5

Marxism

The interpretation of Marxism is the subject of fierce dispute

amongst theoreticians and dozens of political parties and
sects, all of whom justifY their interpretations by apposite
selections from the writings of Marx and Engels. The
enormous diversity of self-proclaimed 'Marxist' views is only
rivalled by the positions inaccurately labelled as such by
critics. Analysing the Marxist theory of the state is
complicated by Marxism's continuing role as the most radical
and threatening critique of capitalism and liberal democracy,
and as the official ideology of governments nominally engaged
in revolutionary struggle against 'bourgeois' regimes.

5.1 Origins and development

To understand the genesis of the Marxist theory of the state,

we first briefly survey the 'classical' Marxist system of ideas;
then we discuss Marx and Engels' varying characterizations
of nineteenth-century European states. Finally, we sketch the
evolution of Marxism after Marx.

Classical Marxism

The core Marxist system of ideas draws principally on three

203
P. Dunleavy et al., Theories of the State
© Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O’Leary 1987
204 Theories of the State

early nineteenth-century influences: British economICS,

German philosophy, and French revolutionary experience.
Between 1840 and 1880 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
criticized and restructured the ideas they gleaned from all
three sources, and combined them into a potent synthesis
which they acclaimed as the first 'scientific socialism'.
From the British 'classical' economists, Adam Smith, David
Ricardo, Adam Ferguson and James Mill, Marx accepted
the idea that the 'laws of motion' of capitalism can only be
grasped via simplified economic models, and that different
groups in production have opposing interests (Meek, 1973).
But he disagreed that economic 'laws' are 'natural' or
inevitable, insisting that current economic 'realities' (such as
poverty wages) are specific to capitalism. From Ricardo,
Marx took the idea that the value at which products exchange
in a market is proportional to the labour time required to
produce them. He transformed this 'labour theory of value'
by insisting that workers are paid only the exchange value of
their labour power, enough to barely provide for ('reproduce')
themselves and their families. But since owners of capital
control the production process, workers are not paid for the
full labour time expended at work. Once they have earned
the exchange value of their labour power (L) in a given day,
workers' additional efforts are expropriated by capital owners
as 'surplus value' (S). The ratio S/L measures the rate of
exploitation, and, whatever their personal ethics, all capital
owners are forced by market competition to maximize the
rate at which surplus value is expropriated from their
workers.
Marx also took from the classical economists the idea that
rates of profit are bound to fall in the long term. Ricardo
argued that population growth would bring lower grade
agricultural land into production, thereby pushing up average
food prices and diverting increasing social resources into
landlords' rents. But Marx argued that falling rates of profit
are an ironic consequence of investment in capital goods,
which in the labour theory of value are seen as the products
of past labour power, a stock of 'dead labour'. Surplus value
or profits can only be expropriated from living labour. With
increased capital investment in production the ratio of surplus