Mark Neocleous: All Roads Lead to Class by Olena Kobzar A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Institute of Political Economy Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario © copyright September 2005, Olena Kobzar Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. 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Abstract Mark Ncocleous has produced a body of work informed by Bob Jessop’s admonition that Marxists need to pay more attention to the analytical requirements of a weak theory of the state. To this end, Neocleous has tried to elaborate a political theory which proceeds from a more-or-less orthodox Marxist understanding of the relationship between economy and the state, and supplements it with a politicized rendition of Michel Foucault’s approach to the study of the connection between power and knowledge. The point of this conceptual exercise is to demonstrate how the working-class became an object of administration in the nineteenth century, and how administration itself was reconceived as the non-political management of social order. This thesis challenges Neocleous’s functionalist account of the state, arguing that different forms of governance are better understood as interacting with one another in complex and possibly contradictory ways. 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the assistance of my supervisor Alan Hunt for his tireless work in reading and commenting on various drafts of this thesis. His numerous suggestions have been immensely helpful to its final form. His encouragement and sharp wit made the writing of the thesis a fulfilling exercise. Needless to say whatever faults that remain in it are wholly attributable to me. I would also like to thank George Rigakos, Trevor Purvis and Rianne Mahon for the inspiration and intellectual mentoring I have received while pursuing my MA. The many conversations I have had with my fellow students at the Institute of Political Economy have helped me refine my understanding of the political world. I would like to thank Keith, Dale, Sam, Berrak and especially Lincoln. A special thanks to Donna Coghill who helped guide me through the year. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Administering Civil Society 1 Introduction 8 2 From Foucault to Marx Through Hegel 17 3 From Gramsci to Foucault Through Althusser 20 4 Rethinking State and Class in Britain 26 5 Class Struggle and Political Power: A First Critique 32 Chapter 2 Fascism 1 Introduction 42 2 Perpetual War and Destruction of Reason 44 3 Nationalism and Racism: A Fascist Equation? 46 4 Fascism and the Working Class 50 5 Fascism as Reactionary Modernism 54 Chapter 3 The Fabrication of Social Order 1 Introduction 62 2 Origins of Police: Preliminary Observations 63 3 Liberalism and the Police Project 69 4 Hegel and Colquhoun: Liberal Realists or Apologists? 75 5 Policing Wage Labour 80 6 The Dirty Criminal Vagrant 83 7 Pigs, Crime and Order 86 8 The Rule of Law versus the Rule of Police 87 9 All Roads Lead to Class 95 Chapter 4 Imagining the State 1 Introduction 102 2 The Body of the State 105 3 The Mind of the State 108 4 The Personality of the State 112 5 The Home of the State 116 Conclusion 120 Bibliography 131 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Introduction To argue, as I have done, that state power is geared towards the political administration of civil society, is to argue that bourgeois order is constituted politically by the state. To make sense of the constitutive practices of order, one cannot do without the police concept. Just as all roads lead to property in the bourgeois concept of order, so all roads lead to the state in the concept of police.1 For Marxist theorists, a recurring question has been the role of the state in producing and reproducing the order upon which capitalism is structured. There have been numerous, often conflicting, Marxist accounts of the state’s role in securing capitalism. For instance, Antonio Gramsci famously argued that the key to understanding the function of the state is to be found in the dual imperatives of coercion and consent, and in the contingent nature of the historical bloc of class forces that dominates society at any given moment.2 Louis Althusser, by contrast, focused on the structuring process supplied by the repressive and ideological state apparatuses, all the while maintaining that in the last instance the economic mode of production remains the determining factor in state policies.3 Ralph Miliband, following an empiricist tradition in Marxism, directed his attention to the established links between capital and state elites, and the instrumental value that state policies have for particular classes.4 Miliband’s well-known theoretical protagonist, Nicos Poulantzas, insisted on viewing the state as a complexly articulated set of structures that worked to mediate the conflicts engendered by capitalism, while 1 Mark Neocleous, The Fabrication of Social Order: a Critical Theory of Police Power (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 118. 2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972). 3 Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left Books, 1971). 4 Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969). 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 continuously safeguarding the capitalist system as a whole.5 Resisting what they regarded as a fatal economism in the works of their contemporaries, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have argued that an understanding of the discursive constitution of hegemony is crucial to a theory of the capitalist state.6 Bob Jessop, drawing broadly on Gramsci via Poulantzas, and, more recently, on writers identified with the “regulation approach” to the study of capitalism, has tried to develop an institutional analysis of the state which stresses the varying accumulation strategies which different state projects n help underwrite. While differing on such things as the internal unity of the capitalist state, its precise relationship to civil society, its efficacy in producing the conditions for capitalist profitability, the role of the class struggle within state institutions, etc, what these Marxist theorists have in common is a tendency to regard the state as an entity or an ensemble of forces that is relatively independent of the economic classes and mode of production that comprise capitalism, and that works in one way or another to condition or structure class relations. This inclination to treat the state not as an epiphenomenon of, but rather a crucial formative institution for, capitalism is shared by another contemporary Marxist theorist, Mark Neocleous. While his writings have not yet earned him a wide audience8 Neocleous’s reflections on state and administration promise to be marked as a significant contribution to a debate that has become so central to the Marxist legacy.9 In this thesis 1 5 Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973); “The Problem of the Capitalist State," New Left Review ,58, (1969), pp. 67-78. 