relations could be used to extract from the
workers an even greater surplus – a surplus which would then be
available to the State’ (see ‘Outline of an Anarchist Theory of
History’ in Goodway: 184, 176–197).
4. Indeed, Bakunin argues that a democratic republican
state can be more despotic than a monarchic state, because it can
oppress people in the name of the popular will (1984: 209).
5. According to Agamben, zoe was for the ancient
Greeks biological life itself — the mere fact of existence
— as opposed to bios, which was a form of life proper to the
individual within the polis. In other words, at the heart of the
very concept of life itself is the division between symbolic and
politically significant life, and naked life stripped of this significance
(see 1998: 1–2).
6. This concept ‘suture’ is taken from Lacanian
psychoanalysis to describe a process by which the subject is joined
into the signifying chain, allowing the signifier to stand–it for
the subject’s absence in discourse (see Miller 26–28).
7. Here David Graeber has explored not only the
different and increasingly imaginative forms of activism that characterise
the movement, but also the different strategies employed by protest
groups to build consensus amongst participants and to implemet forms
of direct democracy in decision making (see 2002).
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This article was orginially published in Anarchist Studies,
[Volume 12, #1, 2004]
Related articles:
Anarchism
vs. Marxism
Bakunin
vs. Marx.
Subject Headings:
Anarchism
Anti-Authoritarianism
Left,
The
Libertarian
Politics
Libertarian
Socialism
Libertarianism
Marx,
Karl
Marxism
Socialism
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