Joachim Hirsch on Regulation and the State

Bob Jessop7000/50000

Joachim Hirsch has made original and important contributions to materialist state
theory, the regulation approach, and their theoretical combination to provide powerful
analyses of contemporary capitalism. His contributions to the famous state derivation
debate on the necessary functions and form of the capitalist state were sophisticated
but he also strongly emphasized how its form problematized its functionality for capital.
This opened the space for political and ideological struggles on the terrain of the
capitalist state, with its historically distinctive separation between an economy
dominated by the profit-oriented, market-mediated logic of capital accumulation and a
public sphere dominated by the constitutional, democratic state in which political
struggles occurred around the definition of the (illusory) general interest. Thus,
Hirschs work combined a Marxist political economy of capitalism and a Marxist
political sociology of class domination without fetishistically limiting the former to the
labour market and circuits of capital, the latter to the political sphere and state power.
He used key assumptions, concepts, and principles of explanation drawn from Das
Kapital to explain key features of the state apparatus and state power; and he showed
how the dynamics of accumulation and forms of class struggle were overdetermined
by the specifically political logic of an autonomized state apparatus and political sphere
(for an overview of Hirschs distinctive contributions to the West German state debate,
see Jessop 1982: 00-00).

The regulation approach developed in France in the 1970s around the same time as
the West German state debate was taking off. It reached similar conclusions about the
need to combine heterodox political economy with an analysis of social conflicts. But
it drew on many kinds of heterodox political economy and did not reduce social
conflicts to class struggle. One of its key contributions to develop a series of middle-
range concepts for economic and political analysis that went beyond the general
analytical categories to be found in Capital and, in this context, to explain how specific
sets of economic and social configurations and norms served to regularize
accumulation for a period of time until underlying crisis tendencies broke through
precipitating a trial-and-error search process for new bases for an accumulation

1
regime, new modes of regulation, and new societal paradigms (for an overview of the
Parisian regulation approach and other French schools, see Sum and Jessop 2005).

The West German debate on the state faced increasing difficulties because of its
increasingly baroque and obscure internal disputes and because economic and
political events consequent upon the crisis of Atlantic Fordism called into question the
capacities of the late capitalist state to regularize accumulation and secure social
cohesion. This provided the historical context in which Hirsch became interested in the
potential of (neo-)Gramscian state theory (partly due to the influence of Nicos
Poulantzas) and the Parisian regulation approach to provide an analysis of the
transformations and crises in the post-war state in Europe and North America. Working
with these approaches enabled him to develop an innovative perspective on the
political economy of capital accumulation and political domination and applied it to
diverse phenomena - from the nuclear family and the city through party systems and
corporatist arrangements to social movements and new forms of subjectivity.

State theoretical background

German Marxists rediscovered the state as a major theme in the 1960s and 1970s.
Their approach reflected the specific situation in the FRG and West Berlin.
Economically, the state intervened significantly to manage the economic crises of
196667 and 197475 and, at least in relation to the 1960s crisis, its actions seemed
to have resolved the crisis. Politically, the 196667 crisis prepared the path for a social
democratic government that could mobilize trade union and workingclass support for
its crisismanagement policies and reformist programme. But the same government
continued with the move to a strong state (Sicherheitsstaat) to protect its hegemony
with the armour of coercion (cf. Gramsci 1991ff). Ideologically, the extraparliamentary
left had to confront the widely-emphasized contrast between the BRDs democratic
constitutional state and the DDRs Stalinist dictatorship. This contrast sustained anti
communist sentiments in the working class and required a response beyond a
dogmatic insistence on the ultimately repressive nature of all bourgeois states. To
address these issues West German Marxists initiated the Staatsableitungdebatte to
develop a capital-theoretical analysis of the state and politics (Hirsch, 1980b: 11641).

