Class Politics, State Power and Legitimacy

Author(s): James Petras

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 34 (Aug. 26, 1989), pp. 1955-1958
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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 SPECIAL ARTICLES

Class Politics, State Power and Legitimacy

James Petras
The notion of political legitimacy, which has become a central concern among academics, writers and jour-
nalists, is an irrelevant issue or at best a derivative or subsidiary concern. Different electoral regimes derive their
legitimacy from different class reference groups and different balance of class forces.
Power, it is argued here, creates its own legitimacy. Those who do not have power seek it and not legitimacy.
Power, in turn, revolves around class interests and control over the state. Those who neither have power nor are
able to defend their class interests do not necessarily consider authority legitimate or illegitimate. They may pur-
sue private interests,illegitimate or legitimate activity or collective political action outside the institutionalframework
of the political class.
THE concept of political legitimacy has Marxist problematic, Max Weber formulated POWER CREATES LEGITIMACY
become a central concern among a great a counter-perspective starting from the other We want to argue that legitimacy is in
number of writers, academics and jour- side. Since the organised working class was many ways an irrelevantissue or at best a
nalists. Legitimacyhas become the master growing and extending its social power, it derivativeor subsidiaryconcern. The thrust
keyexplainingthe political process, the rise represented a challenge to the authority of
of our argumentin the first instance is that
and decay of electoral and authoritarian the capitalist state. For Weber, the over-riding
powercreatesits own legitimacy.Those who
regimes,the stabilityof social orders,the ef- issue was the problem of authority, the do not havepowerseek it and not legitimacy.
fectiveness of ruling classes and the con- means of securing obedience (legitimacy) Power,in turn,revolvesaroundclass interests
tradictions of capitalist (or collectivist) and the consequences of the latter on the and controloverthe state.Those who neither
societies. Starting from a discussion of political institutional order (parties, electoral havepowernor are able to defendtheir class
legitimacy,this approachanalyseshow social systems, etc). Weber's three-fold classifica- interestsdo not necessarilyconsiderauthori-
classes, the state and the political class act tion of authority-traditional, rational and
ty legitimate or illegitimate.They may pur-
to preserveor undermine it. In effect, nor- charismatic-was accompanied by his belief sue privateinterests,illegitimateor legitimate
mative, idealistic and subjective behaviour that there was a logical-historical progres- activity or collectivepolitical action outside
of individualscreatesthe basis for the socio- sion toward 'rational authority' accompany- the institutional frameworkof the political
economic and political order.Valuesdeter- ing the bureaucratisation of society. His class.
mine economic interestsand condition their analysis was fundamentally flawed as the
pursuit. Marx is turned on his head: collec- eruption of class warfare, worldwide depres- The question of whether a regime is
tive material interests are subordinated to sion, the rise of fascism, world wars and legitimate is not a major question in
and derived from the pursuitof legitimacy. subsequently colonial and neo-colonial wars American politics. In recent years at least
There are essentially two approaches to was to demonstrate. three regimeshave been publiclyexposed as
criticallyanalysethe issue of legitimacy.One Yet in the late 1970s, a new generation of violating the so-called 'democraticrules of
is to question its centrality in analysing writers, mostly academics, has re-emerged the game' and it has not led to any major
politics, to critically examine the assump- who have taken up the major theme or con- politicalmovement,or any 'legitimacycrisis'
tions that unlerlie the conceptual cepts of Weber and have applied them to the or, for that matter,to any politicalcrisis cal-
framework anchored in the concept of political processes of the contemporary ling into question the political institutions.
legitimacy.This approachquestionsthe very period. Self-consciously 'post- Marxist' and PresidentJohnson's bypassingof Congress
usefulness of the notion-it questions the in some cases self-styled 'neo-Weberians', during the undeclaredwar in Vietnam and
question:why study legitimacy?-and posits they have turned towards the notion of massive deception of Congress with the
an alternativeset of concepts starting from legitimacy as the organising principle of fabricatedTonkin incident is one example.
