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WHAT DOES THE RULING CLASS DO WHEN IT RULES?
SOME REFLECTIONS ON DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO
THE STUDY OF POWER IN SOCIETY
Göran Therborn
What is the place of power in society? What is the relationship between class and power? Answers diVer, as is to be expected, given the obvious signi cance of class and power to the evaluation of a given society. The question itself, however, appears simple and straightfor- ward enough. Ideological biases apart, what seems to be at issue is the famous question of scienti c method, of what is the most adequate method to answer the question.^1 But is the question really so clear and simple? From what we know about “paradigms” (Kuhn) and “prob- lematics” (Althusser) of science is it very likely that, for example, a pro- letarian revolutionary and critic of political economy (Marx), a German academic historian and sociological follower of Austrian marginalism (Weber), a descendant of JeVersonian democracy (Mills), an admirer of contemporary liberal economics (Buchanan-Tullock, Parsons), or an adherent of some of the ruling political ideas of present-day USA (Dahl, Giddens[^2 ]), would be concerned with the same problem and ask the same question—even when they use the same words? Leaving subtler points and distinctions aside we can distinguish at least three diVerent major approaches to the study of power in society. The rst and most common one we might call the subjectivist approach. With Robert Dahl it asks: Who governs?,^3 or with William DomhoV: Who rules America?,^4 or in the words of a British theorist of strati ca- tion, W.G. Runciman: “who rules and who is ruled?”,^5 or in the mil- itant pluralist variant of Nelson Polsby: “Does anyone at all run this community?”^6 This is a subjectivist approach to the problem of power in society not in the same sense as “subjective” in the so-called subjective con- ceptions of strati cation, which refer to strati cation in terms of sub- jective evaluation and esteem, in contrast to strati cation in terms of, say, income or education. It is a subjectivist approach in the sense that it is looking for the subject of power. It is looking, above all, for an answer to the question, Who has power? A few, many, a uni ed class of fam- ilies, an institutional elite of top decision-makers, competing groups,
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everyone, or no one really? The focus of the subjectivists is on the power-holding and power-exercising subject.^7 The common subjectivist question can then be studied and answered in various ways. This has in fact given rise to a very lively method- ological as well as substantial debate in the United States in the fties and sixties, which still has not been superseded, between the “plural- ists” and the elite and the ruling class theorists.^8 Essentially, it has been a debate within the framework of liberal political ideology and liberal political theory, accepting the liberal conception of democracy as a start- ing-point and then investigating whether the contemporary manifesta- tions of liberal democracy, in the present-day United States or in other Western countries, correspond or not to that conception. But it has also included important contributions from Marxist authors, who have basi- cally con ned themselves within this framework, accepting battle on the terrain chosen by the enemy.^9 The latter case, by the way, highlights the far-reaching eVects of prevailing ideology, shaping even the form of opposition to itself. Outside the subjectivist fold and its internal polemics about diVerent methods and answers, another type of question is raised by some authors who base themselves on liberal economic ideology and liberal economic theory. We might label it the economic approach. In the businessman’s manner, the question here is not who, but how much. Power is regarded above all as a capacity to get things done. The primary emphasis is on “power to” rather than “power over” and the crucial question is not the distribution but the accumulation of power. As a theory of power the economic approach features two main variants, a sociological and a utilitarian. The main proponent of the former is Talcott Parsons. Parsons conceives power “as a circulating medium, analogous to money”^10 and de nes it as “generalized capacity to secure the performance of binding obligations by units in a system of collective organization when the obligations are legitimized with reference to their bearing on col- lective goals and where in case of recalcitrance there is a presumption of enforcement by negative situational sanctions—whatever the actual agency of that enforcement.”^11 In the utilitarian “economic theories of democracy,” little attention and consideration is allotted the phenomenon of power and its con- ceptualization. Politics is seen from the perspective of an “individualist theory of collective choice” and the meaning of power is then derived from the assumed blessings of market exchange. “This approach”, write Buchanan and Tullock, “incorporates political activity as a particular form of exchange ; and, as in the market relation, mutual gains to all par-
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that is, on (particular historical) relations of production and their relation- ship to the productive forces and to the state and the system of ideas.