6 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso Press. 1985). 7 Bob Jessop, State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990); The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002). 8 Only a handful of reviews of Neocleous’s work have appeared to date. 9 Neocleous has authored four books which explicitly deal with the topic of the capitalist state: Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan Press, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 propose to examine critically the theoretical and political nature of this contribution with an eye to determining whether Neocleous succeeds in his self-appointed task of assembling a Marxist theory of state power that retains a separate notion of civil society, and that is grounded in an analysis of the role of administration in fashioning modern capitalism. The thesis will consist of an immanent critique of Neocleous’s assorted writings on the capitalist state, the theoretical motivation for which is a shared affinity for Marxist theory that systematically aims at historicizing its subject matter A Lecturer at Brunei University in West London since 1994, and a member of the editorial collective of the journal, Radical Philosophy, Mark Neocleous is, if anything, a prolific writer. In the last decade Neocleous has written five books and scores of articles on subjects ranging from state theory, modem European philosophy, fascism, policing, security, and political imagery. Dense with references and frequently filled with highly allusive language, these writings reveal a thinker who can at once infuriate with hastily drawn epithets and entice with carefully crafted arguments. It must be noted in advance that Neocleous’s style of writing does not easily lend itself to summary. His expositions are not exactly linear; rather, he frequently circles back on previous arguments in order to expand and refine points. He also frequently indulges in digressions either to make polemical points or to distinguish his arguments from those of other writers. He occasionally resorts to undocumented claims using such academically unacceptable assertions as: “research shows...” He is fond of employing conceptual symmetries that 1996); Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power (London: Pluto Press, 2000); and Imagining the State (Maidenhead, U.K.: Open University Press, 2003). It must be noted that a fifth book which tangentially touches on the same subject was in press when this thesis was being written and was therefore not considered: The Monstrous and the Dead: Burke, Marx, Fascism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 are alleged to be preconditions of each other though never demonstrably shown to be such. Despite these several problems of exposition, it is nonetheless the case that Neocleous’s overall academic purpose is easy to detect. The theoretical project that runs through Neocleous’s varied writings was initially enunciated in Administering Civil Society. Observing the renewed interest amongst academics of all political persuasions in the idea of civil society in the years both immediately preceding and those succeeding the fall of communism in the former Soviet Bloc countries, Neocleous proposes to revitalize this concept for Marxism by reconsidering the Hegelian distinction between state and civil society. In the process of reassessing this Hegelian theoretical heritage in Marxism, Neocleous also proposes to incorporate insights from Michel Foucault’s treatment of power as a disciplining mechanism that constitutes subjects according to norms of various administrative discourses. From Foucault Neocleous takes over the idea that administration is central to the construction of subjectivity, but he resolutely links this process to the state, thereby stressing the political character of administration, particularly its role in mediating class conflict. This latter point, that political administration is intimately and inextricably involved in managing class struggle, is a theme to which Neocleous returns time and again. It is for all intents and purposes the guiding motif of his political theory, and, as will be argued in the course of this thesis, this class-centric view of administration tends to vitiate the very distinction between state and civil society that Neocleous takes such pains in defending. The thesis consists of five chapters, the first four of which offer critical commentary on Neocleous book-length studies of the state and political administration in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 the order that they have appeared in print. The decision to present the trajectory of Neocleous’s arguments in this chronological fashion rather than according to thematic distinctions, has been taken because there is a palpable sense in which each of his succeeding books can be profitably read as an extended elaboration of points first raised in Administering Civil Society.10 Chapter One of this thesis will reprise the central arguments of this inaugural work and establish the academic and political context against which these arguments gain their sense. Included in the chapter will be brief accounts of the history of the state/civil society couplet, some of the conventional views on the rise of the modem administrative state, recent Marxist and non-Marxist attempts to theorize the capitalist state, and the Foucauldian representation of state power as part of the generalized social ordering process. Politically—why has class struggle not succeeded in subverting capitalism? Chapter Two looks at Neocleous’s interpretation of the phenomenon of fascism. Frequently regarded by Marxist writers as an exceptional form of the capitalist state, fascism is taken by Neocleous to symbolize in the starkest manner the internal logic of the state form within capitalism. Focusing on the symbols and ideological expressions of fascist regimes, Neocleous contends that the political purpose of this form of state is to present a set of discursive practices that serve to integrate the working class into existing capitalist relations by deliberately exaggerated appeals to national as opposed to class identities. In detailing this argument it will be shown that Neocleous’s own understanding of the state/civil society distinction contains unresolved tensions, largely because he tends 10 And as often is the case with academic writers, the theoretical problematic that informs Neocleous’s publishing career derives from preoccupations acquired in graduate school. Thus Administering Civil Society, and the further refinements to arguments enunciated in that book, originate in his PhD dissertation, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.