a different set of assumptions about the their analysis. Essentially, their trajectory in- President Nixon's Watergate incident
forces shaping political life. The second ap- volves a flight from class politics to the highlightedthe all-pervasiveuse of the secret
proach we can call an 'immanent critique', political class. They are the new crisis police (FBI) and covert state operatives to
accepts the notion of legitimacyas possess- managers, pointing to the dilemmas of the underminelegal political opposition. Presi-
ing some analytical value and critically political class, its fiscal crisis, the 'contradic- dent Reagan's Iran-Contrapolicy involved
evaluates its relative utility in relation to tions' between its need for legitimacy and bypassing and deceiving the Congress,
otherconcepts,the specificgroupsfor whom its need for accumulation. Over and over violating laws through massive sustained
it has special importance and the degree of they return to the problem of 'legitimacy' covert action. In addition, approximately
relevancein different political contexts. the need to secure obedience or, in their own 125 top officials in the Reagan Adminis-
For Marx the central issue was the ex- euphemistic vocabulary, consent. Like the tration were involved, accused or convicted
ploitative economic system, based on the mandarin of ancient China who offered of criminalactivity-and yet the 'legitimacy
,conflicting economic interests between the their services to the emperor to secure a crisis'neverenteredinto the subsequentelec-
owners of the means of productionand the mandate from heaven, the neo-Weberian in- toral campaign.
wage earning working class. In the Marxist tellectuals (who are specialists in the For the affluent and politically visible
analysis, the problem was one of analysing manufacture of the symbols of power) of- classes social actions and relations favour-
the conditions under which the working fer to provide the appropriate values to ing capital shaped 'legitimacy'not vice ver-
class would organise itself into a collective secure legitimacy. And it is precisely the in- sa. Only among certainsectorsof the liberal
forceto transformthe capitalistsystem. The tellectuals' real or imagined proximity to the intelligentsiawas the issue of legitimacyever
Marxist analysis thus proceeds from an political class and their concern with its pro- raised-more in esoteric books and infre-
analysis of the social relations of produc- blems that explains the vehemence with quently read small magazines-in an effort
tion, to the social organisation of the ex- *which these 'post-Marxists' eschew any to influence the political class. Even in this
ploited classes and to the question of state reference to class-based institutional power context, little was accomplished: the
power. and any suggestion of the centrality of class technocratic wing of the opposition
In responseto the challenge posed by the conflict based on economic interests. (Democratic Party) was more interestedin

Economic and Political Weekly August 26, 1989. .1955

publicising their management capacity than
in raising the issue of a 'legitimacy crisis'.
Furthermore, the majority of the opposition
political class was competing for the favour
of precisely those same affluent groups as
the government party, and they were highly
unlikely to get any support by calling into
question the legitimacy of a system from
which they were reaping such lucrative
benefits. Even the populist opposition
(grouped around the Jackson movement) did
not raise the legitimacy issue, but rather
fought its campaign around the issue of
greater inclusion within the system; in fact,
Jackson went further and argued that
precisely his candidacy and presence was
evidence of the maturity of the political
institutions-a far cry from the purported
crisis in legitimacy decreed by the neo-
Weberians.
The great absentee electoral public (over
50 per cent of the US voters don't vote) is
neither a sign of legitimacy or of illegitimacy
-it is just ignored and the system functions
as smoothly as if they did vote. Nor are the
absentees, particularly those alienated poor
blacks and white workers, responding to a
legitimacy crisis. They are more concerned
with issues of jobs, income, housing, health,
education, security of employment. Because
these fundamental issues are not resolved,
they could serve as a basis for challenging
the 'legitimacy' of the regime, if there existed
a political class that could effectively
organise these private discontents into a
political programme. But in stating the issue
of legitimacy in this fashion we are show-
ing the manner in which the legitimacy is a
derivative issue dependent on basic eco-
nomic interests and conflicts contingent on
political mobilisations.
WEBERIANS AND NEO-WEBERIANS
The notion that legitimacy plays a major
role in social domination is based on the
assumption that there are reciprocal benefits
between rulers and ruled. But as we have
seen over the past decades, under neo-liberal
and conservative regimes there have been
asymmetrical benefits to those at the top and
costs (borne by those below). Yet without
reciprocity there have been no revolutionary
movements or even radical challenges to
authority. The supposed connection between
reciprocity and legitimacy is a figment of the
neo-Weberian imagination.