2
The Staatsableitungdebatte adopted a distinctively Marxist method of theoretical
research and argumentation involving the systematic development of concepts for
political analysis from the historical materialist critique of the capitalist mode of
production and/or bourgeois society. The debate was initiated by Wolgang Mller and
Christel Neus, who launched a polemical critique of the Sozialstaatsillusion and
claimed that the nature and limits of state intervention can only be understood on the
basis of the laws of surplus value production (1970). Subsequently, two main
approaches (with many variations) developed. These reflected important differences
on how to read Marxs critique of political economy, the initial conceptualisation of
politics and the state, and the appropriate starting point for any derivation.

One approach started from the inherent capitalist tendencies to market failure,
economic crisis, and class struggle and then tried to derive the necessary form of the
capitalist state from the functions it must perform to correct these deficits and thereby
secure capitalist reproduction. Hirsch criticized this approach because the general
derivation of form cannot go beyond trivialities and concluded that the theoretical
investigation of the state must proceed beyond value and capital in general to embrace
the whole of the social, political, and national conditions of production of a social
formation (1974a: 66, 7475, 8283). Otherwise it would soon re-enter the theoretical
Sackgasse of economic reductionism as it reduced politics to the global dynamic of
class struggle and policies to the prevailing needs of capital (Hirsch 1980: 54-6).

The other approach developed its arguments in two stages. It first derived the form of
the capitalist state from the nature of generalized commodity production in the
capitalist economy and, second, then showed how this form problematized the state's
functionality for capitalist reproduction. This opened space for a sui generis dynamic
of political struggles and a specific institutional logic in policy-making. This was the
approach pursued by Joachim Hirsch and Jupp Esser. It combined state derivation for
the first stage with Gramscian and Poulantzasian concepts for the second stage. In
especial, Hirsch introduced special categories to analyse political class struggles and
ideological relations. These include concepts drawn from Marxs political writings as
opposed to his abstract critique of political economy, from Gramscis analyses of
hegemony and the historical bloc, and the work of Nicos Poulantzas on how the
bourgeois form of state contributed to disorganizing the subordinate classes and

3
organizing a relatively unified power bloc out of different fractions of the dominant
class(es) (Esser. Grg and Hirsch, 1983; Esser 1985: 232-40; Hirsch, 1976a: 10923
and 141; 1976b: 104105, 11214; 1977: 1667, 1778; 1978: 2246). He also
introduced novel categories, such as mode of mass integration. This functions to
process mass needs and make their satisfaction compatible with capital accumulation
and political domination (Hirsch, 1976a, 1976b, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1983a; Hirsch and
Roth 1986). It also provides a framework to consider the articulation between
economic and political domination. This approach therefore permits more detailed,
conjunctural analyses of politics and political struggles. These issues mattered more
as economic crises grew less manageable and a crisis of mass integration began to
emerge.

Hirsch recognised more clearly than other form analysts the difficult task confronting
the bourgeoisie in avoiding a merely particularistic reproduction of specific interests in
state policy at the expense of the interests of capital in general. Indeed, he suggested
that these latter interests are at least contingently, if not inherently, selfcontradictory
and also stressed that the state has no privileged knowledge of bourgeois interests.
Its support for capital in general cannot be taken for granted. He sought to solve these
problems in two rather different directions whose relations he never satisfactorily
resolves: the internal organisation of the state and the constitution of a hegemonic
power bloc. The arguments concerning structural selectivity merely specify certain
negative limits on state intervention (exclusion from production, taxdependence) that
cannot ensure that the collective interests of capital are pursued within these limits or,
alternatively, allude to positive organisational practices (central supervision,
bureaucratic bargaining) whose impact on these interests cannot be taken for granted.
The situational logic of the governing groups is open to similar criticism. Hirsch was
therefore forced back to the apparently economistic principle of crisis as a steering
mechanism. But even here he admits that crises do not operate as an automatic pilot
but depend for their effects on the balance of forces. In this context there can be no
guarantee that this balance will always favour capitalism rather than a transition to
socialism or, indeed, the common ruin of the contending classes (Marx and Engels,
1848: 482).

