State derivation

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Under state derivation is understood since the 1970s attempts within the Marxism and neo-Marxism , the origin, existence, necessity and severity of State and Law of the civil society to be explained by the economic system out, they derive from it.

A forerunner of the state derivation was the legal scholar Yevgeny Bronislawowitsch Paschukanis , who had already derived the legal form from the commodity form in the 1920s. Important authors since 1970 have been Rudolf Wolfgang Müller , Christel Neusüß , Bernhard Blanke , Elmar Altvater , Freerk Huisken , Joachim Hirsch and the class analysis project (including Joachim Bischoff ).

State derivation debate

As a branch of the Neue Marx-Reading , the debate was mainly conducted in the academic world, but was also shaped by the political situation at the time. After the social-liberal coalition had taken over government in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969, sections of the political left had hopes for social reforms and sought a march through the institutions and the reform of society through the state.

In the debate on the derivation of the state, the state is analyzed as “ a structural component of the capitalist production relationship itself, its particular political form. The capitalist class and exploitative relationships are designed in such a way that the economically ruling class cannot rule politically, but can only realize its rule through an instance relatively separate from the classes, the state. At the same time, the state remains subject to the structural and functional logic of capitalist society. It is not an authority that stands outside of capital. The bourgeois state is thus a class state without being the direct instrument of a class. And it is precisely this 'specialization' or 'relative autonomy' of the state that is the basis of the state illusion. "( Joachim Hirsch )

In particular in discussion with Freerk Huisken, a collective of authors from the then Marxist group (MG) wrote the book “The bourgeois state” with the claim that it would derive the state ( “It is the derivation of the state, so it ends that unfortunate debate for all those who have an interest in the declaration of the state ” ). Apart from Huisken and v. But Flatow is hardly one of the decisive authors in the debate today as a representative of the considerations recorded there.

criticism

Rainer-Olaf Schultze objected that the attempts at derivation "mostly moved in a conceptual-logical dispute over the interpretation of the Marxist classics" and were unable to "provide the necessary communication from the general level of form determination to the concrete analysis of the reality of capitalist states." Similar to Frank Deppe : The debate on the derivation of the state “was a typical example of an“ academic Marxism ”- largely detached from practice and ultimately only self-reflective - especially since the concentration on the state - given the importance of“ civil society ”in Gramsci's sense - a narrowing of the concept of politics. ” Joachim Hirsch, who was significantly involved in the debate at the time, also later conceded “ that the debate on deriving the state was conducted on a highly abstract level and sometimes took on the traits of theoretical glass bead games ” . On the other hand, according to Hirsch, the status of the debate has often been misunderstood, which was not about a finished theory of the state , but about the definition of the form of bourgeois society as part of a more comprehensive historical theory.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wake up dead dogs? Interview with Joachim Hirsch on state theory and the derivation of the state ( memento from 7 July 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), Arranca !, No. 24, 2002
  2. ^ Karl Held (ed.): The civil state . GegenStandpunkt, Munich 1979, ISBN 978-3-929211-03-0 , p. 144 .
  3. ↑ "Derivation" by Schultze, Rainer-Olaf; in: Nohlen, Dieter; Schultze, Rainer-Olaf; Political Science Lexicon. Theories, methods, terms, 2nd edition (2004)
  4. ↑ Or also: Above all in the so-called “State Derivation Debate” of the 1970s, the focus was on the effort to “correctly derive” the state from the [note: Marxian] “ capital ” . This debate soon turned into highly abstract elaborates, whose relation to the real movement and the struggles of the time could hardly be traced. Deppe, Frank: Crisis and renewal of Marxist theory. Notes from a political scientist. (PDF file; 196 kB) Slightly edited and shortened text of his farewell lecture on July 14, 2006; a first version of the text appeared in: " Sozialismus " Hamburg: VSA-Verlag No. 3/2007.

literature

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