The assumption that counterposes legiti-
macy to force is another questionable
assumption. Roagan's arbitrary dismissal of
14,000 air controllers and Thatcher's violent
repression of the coal miners' strike reinforc-
ed their legitimacy in the eyes of their af-
fluent visible public. Force and legitimacy
are not opposed, but are dialectically inter-
related-two sides of the same reality, rein-
forcing bourgeois domination within the
electoral system.
Weber's notion of legitimacy is concern-
ed with the conditions facilitating social
domination-a point the Weberian epigones
casually slide over. The ideal type legitimate
social domination for Weber is where the *thesearchfor legitimacyis the opium of the Whencls struggleseruptthat chailengethe
subjectobeysan orderas if the orderresulted intellectulals:
1956
from an inner decision and was thought to cerns, which they confuse with the larger
serve their interest. Underlying this 'ideal society, they confuse the shadows of power
type' of legitimacy is Weber's explicit em- for the real thing.
brace of subjectivistic criteria (the ap- Both in the advancedcapitalistcountries
pearance of interest-serving-not the and in the third world, legitimacy is about
substance), a hierarchical order (the identi- the working order of the institutional
fication of order givers and takers, and obe- machinery-and pre-occupation with its
dient subjects) and the abstraction of the breakdown.Here there is a difference: the
subject from the larger social context (the institutional frameworks of the electoral
'individual' citizen and not the social class). regimes in the third world-particularly in
Unlike the epigones, Weber is consciously Latin America-come into conflict with
reinforcing the centrality of a command dynamicpopularsocio-politicalmovements
structure of orders and obedience, basing it and economic interestsand are incapableof
on a subjective (and manipulable) sense of responding to the demands for systemic
interests (based on perceptions). The pro- changes. Hence the cries about a legitimacy
blem for the neo-Webs is how to translate crisis in the third world, hence the neo-
this authoritarian conceptual framework in- Weberianattemptsto prioritisethe electoral
to a post-Marxist, passably democratic mgimeover social-economicmovementsand
argot. The procedure is rather simiple: it re- adopt authoritarianmeasureof state repres-
quires a bit of intellectual amnesia and a sion to defend legitimacy,i e, the bourgeois
great deal of abstract jargon, mixed in with electoralregimes.No such probms exist at
constructing and knocking down Marxist the moment in the advanced capitalist
straw-people. countries-or, to put it better, state power
In Weber's analysis the model of authority is used to concentratethe endemic violence
is a visible creature of the structure of pro- among the inner city poor.
perty and property values and relations Authoritarianrule growing out of class
penetrate all structures of authority. Among conflict is not illegitimate for the victors.
the neo-Webs the issue of property-the Pinochet received43 per cent of the vote in
great concentrations of capital- disappear Chile and substantialmajoritiesin threema-
or reappear as an afterthought. In its place jor affluent municipalitiesin Santiago(Pto-
are the problems of legitimacy and authority videncia,Las Condes and Vitacura).For the
as 'things in themselves'. like 'democracy. rich and very rich, among the petty
In some cases, among the critical neo-Web bourgeois who have benefited from his
writers they even counter-pose the electoral economic politics, the militarydictatorship
system and property in a so-called contradic- was a legitimatedefenderof class privilege.
tion between capitalism and democracy, con- The same was true of the militaryregimein
veniently overlooking the thousand and one Brazilfrom the mid-1960sto the early 1970s.
ways in which the values, financing and in- Legitimacyhas no meaningoutsideof the
terchange of personnel from both are class-politicalcontextin which it is inseted.
mutually interconnected and reinforcing. It has no universalnormativemeaningthat
The neo-Webs thus reduce the concept of can be applied to particularregimes for all
legitimacy to a question of the political classes in all periods. Legitimacyis a class
institutions-setting aside the class system specific concept: the question is legitimacy
(the relation of classes and the ruling class for whom and under what circumstances?
power structure). The setting aside of This takesus to our second approach,which
systemic and ruling class issues reflects the takesa middle position betweenthe total re-
'givens' in the political discourse ofthe neo- jectionist view of legitimacyand those who
Webs and the changes in political context see it as a central concept in political
from the time Weber was writing. In the first analysis.