4
The other solution was to develop the Gramscian concept of hegemony as political,
intellectual, and moral leadership and explore its role in different modes of mass
integration. This makes the unity of state policies and the overall cohesion of society
depend on contingent social practices rather than on inbuilt structural guarantees.
However, while he developed the concept of modes of mass integration in some detail
in relation to the West German state, the notion of hegemony remained undeveloped
relative to the explanatory burden he placed on it. The differential articulation of
hegemony over the power bloc and over the masses is likewise unexplored.

A third solution was to emphasize the role of crises in steering state activities. Here
Hirsch argued that serious failures of market forces and state intervention to reproduce
the conditions needed for capital accumulation and/or political domination threaten the
governing groups, stimulate demands for action, class forces, and impose new
priorities on the state. Thus, while he continues to emphasize the role of the TRPF
(including its reflection on the political level in fiscal crises) and its various counter
tendencies in determining the dynamic of capitalist societies, it is the political
repercussions of this tendential fall in the rate of profit and its articulation with crises
of mass integration and/ or the power bloc that constitute the principal steering
mechanism of state intervention and the reorganisation of the political system.
Nonetheless, this steering mechanism is not an automatic pilot. It is mediated through
changes in the balance of class forces (see Hirsch, 1973: 22325, 265; 1974a: 65,
756, 912, 103104; 1974b: 11617, 1269; 1976a: 12930, 1435; 1976b: 116,
123, 127128; 1977: 178180; 1978: 22528; 1980a: 953; 1980b: 12731).

All three sets of arguments were illustrated in his analyses of the crisisinduced
reorganisation of mass integration in West Germany in response to crises of the
reformist mode of mass integration based on a social democratic cartel of integrated,
sozialpartnerschaftlich, economistic trade unions and a bureaucratic, electoralist
Volkspartei with the support of the ideological and repressive apparatuses. The
growing structural crises of the economy at home and on the world market and the
resulting attempts at rationalisation, increased exploitation, and social modernisation
threw the reformist mode of mass integration into crisis with the growth of strikes,
protest movements, and political disaffection. The German state responded by
seeking to suppress protest movements operating outside the reformist mass

5
integrative apparatuses and to police potential subversives within them. This facilitated
a reorganisation of the mode of mass integration through a more selective flow of
material concessions at the expense of marginal groups, a more active policy of
corporatist integration of responsible unions and parties, and a greater role for the
security apparatus within the framework of bourgeois democracy (Hirsch 1978; 1980a;
1980b).

The Regulation Approach

Both the state derivation debate and the Parisian regulation school produced concepts
at a middle range, institutional level; both were concerned with stages and phases of
capitalist development rather than with the abstract laws of motion and tendencies
operating at the level of capital in general; both were sensitive to the relative autonomy
of the economic and political spheres seeking to avoid economic reductionism and
to explore state intervention; both were committed to conjunctural analysis; and both
emphasized the role of strategic conduct and struggle in the transition from one phase
to another of capitalism; and, whilst the state derivation debate was prompted by a
critique of social democratic reformism, the regulation school was motivated by a
desire to develop economic models relevant to policy making! In this sense, it was a
natural (but not, of course, inevitable) step for Hirsch to turn to the Parisian regulation
approach to study the capital relation. For, not only does it offer a more concrete and
complex analysis of capitalist reproduction, it also emphasizes how the basic form of
the capital relation makes its reproduction problematic. This parallels his own work on
the state form and state functions and provides a complex theory of the historical
development of capitalist societies. As Hirsch himself remarked, in drawing on (and
extending) this work and combining it with West German state theory, he can 'proceed
from general (and therefore abstract) political theory to a concept useful for the
analysis of actual changes in the political apparatus, essential for the political
usefulness and relevance of theory' (Hirsch 1983b: 75).