II
This third approach to the problem of power in society owes its more roundabout character to the fact that it seriously and systematically tries to tackle two fundamental problems largely neglected by the other approaches. One concerns “power to”, the other relates to “power over”. One question which should be seriously faced is: Power to do what? What is a particular amount of power used for? The utilitarian answer— to maximize one’s utility—is hardly very satisfactory in view of the enor- mous variety of historical social forms, and thereby systems, of power. For the same reason we do not learn very much from Parsons’ discus- sion of power in terms of realization of “collective goals.”^15 Nor should it be assumed a priori , or made a part of the de nition, that, as Parsons contends, power is exercised “in the interest of the eVectiveness of the collective operation as a whole”,^16 rather than in the interest of the exploitation of one class by another. What “power to” means depends on the kind of society in which it operates. A Marxist analysis of a given society rst of all focuses on its mode(s) of production, its system(s) of relations and forces of production. By determining the relations of production the Marxist analyst at the same time determines if there are classes in the given society and what classes there are, because classes in the Marxist sense are people who occupy certain positions in society as basically de ned by the relations of production. If immediate production—in husbandry, agriculture, indus- try, transport, etc.—and the appropriation and control of the surplus produced are separated among diVerent role incumbents, and are not united in an individual or in a collective, there are classes. And the diVerent modes of separation (slavery, feudalism, capitalism, etc.) mean diVerent classes.^17 Determining the relations of production does not pertain only to the context of political power. It is also directly related to the question of power, since the separation between the immediate producers and the appropriators of the surplus product entails speci c relations of domi- nation and subordination.^18 Exploitative relations of production directly involve relations of domination, and in what may be called the key pas- sage of Marx’s materialist interpretation of history he says, “The speci c economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers, determines the relation of domination and servitude,
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as it emerges directly out of production itself and in turn reacts upon production.” Marx then continues and makes his basic proposition about the relationship between the economy and the polity (the meaning, truth and fruitfulness of which proposition is under debate): “Upon this basis, however, is founded the entire structure of the economic community, which grows up out of the conditions of production itself, and conse- quently its speci c political form. It is always the direct relation between the masters of the conditions of production and the direct producers which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social edi ce and therefore also of the political form of the relation between sovereignty and dependence, in short of the particular form of the state.”^19 For the adherents of the subjectivist approach, in both its pluralist and elitist variants, to raise the problem of “power to do what?” means to ask: What do rulers do when they rule? Where do the leaders lead the led? To say or imply that what rulers do when they rule is to maintain their ruling position is at best trivial—and not infrequently wrong. Intentionally and unintentionally what rulers do and do not do aVects the ruled, and the same sort of power subjects—in terms of personal background and present interpersonal relations—may aVect the ruled in very diVerent ways. There are diVerent eVects under pluralism or elitism, diVerent eVects under, say, military governments and centralized “oligarchical” organizations.^20 And there are many ways for a ruling class to exercise and maintain its rule, other than by supplying, from its own ranks, the political personnel. It may therefore be argued that rulers and ruling classes would be better identi ed not by their names and numbers, their social background and power career—although all this is of course not without importance—but by their actions, that is by the objective eVects of their actions. From this perspective, the Marxist interjects into the subjectivist discussion, polarized around democracy and dictatorship or, in its contemporary, somewhat lower-pitched versions, pluralism and elitism: democracy of what class, dictatorship of what class? There is a second aspect to what rulers do when they rule. Talcott Parsons once made a famous critique of utilitarianism for its inability to account for social order.^21 What all kinds of subjectivist elite and rul- ing class theorists are unable to do is to account for social change. Characteristically enough, the classical elite theorists, who really thought out the consequences of their theories, all basically held that society did not change. Instead they drew a picture of an eternal cycle of rising, ruling, degenerating, and falling elites. This goes for all of them, Gumplowicz, Mosca, Pareto, and Michels.^22 Ultimately they tended to