decades of the century rising mass working
class parties were challenging the bourgeois LEGITIMACYIN POLITICALPERSPECTIVE
state, ruling classes were insecure, class rela-
tions were polarised-Weber had to address A more modest view of legitimacyplaces
these issues, they had not become the it in the contextof havinga secondary,rein-
'parameters' of politics as they are for today's forcing impact on the basic social and
neo-Webs. In today's neo-conservative politicalrelationsand conflicts.Politicsdoes
political climate, with labour in retreat, the not revolve around the issue of legitimacy,
epigones of Weber argue and debate the ap- but it is not a
factor that can be altogether
it
propriate 'political formula' the ap- ignored. First, is important separate
to
propriate justification for the existing the notion of legitimacy from a one-sided
order- to invest in a ruling class. Hence the associationwith electotalsystems.Non- elec-
concern with legitimacy: to bring their orders toral regimeshavesecuredthe consent of
the
into line with the subject's obedience. populace through socio-economic policies,
national struggles and a variety of other
practices (imperial incursions, racist or
LEGITIMACYFOR WHOM?
chauvinistwars,etc). ELiciting consenton the
The governing classes have a strong base basis of an electorl system has been,one
of support-in the dominant classes, in the mechanismfor securinglgitimacy-and not
visible public and in the mass media. There always a successful one when basic social-
is a power structure in place without much economic interests are violated. Bourgeois
concern with legitimacy or that can create electoral systems depend above all on the
its own legitimacy-or buy it. In this sense, belief in the ltimacy of the ruling class.
intoxicatedwith theirown con- powerand prerogativesof the rulingclass-
Economic and Political Weekly August 26, 1989
and thus question its legitimacy-the elec-
toral system is vulnerableto overthrowand
replacement by authoritarian institutions
that safeguard bourgeois interests. Those
new institutions partake of a class-specific
legitimacy.
Legitimacyis not only tied to state institu-
tions and their relations to citizen-subjects.
Legitimiacycan be built outside of the state
from civil society.This, of course,challenges
the institutionalist views of the orthodox
neo-Webs who see mass movements as a
threat to the stability of 'legitimate
democratic institutions' translated as a
challengeto the monopoly of politics by the
electoral political class and of violence by
the state.
Thirdly,the concentrationof power by a
few international conglomerates has
shrunkenthe boundaries of politics in the
liberalwesterndemocracies:their role is in-
creasingly an instrumental one, creating
competitiveness, seeking markets, bargain-
ing with other statesover termsof economic
exchange,co-ordinatingfiscal, currencyand
financialpolicies,etc. The subordinationand
instrumentalisationof liberaldemocracyto
concentratedcorporatepowermakesthe no-
tion of a 'contradiction'betweenthe two less
plausibleand problemsof 'legitimacy'more
a question of public relationsmanipulation
than a basis for launching a political
movement.
Fourthly, the neo-Web association of
legitimacy with liberty has political mean-
ing only in a public context: access to a
public and to the means of communication
to articulateideas and organisemovements.
Liberty has no political meaning as in-
dividual private expression devoid of a
public context: the isolated expression of
ideas may have subjective value (the in-
dividuals may feel good that they have 'the
freedom to express their views without
physical harm')but it has no consequences
for politics. Thereis a qualitativedifference
in the two contexts; without a public, liber-
ty is essentially privatised- divorced from
politics and power-and compatible with
public tyranny.Public liberty pre-supposes
private liberty, but is not identical with it.
Private liberties do not pre-suppose public
liberty, in fact in contemporary bourgeois
electoralregimesprivatelibertiesarenormal-
ly dissociated from public liberties. Discus-
sion of legitimacymust distinguishbetween
public and privateliberty or fall preyto the
coupling of the two and offer legitimacy to
a tyrannical public order by celebrating
private freedoms.
Because the political class has access to
the public and depends on securing obe-
dience, legitimacy fits into its ideological
concerns.The neo-Websprovidean intellec-
tual veneer for the failures of the political
class by dichotomisingthe political choices:
democracyor chaos, politicsor anomie,elec-
tions or historical regression, transactions
and negotiations within the political class
or class/Hobbesianwars.The self- assertion
of workers-that they are vicdmsof the neo-
liberalelectoralgame-is enlargedupon as
a vehiclefor stregtenng daorcy if and
Economic and Political Weekly August 26, 1989
only if it is ultimately subordinatedto the
political class, which in turn is a loyal
upholderof the capitalistrules of the game.
