State Autonomy and Peripheral Capitalism in Mexico

THE PROBLEM OF THE MEXICAN STATE

The problem of the Mexican state derives from the apparent contradiction between its historical origins in the Mexican revolution and its contemporary function of maintaining conditions for peripheral capitalist development. The revolution of 1910 destroyed the pre-existing state apparatus and enabled the revolutionary leadership to form a new state within the context of structural options resulting from Mexico's prior development as well as new forces, alliances, and conflicts emerging from the revolution itself. The constitution of 1917 incorporated the ideal of a strong interventionist state which would eliminate privileges of foreign monopolies and national political elites, affirm national control over Mexican territory and resources, and defend the interests of subordinate groups and classes.

Moreover, during the administration of General Lázaro Cárdenas, President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940, this ideal of a progressive and implicitly autonomous state was to a large extent realized.

The Cárdenas administration carried out a far-reaching agrarian reform: distributing more land to more peasants than all of his predecessors combined, establishing collective farms on commercial agricultural estates — a move which was particularly controversial, given the importance of these estates for the Mexican economy — and effectively eliminating the power of the traditional landowning sector. The government also challenged the incipient capitalist industrial class by encouraging the mobilization and organization of urban and industrial workers, ultimately incorporating the major labor unions and confederations, as well as the major peasant confederation, into the government party structure. Probably the most dramatic example of apparent state autonomy during the Cárdenas administration was the expropriation of the British and U. S.-owned petroleum companies, eliminating foreign control of an important resource and export product. This move was particularly significant given the past success of the petroleum companies in resisting efforts by the Mexican state to regulate them (Weyl and Weyl, 1939; L. Meyer, 1972b; Raby, 1972).

But this orientation was reversed in subsequent years, during which the Mexican state cooperated with private domestic groups and foreign interests to promote rapid economic development, involving the relative neglect or open repression of subordinate groups. In the thirty years following the Cárdenas administration, Mexico was characterized by one of the highest sustained growth rates in the world, coexisting with increasingly high levels of unemployment and underemployment and the impoverishment of the majority of the population. Mexico's growth rate fluctuated in the past decade, and the situation of the majority has stagnated or deteriorated.

How can the relative autonomy of the Mexican state in relation to foreign capital and dominant Mexican groups under the Cárdenas administration be explained? And why was the progressive orientation of the government reversed under subsequent regimes? The transition from an apparently autonomous state to the contemporary Mexican state raises questions regarding the actual extent of relative state autonomy in post-revolutionary Mexico, which in turn is related to more general questions regarding the possibilities and limits of state autonomy. Since Marxist theory is particularly concerned with these questions, a review of Marxist literature on the state will help to provide a framework for analysis of the Mexican state.

MARXIST PERSPECTIVES ON THE CLASS NATURE OF THE STATE

Marx and Engels on the State. The question of state autonomy is a controversial one for Marxist theory because Marxists perceive the state in class societies as functioning to reproduce a mode of production in which a specific class is dominant. Thus the state functions to maintain a given system and, at least by implication, to promote the interests of the dominant class within that system. The works of Marx and Engels do recognize an early form of the state or "organizing authority" resulting from a division of labor in primitive, classless societies through which certain individuals or bodies are designated with authority to maintain order, look after common interests, and defend the community from outsiders (Moore, 1957: 17-21; Draper, 1977: 246). But while the modern state may continue to carry out these functions, the state as an institution common to all societies is of limited relevance. It is precisely those state functions which are not unique to the state nor common to all forms of the state which are of greatest interest in discussing the contemporary state.

And with the development of modes of production based on antagonistic social classes, the state takes on specifically class-related functions. As described by Engels, "the state is the product of society in a determined stage of its development; it is the confession that society is caught up in an insoluble contradiction with itself. ... In order that the antagonists, the classes with economically opposed interests, not be consumed ... the necessity of a power is imposed which, apparently situated above society, must soften the conflict, maintaining it in the limits of 'order': that power, coming from society but situated above it and increasingly foreign, is the state" (Engels, 1972: 229). The original functions remain, but become secondary to that of safeguarding the mode of production and existing class relations through the containment of class conflict and control of subordinate classes (Engels, 1959: 206). Thus the struggles of subordinate groups and classes also have implications for the form and nature of the state.