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some ways always patterned, and therefore possible to grasp by scienti c analysis. What the elitism-pluralism theorists have been doing, then, is to concentrate on the existence or non-existence of one possible form of the patterning of power in society and, it should be added, on a form which hardly seems to be the most important one in modern com- plex societies. Little is gained in answering this kind of objection by referring to another kind of interpersonal identity than that ensured by overlapping membership in cohesive power groups—by referring, that is, to a com- mon identity of ideas, to a consensus of values.^25 How is a particular kind of consensus and its maintenance to be explained,^26 and how does it actually operate, so general and abstract as it tends to be in modern societies? What objective social structures and social relationships are brought about and/or maintained, how are people’s lives patterned by the diVerent exercises of supposedly consensual power? Important methodological critiques of pluralism have been developed by Bachrach and Baratz,^27 and most recently by Lukes,^28 with their inclusion of institutional “mobilization of bias” and of “non-decision- making,^29 and in the case of Lukes, of latent con icts and of the eVects of inaction.^30 But they do not deal with the present problem, of “power over.” In fact, the subjectivist orientation of these authors seems to pre- clude a way out for the elitists in this respect. What their re ned meth- ods can do is to detect more hidden manifestations of elite rule, but they can hardly nd social patternings of exercise of power other than those of a uni ed power subject. With Bachrach-Baratz this is strongly implied by their conception of power, and its related concepts, as an interpersonal relation between A and B.^31 With Lukes it follows from the author’s moralistic concern with responsibility. For this reason Lukes is uninterested in impersonal forms of domination and wants to con- centrate on cases where it can be assumed that the exerciser(s) of power could have acted diVerently from how they did. And in this context he throws in a distinction between power and fate!^32 To Lukes too, then, power should be analysed primarily with a view to nding subjects of power, identi able, free, and responsible originators of acts (and non- acts). He seems to remain stuck within the pluralist-elitist framework, of either a uni ed elite or various elites or leadership groups (whose interrelationship as a relation of power over others remains obscure, unless they themselves are aware of their relationship). Marx opened up a path out of the pluralist-elitist impasse, one which seems to have remained almost completely unnoticed among sociologists and political scientists, including writers who have explicitly referred to
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Marx, more or less critically. The radical novelty and dissimilarity to others of the Marxian approach seems to have been drowned in sub- jectivist receptions and reinterpretations. The way out indicated by Marx is that the study of a given society should be not just a study of its sub- jects nor of its structure only, but also and at the same time should be an inquiry into its process of reproduction. Signi cantly, it is in the study of the process of reproduction that Marx analyses the class relationships of exploitation and domination. Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous con- nected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only com- modities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capital relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer.” 33 In a critique of the subjectivist conceptions of market exchange in 18th- and 19th-century economics Marx provided a cri- tique in advance of 20th-century sociologists as well: “To be sure, the matter looks quite diVerent if we consider capitalist production in the uninterrupted ow of its renewal, and if, in place of the individual cap- italist and the individual worker, we view them in their totality, the capitalist class and the working-class confronting each other. But in so doing we should be applying standards entirely foreign to commodity production.”^34 For the study of power in society the perspective of reproduction means that the commanding question of all the variants of the subjec- tivist approach—Who rules, a uni ed elite or competing leadership groups? Is the economic elite identical with or in control of the polit- ical elite?—is displaced by the question: What kind of society, what fun- damental relations of production, are being reproduced? By what mechanisms? What role do the structure and actions and nonactions of the state (or of local government) play in this process of reproduction, furthering it, merely allowing it, or opposing it? The analysis of reproduction makes possible an answer to the ques- tion of how the diVerent moments of the exercise of power in society are interrelated, even if there is no conscious, interpersonal interrela- tion. They are interrelated by their reproductive eVects. A given kind of relations of production may be reproduced without the exploiting (dominant) class de ned by them being in “control” of the government in any usual and reasonable sense of the word, even though the inter- ventions of the state further and/or allow these relations of production to be reproduced. And yet the fact that a speci c form of exploitation and domination is being reproduced, is an example of class rule and is an important aspect of power in society.