Widespread disillusion with the electoral
system, the decline of the political class, the
rise of popular movements is described by
the neo-Websas a crisis of the state-not an
affirmation of class power in civil society;
movement displacement of conventional
electoralist politicians is described as the
disintegration of political society (politics
guidedand channelledby the politicalclass).
Movementpolitics is a factor of political
deterioration from the viewpoint of the
political class, but it is a factor in the
strengthening of civil society against the
state from the perspective of the working
and under classes. 'Legitimacy' takes dif-
ferentforms and is located in differentsites,
depending on whether one takes a state-
political class centredview or a civil society-
movement perspective.
Legitimacycan be conceivedas a product
earned through participation in the class
struggle and the construction of class
solidarity. Or it can be conceived of as the
magic wand wieldedby intellectualsseeking
to securestate recognition.The self-defined
role of intellectualspossessing the power to
conferlegitimacyon a regimeis to arguethat
they are indispensable handmaidens of
power.
Both in the thirdworldand in the advanc-
ed capitalist countries major politiqal
forces-particularly bankers,bourgeoisand
in the third world the military and
paramilitarygroups-do not feel obligated
to fight the battles of democracy or the
meaning of democracyon the electoral ter-
rain. Capital flight, creditfreezes,threatsof
coups, corporatemergersand a host of other
extra-parliamentarymethods are all part of
the realterrainin 'definingdemocracy'.Only
the intellectualsof the political class believe
that political struggle over the meaning of
democracyshould take place in the 'terrain
of democracy', i e, parliamentary
frameworks.
For the organic intellectuals of the
politicalclass 'democracy' parliament,elec-
tions, parties and the 'rule of law'
-constitutes the centrepiece of political
legitimacy. For the popular classes in civil
society, the socio-economic problems of
declining standardsof living, skyrocketing
prices, deterioratingwages and the spread
of temporary employment are the central
is,sues defining their attitudes toward
political authority. The dominant classes
that address the interests of the latter can
secure 'popularlegitimacy'with or without
the former. The ruling classes that address
the interestsof the political class can secure
i'tslegitimacy,but lacking a social base will
find it difficult to sustain. Democracy or
socialism is about the solution of people's
basic needs-legitimacy is a derivative of
that process. Insofar as democracyis an in-
strument of those ends, it secures its
legitimacy. Material interests define the
boundariesand providethe substanceof the
debate over legitimacy.
The debateabout legitimacyas it is fram-
ed by Marxistsis about the paths and direc-
tions which conflicting classes will take. To
frame the problemsof legitimacy in a class
conflict frameworkraisesfundamentalques-
tions. In the third world choices between
paying overseas banks or meeting popular
needs, defendingnuman rightsor absolving
military tortures, promoting agro-business
exporters or peasant producers and local
consumers are irreconcilable choices that
confound the babblers about 'democracy'
without class definitions. The political pat-
tern of the new electoral regimes in Latin
America has been to speak to one set of in-
terests(popularmovements)duringelectoral
campaigns and to work for another set of
interests (banking, export elites) in power.
The crisis of legitimacy of these bourgeois
democracies-the mass disillusionment,
urban uprisings and general strikes-has
emergedfrom this doublediscourse,the con-
sequentdevaluationof democraticideology
and disrepute of the political class.
Legitimacy is part of the great debate
among the intellectualsof the politicalclass.
Their numberone priorityis promotingand
defending the political institutions of the
politicalclass. The alliancebetweenthe neo-
Weberianintellectualsand the politicalclass
around the notion of defending the legiti-
macy of the institutionsof the politicalclass
cuts acrossclass boundariesand undermines
the fundamental demands of the popular
classes. The reverseis also true: consequen-
tial political leaderswho articulatematerial
demands of the social movements create a
new legitimacy,one anchoredin civil socie-
ty that underminesthe elite consensus and
legitimacy of the political class and its
organic intellectuals.
