BA( VS) Tourism In lieu of MIL
Paper : Indian Goverment and Politics
Chapter : The Marxian Concept of Nature of the Indian State
According to Marxism, the state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class. They assert that the state is dominated by the economically powerful class. The ruling class own and control the means of production. Marxist Theory claims that economic structures are over determined by cultural and political casualties to produce specific historical outcomes. Pressures arising from economic structures undermine political acts and outcomes.
The Marxist approach asserts that the state is the instrument in the hands of the dominant class, or the class that possesses the greatest amount of economic power and wants to maintain order in society so that the inequality in the economic relationship is maintained.
All forms of conflict in society are due to economic differences according to Marxist framework.
Economic conflict, along with other forms of conflicts in society, can be resolved only through revolutionary change in the way economic relations are. According to Marxian framework 'politics' is only the means by which those who have economic power maintain their dominance, ensuring stability and order only so that they do not lose their economic dominance. Marxist framework views Politics as a means of domination and perpetuation of the exploitative
capitalist system. The Marxist approach insists conflict as a state of domination and subjection should be ended by total transformation of the conditions which give rise to it.
For Marxists, the complexity of class formation, class configuration and class action are central elements for an understanding of the constraints on the state and capitalist transformation.
According to Marx, every state is a class dictatorship. He held that the state is the organizing committee of the ruling class. Marx was of the view that state is the instrument through which the ruling class coordinates and exercises its rule on the other classes, and thereby maintains its status as the ruling class.
There are two schools on Marxists view on state;
The Instrumentalists Model : This model emphasises that state is created to safeguard economic interests and state is an instrument for owner of property.
Relative Autonomy Model :This model emphasises that capitalist state works as the instrument at the hands of bourgeoisie, it may often exercise its power independently. The word relative denotes that sometimes it acts without being influenced by the powerful class.
According to C. P. Bhambri, property owners , both the rural and urban sectors have forged an alliance to govern the country and make use of the political system for protection of their
interests. Marxists emphasises that India has continued to be a class state. Marxists believe that if India's national economy has been anti - poor over these approximately seventy years, so has been India's democratic state.
For Marxists, the complexity of class formation, class configuration and class action are central elements for an understanding of the constraints on the state and capitalist transformation.
Though their perception differs
the specificities of its relationship to imperialism occupy central stage in this debate.
Analysis of the state is understood both in terms of the long term structural compulsions of the economy in the international capitalist system and its division of labour and also the coalition arrangements and the changing balance in the class coalitions dominating the state.
Two points are worth noting, firstly bourgeois dominance of the state is not reflected in bourgeois - dominance of society. Second, capitalist control is exercised through a class coalition; indeed, a coalition strategy is the condition of dominance. In class terms, the ruling
coalition contained three elements: monopoly bourgeois, landed elite and bureaucratic managerial elite.
The imposition of emergency in 1975 produced a fresh controversy on the state. This time on the role of the repressive powers in sustaining the state. After emergency, the discussion shifted to the relative autonomy of the state, particularly the inability of the bourgeoisie in instituting its hegemony over civil society. Though the idea of relatively autonomous state was present in the works of Marx but he did not explain it in a comprehensive and systematic way. It is true that Marx's theory of state has given much scope for instrumentalist, as well as structuralist debates.
The Miliband - Poulantzas debate which is also known as instrumentalist vs structuralist debate revolved around the concept of the relative autonomy of the state and not only created the ground work for the neo-Marxist school but also made a rich contribution towards its literature.
Hamza Alavi, Anupam Sen, Pranab Bardhan, and Achin Vanaik are well known neo-Marxist scholars of India.