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The typology of state structures should distinguish among the diVerential eVects (of legislative, administrative, and judiciary arrangements and pro- cedures, of mechanisms of governmental designation, of organization of army and police, etc.) upon the extent to which the state can be used by diVerent classes—that is, their eVects on whether and to what extent the rule of a given class of people (with certain characteristics and quali cations as de ned by their position in society) can operate through the state structure under investigation.^35 In this way broad types of state structures can be identi ed and distinguished in terms of their class character, for example feudal states, bourgeois states and proletarian states (in which the principle of “politics in command”, as realized in soviets, workers’ parties, mass movements of cultural revolution, etc., seems to be a central characteristic). Various speci c state apparatuses, such as legislative bodies, the judiciary, or the army, could also be stud- ied from this point of view. It should of course not be assumed that a concrete state at a speci c point in time necessarily has a homogeneous class character in all its institutions—which raises the problem then of how to establish its dominant class character. To study the process by which the state actually operates we also have to have a typology of state interventions (including non-interven- tions signi cant to the (re)production of given relations of production). Such a typology could be almost endlessly re ned. Basically, however, it should comprise two dimensions. One concerns what is done, and the other how it is done. In other words, one refers to the external eVects of state intervention on other structures of society, above all on the relations of production, (but also on the ideological system), and the other refers to the internal eVects upon the state itself. State interven- tion can either further, merely allow, or go against, and at the limit break, given relations of production. And they can either increase, maintain, or go against, and at the limit break, given relations of political domination as embodied in the character of apparatuses of administration (and government) and repres- sion. (The possibilities of successfully breaking given relations of pro- duction are fundamentally determined by the particular stage of the relations and forces of production, and the stage of the relations of force between classes which this implies.) The following table illustrates the types of state intervention possible along these two dimensions.
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EVect upon given relations of political EVect upon given domination relations of production (Structure of administra- tion and repression) Further Allow Go against/ Break
Increase 1 2 3 Maintain 4 5 6 Go against/ 7 8 9 Break
This typology can be applied both to a given political measure, such as a social security program, nationalization, a land reform, a school reform, etc., and to the sum of actions undertaken by a given govern- ment over a given period. It is in this way that the class character, in the Marxist sense, of a regime or a policy is to be ascertained. For ex- ample, a nationalization act or a land reform can allow and even fur- ther capitalist relations of production if it is carried out through the rules of the capitalist game, involving compensation more or less at mar- ket value, implementation through the established legislative and admin- istrative procedure, and the creation of enterprises run by new owners using wage labor for pro t (or for subsidizing other enterprises run for pro t). But such measures can also be put into eVect in the opposite manner, without necessarily meaning the complete abolition of capital- ism in the society. A regional policy can be carried out with the help of various kinds of subsidies, such as tax rebates, to capitalist enter- prises, thus following the logic of capitalist relations of production but making a certain localization of plants more pro table. But the same measure can also go against that logic, through mandatory planning. The class character is determined on the basis of the identity of the dominant (exploiting) class (i.e., the dominant class of the particular rela- tions of production furthered or allowed by the interventions). If there is a discrepancy in the eVects upon the relations of production and the structure of the state, this indicates a contradictory and unstable situa- tion. For instance, in the case of the last period of Czarist Russia, the state furthered the developing capitalist relations of production while at the same time basically maintaining a largely pre-capitalist form of state; Soviet Russia in the 1920’s allowed capitalist relations of production to develop while maintaining a proletarian dictatorship; and the Allende