Legitimacy can only have meaning in a
specific historicalstructuralcontext-it can-
not be considered in an ahistorical, asocial
fashion. Broader structural factors (class
relations)and social processes(levelsof class
struggle) shape the meaning of legitimacy.
Being a derivative and dependent
phenomenon does not detract from the
potential importance that legitimacy may
have as a secondary influence on the
political process: reinforcingthe roles and
positions of class protagonists inside state
structuresand outside in civil society. While
legitimacyis derivativeof largersocietalpro-
cesses, it plays an importantrole in reinfor-
cing outcomes.
Legitimacyas a conceptrequiresspecifica-
tion of the levelsof analysis:regime,govern-
ment, state, as well as relationsbetween the
politicalclass and civil society.Moreover,the
notion of capitalist legitimacy is not tied
either to Keynesian reformism or for that
matter to democraticelectoral regimes:the
notion of legitimacyis linkedto specificcon-
stituencies and social demands and time
periodswhichcoincidefrequentlywith dep-
seated cleavages.All of which is to say that
legitimacyis a component of the analysisof
political power whose importancecan only
be understoodin miationshipto the dynamic
inter-action of class forces.
1957
 STYLESOF LEGITIMACY
There is no single style of legitimation,
rather there are various types of legitima-
tion varyingwith the social composition of
the regime. We can for general purposes
distinguishbetweentwo types, 'progressive'
and 'reactionary'forms of legitimacy cor-
respondingto differentformsof regime:pro-
gressivelegitimacyinvolveswelfaremeasures
in social democraticregimes,social transfor-
mation in revolutionaryregimesand the ex-
tension of democratic rights in liberal
democratic regimes. Reactionary forms of
legitimacy include wars to legitimate
military-industrialcomplexes,colonial wars
to legitimateimperialregimes,repressionof
minorities-to sustain racialist regimes and
rapid economic growth to secure authori-
tarian military regimes. This diversity of
formsof legitimationsuggeststhat most rul-
ing classesruleon the basis of class or racial-
ly select legitimation.mong politically visi-
ble minorities.
A gitimation crisis occurs when an ac-
tive excluded group reacts to a regime and
sustains a challenge to rulership. Mere
abstentionby majoritiesis no more of a pro-
blem to rulership than the passive
unemployedare a threatto capitalism.Only
when the abstainingmajoritybecome an ac-
tive force hindering rulershipdo we have a
crisis of legitimacyin the same way that the
unemployed who take to the streets and
threaten the accumulation process become
a problem for capitalism.
In fact, an inactive abstentionist
majority-the norm is the US electoral
system-is functional in facilitating the
legitimation functions of the state, freeing
resources so that the state can increase its
allocation to the visible minorities.
The electoral process which is central to
legitimation is also a major factor facili-
tating the demobilisation of civil society,
subordinating autonomous social move-
mentsto the politicalclass, the politicalclass
to the party regime,the party regime to the
executive, and the executive to the state
apparatus.
In the transition from a deter.orating
authoritarianto electoral regimesthere is a
dual process of reinforcingstate authority
and providinglegitimacy to the continuing
authoritarian institutions, while inserting
within these institutions a set of electoral
practices that elicit popular consent. In a
word, electoral regimes procure popular
legitimacy for authoritarian structures.
When popular movements question the
legitimacyof the state, a crisis emergesthat
is resolved either by deflecting opposition
through regime changes; if that is not pos-
sible the electoral regime represses the
populace.
EVOLUTIONOF A CONCEPT
In the advancedcapitalist countries new-
ly awakened concern with legitimacy first
surfaced with the decline of the first wave
of class struggle in the aftermathof World
War II. The acquiescenc of the working
1958
class with electoral regimes in western America provide ample proof of this pro-
Europein the contextof an cxpandingworld cess: the welfare reforms of the 1950-1970
economy and the spread effects of the period were challenged and reversedin the
welfarestate in the late 1950s served as the later 1970s and 1980s. The post-modernist
back drop for the capitalist restorationist effort to reducequalitativeclass differences
writers to celebrate the legitimacy of in state power into quantitative policy
capitalism. The second wave of writers on changes by regimesis an egregiouserror in
legitimacyemergedin the aftermathof the method and theory.