In capitalist societies, the function of the state is broadened, so to speak, to encompass the establishment and maintenance of conditions for private capital accumulation, which includes, but is not limited to, functions of social control (as well as earlier administrative functions).

Marx and Engels, as well as later Marxists, discuss the concept of a separate state interest and suggest certain circumstances in which limited state autonomy becomes possible. As described by Engels, the state seeks to free itself and establish its own identity; it is "increasingly foreign" to the society from which it emerges (1972a: 229). In discussing the case of Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels note that, given the fragmentation of the bourgeoisie and its failure to organize itself with a class interest over and above the self-interest of individual members, the state itself becomes an apparently independent force (Marx and Engels, 1970: 80, 106). The specific historical instance of the emergence of the Bonapartist regime in mid-century France was described by Marx as resulting from the deliberate abdication of power by a bourgeoisie unwilling to exercise it (Marx 1963: 105-106). Thus, while the existence of a relation between the state and the dominant class is central to Marxist theory of the state, the nature of this relation is not obvious and is contingent upon historical and structural conditions. As these cases suggest, it is particularly in periods of transition, when no one mode of production is dominant or none of the contending classes is able to assert its hegemony, that the state, sometimes referred to as the Bonapartist or Caesarist state, may act with relative autonomy in determining the future structure of the social formation. Even in these circumstances the state is limited (by such factors as the level of development of the productive forces) to given historical and structural options, within which it may have a regressive role in reinforcing the old order, or a progressive role, supporting the class which represents a more advanced mode of production (Gramsci, 1971: 219-220), or in some cases elements of both.

The State Defined. Given the above noted conditions: the physical separation of the state and the dominant class under capitalism, the possibility of relative state autonomy under certain circumstances, and the necessity to demonstrate the class nature and functions of the state for any concrete social formation, the abstract conception of the state in terms of its functions within a class structure becomes problematic. For concrete historical analysis, the state must be defined as an entity analytically separable from class structure. Here we will draw upon the definitions of the modern state by Engels and Weber, who despite their different perspectives generally agree in their specifications of the attributes incorporated in the institutions of the state: "legitimate" monopoly of the means of coercion, or public force; administration over a given territory; and the establishment and maintenance of a system of support, especially taxes and state loans. In summary, the state is constituted by the civil and military bureaucracy, or state apparatus, on the one hand, and those having formal control of this apparatus, the government (constituted in various branches, levels, etc.) on the other (Engels, 1972: 228-233; Weber, 1958: 77-78; 1968 I, 194-200). Formal control of the state apparatus is distinct from control of the state; thus the question of the class nature of the state cannot be determined on the basis of which class constitutes the government. Legitimacy, which for Weber is an essential attribute of the state or, more specifically, of state authority (and of authority in general) tends to be replaced in Marxist literature on the state by the concept of legitimation, which involves not only a justification of the state's own authority but also of the existing social order. As indicated above, this involves a process of mystification whereby government in the interests of a specific class becomes government by a neutral authority in the interests of the whole (Offe, 1974: 5; O'Connor, 1973: 6; Kaplan, 1969: 30).

According to Weber, the growth of the state bureaucracy makes it a formidable apparatus of domination for those who control it (Weber, 1968, III: 987). In particular, control of the means of coercion would appear to facilitate state autonomy. At the same time, the different historical origins of state institutions and their interaction with different classes and class segments suggest that the interests pursued by these institutions may be contradictory to each other as well as to those of the government (which of course may also be divided) (Poulantzas, 1976: 76; Oszlak and O'Donnell, 1976: 26; Kaplan, 1969: 33-34). This suggests that a certain level of cohesion among and within the various government factions and state institutions (or the ability of certain factions or institutions to establish their hegemony over the rest) is a necessary condition for state autonomy. Given the concentration of the coercive power of the state in the military/police apparatus, its level of integration and adherence or resistance to government authority is obviously of crucial importance in state cohesion or in determining the outcome of divisions and conflicts within the state.