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versus small capital. In this way diVerent hegemonic fractions of the bourgeoisie can be identi ed. What the ruling class does when it rules, in the Marxist sense, then, is not to make, as a compact unit, all important decisions in society. The rule of the ruling class is exercised by a set of objectively interre- lated but not necessarily interpersonally uni ed mechanisms of repro- duction, through which the given mode of exploitation is reproduced. The ruling class, in this sense, is not a uni ed power subject. The rule of the ruling class is not necessarily, and is usually not, expressed in conscious collective decisions and actions by the class as a whole. What the ruling class does when it rules is not primarily a matter of subjec- tive intentions and actions. Its rule is embodied in an objective social process, through which a certain mode of production is maintained and expanded, guaranteed and furthered by the state. This means that the pluralist-elitist debate does not pertain to the existence of a ruling class in the radically diVerent Marxist sense. What that debate is concerned with are certain aspects of the mode of organization of the ruling class, such as its cohesion. It should be noticed that neither the existence of a ruling class, nor what class is the ruling class, nor the amount of its power, are de ned here a priori. What classes there are has to be uncovered by an analy- sis of the relations of production in a given society. The ruling class has to be identi ed and the amount of its political power, the range of its rule, has to be ascertained by a study of the structure and the inter- ventions of the state. The dialectical-materialist approach to power in society is an empirical approach, although of a quite diVerent kind. Having located the ruling class, another task is then to lay bare the mechanisms of its rule, which includes nding an answer to why the actual interventions of the state function—as such mechanisms. The state power of the ruling class is part of the total reproduction process of society. As Poulantzas^37 has pointed out, there are two aspects of reproduction (and it should be added of revolution as well): the repro- duction of the positions of the given social structure, and the repro- duction of individuals who can occupy them. For example, capital, wage labor, and capitalist enterprise have to be reproduced, as does the state apparatus. The reproduction of position also involves, at least in the long run, the production and reproduction of a compatibility between the diVerent levels of the social structure. The reproduction of capital- ism requires not only the reproduction of capitalist enterprise but in the long run the reproduction of a compatible capitalist state as well.
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But also, new generations of individuals—and the given individuals year in and year out—have to be trained to occupy the given positions, to be quali ed or subjected to ful ll adequately the tasks provided by the social structure. Out of the new-born infants a given proportion have to be reared to become owners and managers of capital, other portions to become workers, white collar employees, and administrative and repressive personnel, or petty-bourgeois farmers, shop-keepers, and artisans. What broad types of mechanisms of reproduction—within which we can seek and nd the concrete mechanisms in concrete societies—can be identi ed? One of primary importance is, of course, economic con- straint. Economic constraint functions, in ways laid bare by speci c eco- nomic analysis, in and through the stage of the productive forces, the inherent dynamics of the relations of production, and the interdepend- ence of the forces and relations of production. It operates on various levels and decisively aVects both the reproduction of positions and of the agents to occupy them. A given level of the development of the productive forces excludes certain relations of production, makes them untenable or obsolete and non-competitive; and the necessity for some kind of material reproduction then favors certain other relations of pro- duction, and determines the range of political options, such as for the Bolshevik government after the civil war. On a lower level, economic constraint imposes certain limits upon what a capitalist corporation or a feudal manor can do to stay in business, limits for instance on the extent to which one corporation or manor can tamper with the capi- talist and feudal relations of production governing other corporations or manors. Economic constraint operates in a constant process to repro- duce a certain structure of economic positions, by sanctions of bank- ruptcies, unemployment, poverty, and sometimes outright starvation. Economic constraint is an important mechanism for keeping even rev- olutionarily-conscious peasants and workers in line and harnessing them for the reproduction of the society they would like to overthrow. Another important type of mechanism of reproduction is political, and includes two basic subtypes, administration and repression, which in modern societies are both regularly concentrated in a distinct state apparatus (or, rather, system of state apparatuses). Through adminis- trative interventions—taxation, regulations, subsidies, countercyclical poli- cies, etc.—the reproduction of a certain mode (or modes) of production is favored or hindered. Administration also functions in the reproduc- tion of agents for the positions of the given modes of production, through