crisisof the 1970sand the subsequentperiod
of prolonged economic stagnation without LEGITIMACYAND STATEFUNCTIONS
any upsurgeof workingclass struggle.These
neo-left writersbegan to relocate the con- On the left, the issue,of legitimacy as a
tradictions of capitalism from the class key analytical concept emerges during the
structureto the state:positinga conflict bet- period of capitalist expansion and the
ween the legitimation and accumulation Keynesianwelfarestate. it is used to explain
functions of the state. Essentiallythe strug- the state's role as a provider of welfare, a
gles took place in the superstructureby and result of the need of the capitalist state to
for the political class and their intellectualsecure legitimacy.
advisers. The decline of the welfare state, the
The third phase of discussion on recorxntration of income at the top, the in-
legitimacy,in the 1980s, coincides with the crea ng role of the state as a vehicle for
growth of the social movements (women, redistk.butingincome from wage earnersto
ecology, peace, animal rights, etc) which propeily owners calls into question the
challenge state action and its right to act. notion of legitimacytied to the welfarestate
The focus is on the culturalmatrix and the and raises the further question of whether
legal basis and consequenceof state action. legitimacy-in the sense of popular assent
For these post-modernists,class contradic- to a governingregime-is a useful concept
tions, struggleand actionis describedas 19th in analysing contemporarycapitalist elec-
centuryresidualsto be replacedby the post- toralinstitutions.The neo-conservativeelec-
modernist language of legitimacy crisis to toral regimes are 'legitimate'in the strictly
be resovled by fashioning a new discourse. legal sense of observing the correct pro-
Curiously enough, the problems posed by cedures in the electoral process. But to go
the post-modernistsresemblethose found in beyondthat and attribute'popularconsent'
the 18th century conflicts between monar- to the regime is to enter into the class con-
chists and republicans-there too the issue tent of the regimesand theirsocio-economic
was one of legitimacy and sovereignty.No policies and to overlookthe lack of popular
doubt 18th century residualscan be recycl- participationin the electoralprocess.Hence,
ed if they serve to update post-Marxist the dilemma of critical legitimacytheorists
posturing. of having a legitimate regime without
popular consent.
MARXISMVERSUSPOST-MODERNISM The post-modern western intellectuals
resolvethis dilemma by attackingthe older
All along the line thereis a profounddivi- basis of legitimacy (or at least putting
sion between Marxists and the varieties of distance between themselves) based on the
post-Marxists (post-modernists, neo- welfarestate and workingclass politics:they
Weberians,etc). For,the latter subordinates launchfull-scaleattackson the state,statism,
the class struggleto politicalstruggleamong public enterprises-and find political
bourgeoisfactions;replacesclass contradic- legitimacy in individual choice, the market
tions by culturalcontradictions;substitutes and civil society, while the neo-liberalstate
the searchfor legitimacyfor the strugglefor seeks legitimacy from investors, bankers,
class power; obscures the confli?t between financiers, the visible public.
working class socialism and liberal In summary, different electoral regimes
democracyby focusing on individualrather derive their legitimacy from different class
than propertyrights;and finally prioritises reference groups and different balance of
political strugglewithin the state for strug- class forces. The intellectualcommentators
gles to transform the state. elaboratetheir theories of legitimacyaccor-
The centralissue of courseis the relation- ding to which regime pre-dominatesat any
ship betweenelectoralregimesand the state: historical moment.
the qualitativedifferencesin interestsvested
in one or the other are obscured. Regimes Economic and Political Weekly,
decide the immediateinterestsof the domi- Available from:
nant classes; states defend their permanent
interests. The post-modernist argument of M/s. Prakash News Agency,
'extending'democracyfrom the political to Railway Road,
the economic sphere overlooks the con- Jallandhar City,
straintsimposedby the authoritarianinstitu- Punjab.
tions of the state. The post-modernistsfail
to recognisethe limits to reformimposed by M/s. News Centre,
the state and the reversibilityof changes in- News Paper Agent,
itiated by regimes (and not the process of Ice Factory Road,
gradual accumulation of reforms) as long Cuttack,
as the state remains in place. Orissa - 735 003.
Recent history in Europe and North
Economic and Political Weekly August 26, 1989