But if the possibility of state autonomy appears to be enhanced by control of the means of coercion and by a high level of cohesion within the state, it is limited by the state's dependence upon resources — chiefly taxes and loans — generated through the mode of production and, in capitalist societies, the private sector. Control of the means of production thus constitutes control of the sources of state revenues; the state is economically dependent upon the dominant class. Beyond this economic dependence, once a given mode of production becomes dominant, the state (or those who control it) is held responsible for the smooth functioning of the system, which both facilitates and requires action by the dominant class (Offe, 1974; Block, 1977). This dependence continues even when the state itself controls the means of production in certain economic sectors; as long as the social formation is predominantly capitalist the dominant class is in a position to weaken the state through economic measures (such as production cutbacks or capital export).

The Question of State Autonomy. Since under capitalism control of the means of production and the means of coercion have been concentrated in two separate entities — the capitalist class and the state, respectively — there is the appearance that the economic and the political constitute relatively autonomous spheres (Holloway and Picciotto, 1978: 24; Zeitlin, 1980: 16-17). This appearance is of course reinforced where the bourgeoisie do not have formal positions within government. Today, the separation of the economically dominant class from those who control the state apparatus appears less the exception than the rule and this separation obviously facilitates the appearance of state neutrality, or that the state is operating in the interests of society as a whole rather than those of a specific class. The problem for Marxist analysis becomes one of, first, demystifying the appearance of state autonomy and neutrality and, second, indicating the circumstances in which the state may indeed act with relative autonomy, as well as specifying the limits of such autonomy.

The problem of "demystifying" the appearance of state autonomy was addressed in the works of Domhoff (1967, 1970) and Miliband (1969), which challenged the prevailing pluralist thesis of state power, that of the state as an arena in which different groups, interests, and coalitions struggle over different issues within a general framework of agreement over norms and procedures. However, the strong "instrumentalist" perspective attributed to these authors in turn sparked a debate among Marxist theorists regarding the class nature of the state (Blackburn, 1973: 238-262).

The instrumentalist thesis suggests that the state is an instrument of the dominant class which intervenes directly or indirectly in its functioning, e.g., through direct recruitment into positions of state power or through such means as membership in advisory committees, campaign financing, lobbying, special relations with congressional and regulatory bodies — or more generally by the ability of the dominant class to control such agents as the media and/or the educational system through which state managers, as well as the rest of the population, are socialized (Domhoff, 1967, 1970; Miliband, 1969). The structuralist position, as stated by Poulantzas, is that the state is constrained by its position within a given social formation to preserve or reproduce that social formation; intervention by the dominant class is not necessary and may in fact be detrimental to this process. The autonomy of the state with respect to direct intervention by the dominant class enables it to operate more effectively in reproducing the dominant class structure and in organizing the hegemony of the dominant class (or the dominant fraction of that class) (Poulantzas, 1969: 239-240; 1976: 71).

For both the "instrumentalists" and the "structuralists" the state operates within the constraints of a given class structure or social formation; the debate is concerned less with the question of state autonomy than with how and why the state operates in the interests of the dominant class or to reproduce a given social formation. And on this issue the instrumentalist and structuralist positions are not very far apart.

Miliband and Poulantzas agree that a certain level of state autonomy may be necessary for the survival of an established class system — particularly when the requirements for system maintenance are contradictory to the actual or perceived interests of specific segments of the dominant class (Miliband, 1977: 87; Poulantzas, 1976: 75). An example would be concessions to subordinate groups that may have negative repercussions for the dominant class (and may even result in the elimination of a fraction of that class) but are necessary for the stability (or continuation) of the existing class system. In some cases, certain segments of the dominant class may be sufficiently cognizant of their long-term class interests to make necessary changes (or collaborate with the state to this end) against their immediate interests (Kolko, 1963; Weinstein, 1968). Otherwise, sufficient state autonomy is necessary to act directly against the resistance of these groups.