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more a ruling class is able to assimilate the most prominent men of the dominated classes the more stable and dangerous is its rule.”^41 The Marxist perspective notes that rigidly diVerentiated access to the edu- cational system tends to make exploitation less stable. In the Marxist perspective, what is most important to the reproduction of exploitation is not diVerential access to the educational system, but the diVerential educational system itself. Mobility, then, is essentially an ideological mechanism of reproduction. So also is another phenomenon dear to all subjectivists, interpersonal intercourse, which contributes to a common outlook among the representatives of diVerent constituencies. Through these mechanisms of reproduction the ruling class can exer- cise its rule and keep state power without necessarily having to supply the political and administrative personnel. The economic laws of motion of a given society set a very high threshold for their possible trespass by politicians. The structural arrangements of the state (its class charac- ter) circumscribe the state interventions decided upon by the government. The ideological mechanisms of reproduction shape both the politicians— even labor politicians with no personal intercourse with the bourgeois cream—and the population at large, including the exploited classes. All these mechanisms operate in and through the con ict and strug- gle of classes. Class struggle then does not mean, even mainly, battles between uni ed, self-conscious entities. It means con ict and struggles between people who occupy diVerent positions in exploitative modes of production. Reproduction and revolution, consequently, are not to be understood in terms of mechanisms of reproduction versus class struggle. The repro- ductive mechanisms also produce, at the same time, mechanisms of rev- olution. To realize this is, of course, a basic feature of a dialectical approach. Marx analyzed, for instance, how the expanded reproduction of capital also meant the development of contradictions between the relations and the forces of production. That analysis might be extended to the political and ideological processes of reproduction. For example, the strengthening of the state—and with it the strengthening of admin- istrative and repressive operations of the state—which characterizes the modern, imperialistic state of capitalism, has been accompanied by more devastating contradictions among capitalist states. The two world wars of the 20th century gave rise to non-capitalist regimes among a third of humanity. Similarly, at the ideological level, the role of the intelligentsia, both in old Russia and China and recently in the advanced capitalist societies, testi es to the fact that the mechanism of quali cation and sub- jection might also take on the character of a revolutionary mechanism,
developing a contradiction between quali cation and subjection. There are also mechanisms of revolution which operate in and through the class struggle. And, looked at from the other side of the same coin, the class struggle is fought in and through mechanisms of reproduction and revolution. But all that is another part of the story, and, maybe, part of another paper.
Notes
The original version of this article appeared in The Insurgent Sociologist 6:3 (Spring, 1976), pp. 3–16.
- See, e.g., R. Dahl, “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model”, American Political Science Review (APSR) 52 (1958), pp. 463–69; N. Polsby, “How to Study Community Power: The Pluralist Alternative”, Journal of Politics 22 (1960), pp. 474–84: P. Bachrach – M. Baratz, “The Two Faces of Power”, APSR 56 (1962), pp. 947–52; P. Bachrach – M. Baratz, “Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework”, APSR 57 (1963), pp. 641–51; R. Merelman, “On the Neo-Elitist Critique of Community Power”, APSR 62 (1968), pp. 451–60; APSR 65 (1971), pp. 1063–80; F. Frey, “Comment: On Issues and Nonissues in the Study of Power”, APSR 65 (1971), pp. 1081–1101; R. Wol nger, “Rejoinder to Frey’s ‘Comment’, APSR 65 (1971), pp. 1102–04. An overview can be gained from the reader edited by R. Bell. D. Edwards, and H. Wagner, Political Power (New York: Free Press, 1969).
- According to Giddens the USA is the most democratic advanced society in the world: A. Giddens, The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (London: Hutchinson, 1973), p. 175. For a comment on the issue, see below. Dahl’s conception of the prevailing regime in USA is expounded in, among other places, R. Dahl, Pluralist Democracy in the United States: Conict and Consent (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967).
- R. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1961).
- W. DomhoV, Who Rules America? (Englewood CliVs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
- W.G. Runciman, “Towards a Theory of Social Strati cation”, in F. Parkin, ed., The Social Analysis of Class Sructure (London: Tavistock, 1974), p. 58.
- Polsby, op. cit. , p. 476.
- In the egalitarian orientation of Bachrach-Baratz this focus is coupled with a look- out for who, if any, gain and who, it any, are handicapped by the existing “mobiliza- tion of bias”. Besides their above-mentioned articles see their Power and Poverty (New York; Oxford University Press, 1970).
- The substantial debate includes, from the elitist side, F. Hunter, Community Power Structure (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1953): C.W. Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956); W. DomhoV, op. cit. , Bachrach-Baratz, op. cit. : M. Parenti, “Power and Pluralism: A View From the Bottom”, in M. Surkin – A. Wolfe, eds., An End to Political Science (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 111–43; M. Creson, The Un-Politics of Air Pollution (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1971). Among the contributions of the pluralists are S.D. Riesman, et al., The Lonely Crowd (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1953); R. Dahl, Who Governs? ; E. Ban eld, Political Inuence (New York: Free Press, 1961). For references to the methodological discussion see above note 1.
- The most important example is R. Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969). The polar opposite kind of Marxist stance is exempli ed by N. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Class (London: NLB, 1973). In a well-argued article the latter has been criticized for not coming to grips with, and thus not really revealing the weaknesses of, the problematic of his opponents: E. Laclau, “The Speci city
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- This is a weak spot in the otherwise well-substantiated critique of pluralist these by Miliband ( op. cit. ). Miliband basically shrinks from really analysing governments whose personnel is not recruited from the economic elite, and where the higher echelons of the administration may also be recruited otherwise. In such cases he merely refers to the ideology of the political leaders as part of a bourgeois consensus (see ch. 4, part IV). He does provide some empirical material and suggestions for a study of the problem, but it is fundamentally outside his model of control. For the analysis of advanced bour- geois democracies, of reformism fascism, and military governments, a more complex model seems crucial. Similarly, the important works of William DomhoV, on the haute- bourgeois backgrounds and connections of American politicians and administrators, and on the cohesiveness of the top-most stratum of the US bourgeoisie, would bene t from being located in a much more elaborate conceptualization and analysis of the US power structure and of the contradictory development of US society.
- Bachrach-Baratz, op. cit. (1962, 1963, 1970).
- S. Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974).
- A nondecision means “a decision that results in suppression or thwarting of a latent or manifest challenge to the values or interests of the decision-maker,” Bachrach- Baratz, op. cit. (1970), p. 44.
- Lukes, op. cit. , chs. 4, 7. Lukes draws upon the work of Crenson, op. cit.
- Bachrach-Baratz, op. cit. (1970), ch. 2.
- Lukes, op. cit. , pp. 55–56. Cf. Marx: “I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense coleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personi cations of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may sub- jectively raise himself above them.” Das Kapital , I, p. viii; Capital (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970), vol. 1, p. 10. Marx’s view certainly did not mean that the power of the capitalist was a fate to submit to, but something that could be combatted and abolished. It does mean, however, that it is rather pointless to accuse the capitalists of not behav- ing like non-capitalists. The Marxian standpoint implies, of course, that the arm of crit- icism is replaced by the criticism of arms (i.e., the class struggle in all its forms).
- Marx, op. cit ., I. p. 541; Lawrence & Wishart editions, I. p. 578.
- Ibid. , p. 549 and p. 586, respectively.
- This seems to indicate a way out of the dilemma posed by Claus OVe in his very penetrating essay, ‘Klassenherrschaft und politisches System. Zur Selektivitat politischer Institutionen’, in his Strukturprobleme des kapitalistischen Staates (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972). This is an “objectivist” approach to the problem of the selectivity of the state, but it is not based on any de nitions of the objective interests of the revolutionary class, which OVe rejects (p. 86). Neither does it mean that an empirical inquiry into the class char- acter of the state only can be made post festum , as OVe concludes (p. 90), when the class struggle has developed to the point where the limits of a given state appear.
- Fascism is also distinguished by its furthering of monopoly capitalist relations of production, which points to still another distinction in terms of fractions of classes fur- thered or disadvantaged by the state interventions. Cf. N. Poulantzas, Fascism and Dictatorship (London: NLB, 1974).
- N. Poulantzas, ‘On Social Classes’, New Left Review 78 (1973), p. 49.
- Parsons treats the problem of reproduction or “pattern-maintenance” solely in terms of transmission of values. For a relatively recent formulation see T. Parsons. The System of Modern Societies (Englewood CliVs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 10–15. Similarly all “social sources of stability” singled out by Parkin ( op. cit ., 1971, ch. 2) refer to ideo- logical mechanisms: mobility, the educational system, religion, gambling, and the fos- tering of beliefs in luck. A noteworthy exception is H.F. Moorhouse’s interesting account of the political and economic constraints imposed upon the British working class up to
what does the ruling class do? 243
1918 and their role in shaping later working class “deference”, in his “The Political Incorporation of the British Working Class: An Interpretation,” Sociology 7 (1973), pp. 341–59. See also the discussion by R. Gray, “The Political Incorporation of the Working Class,” Sociology 9 (1975), pp. 101–04; H.F. Moorhouse, “On the Political Incorporation of the Working Class: Reply to Gray.” Ibid ., pp. 105–10. See footnote 72, on the con- centration (in the discussion of social reproduction) on legitimation, a preoccupation com- ing out of the Weberian tradition.
- To identify the ideological mechanisms of reproduction with the processes of legit- imation would imply that people do not revolt against the given rule under which they live because they regard it as legitimate. This seems hardly warranted. People may not revolt, political and economic constraints aside, because they do not know the kind of domination they are subjected to. That is, they may be hold ignorant not only of its negative features but of its positive claims and achievements as well. They may be igno- rant of alternatives, or they may feel themselves incapable of doing anything about it, even if they know of other possible types of societies. But this ignorance, disinterest, and lack of con dence are not simply there, as characteristics of certain individuals and groups, they are produced by de nite social processes. See the important distinction between pragmatic and normative acceptance made by Michael Mann, “The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy.” American Sociological Review 35 (1970), pp. 423–39. The one-eyed concentration on legitimation is often related to a normative conception: that every rule should be based on the true and knowing consensus of the ruled, thereby holding it legitimate. See, for instance, J. Habermas, Legitimationsprobleme im Spatkapitallismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkapm, 1973), esp. pp. 162V. But that is another question. Interestingly enough, Habermas and OVe both accept Weber’s ideal type of competitive capitalism, against which they contrast modern capitalism with its enormously increased amount of state interventions, supposedly making more ideological legitimation necessary (Habermas, op. cit. , Ch. II.; OVe, “Tauschverhaltnis und politische Steuerung. Zur Aktualitat des Legitimationsproblems,” in OVe, op. cit ., pp. 27–63). This view tends to veil the impor- tant role of ideology in the era of competitive capitalism—the era of human rights dec- larations, of the ascendance of bourgeois nationalism, and of still-strong established and dissenting religions—and to veil as well the economic and Political mechanisms of cri- sis and revolution in the present period, a period which has witnessed the shattering of the economic foundations of the British Empire and is witnessing the shaking of the supremacy of the United States.
- See the very important essay by Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation),” in his Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: NLB, 1971), pp. 121–273. For unconvincing reasons, however, Althusser talks of ideological state apparatuses.
- Marx, Das Kapital , III: 2, p. 140; Bottomore-Rubel, op. cit ., p. 190.