Parisian regulationists asked how capitalism could survive even though the capital
relation itself inevitably generated antagonisms and crises that made continuing
accumulation improbable. Hirsch makes a similar point in arguing that 'the historical
reality of capitalism cannot be understood as a mere existence of a structure, but as

6
a process of realizing this structure' (Hirsch 1983b: 76; see also Hirsch 1980: 00-00).
The Parisians found an answer in specific institutional forms, societal norms, and
patterns of strategic conduct that both expressed and regulated these conflicts until
the inevitable tensions and divergencies among these various regulatory forms
reached crisis point (Lipietz 1987: 3-4). It is worth emphasizing that regulation theorists
do confine their analyses to economic matters. Indeed, they emphasize that the
improbable discovery of effective modes of regulation is an outcome of social and
political struggles that stabilize to form a hegemonic system - class alliances, based
on consensus protected by the armour of coercion, that shape the interests both of the
ruling and dominated classes in conformity with the accumulation regime (Lipietz
1986a: 20; cf. Aglietta 1979).

Hirschs efforts to integrate the regulation approach into his state theoretical work can
be seen in the contrast between Der Sicherheitsstaat (1980) and Das neue Gesicht
des Kapitalismus (1986). The former focused on social democratic crisis-management
of West Germany's modes of growth and regulation. The latter was more concerned
with the emergence of a new mode of growth and its corresponding hegemonial
structure. The key concepts in the former were the "intensive" phase of capitalist
development (only occasionally labelled 'Fordism'), the mode of mass integration (as
materially embodied in the reformist social democratic Modell Deutschland state
system), and modes of social reproduction and societalization (Vergesellschaftungs-
modi). The three main concepts in the latter are the Fordist accumulation regime, the
Fordist mode of regulation, and hegemonial structure. Such a theoretical transition
requires adequate theoretical self-reflexion because these conceptual triplets are by
no means identical. There is a risk, therefore, that residues from the former set could
contaminate the latter. In this contribution, however, I focus on problems in the second
set considered in its own terms.

Hirsch adopted regulationist concepts in order to break with the base-superstructure

metaphor and the division of social formations into separate economic, political, and
ideological instances. For regulationist concepts are complex and multi- dimensional
and premised on a non-reductionist analysis of capital accumulation. In appropriating
these concepts and linking them to others, however, Hirsch rendered them less
precise. He worked mainly with two regulationist concepts (regime of accumulation

7
and mode of regulation) and linked them to a third (hegemonial structure) based on
Gramsci and Poulantzas. This raised three problems: the ambiguous scope of the
concepts, their relation to economic-political-ideological analysis, and their
implications for analysis of strategy as well as structure.

The ambiguous scope of concepts

In the Parisian regulation approach, depending on individual authors, introduced three

to four nested concepts: (1) regime of accumulation, (2) mode of growth; (3) mode
of regulation, organized around five structural forms the capital-wage labour
relation, money and credit; competition, the state, and international regimes; and (4)
societal paradigm. The first and second are macro-economic the difference is that,
whereas accumulation regimes were generally considered in national economic terms,
mode of growth included modes of adhesion/exclusion vis--vis the world market and
highlighted possible complementarities among different national modes of growth
within an evolving international division of labour;1 the third was defined in more micro-
and meso-level terms but included social as well as economic norms, institutions, and
social relations; and the fourth was macro-social). In short, the Parisian School
distinguishes its 3-4 key concepts in terms of their position on a macro-micro
continuum and an analytical distinction between market-mediated relations
(economic) and non-market (social) relations (see Boyer 2006; Lipietz, 19**: 000; see
also Jessop and Sum 2005: 00-00). Nonetheless much of its empirical analyses rely
on econometric modelling to identify the parameters within which Fordism and post-
Fordist accumulation regimes might be stabilized (e.g., Boyer and Coriat 1987; Boyer
1987; cf., on Fordism, Lipietz 1986).

Joachim Hirsch used similar terms but in different ways. Thus, regime of
accumulation (RA) as a specific form of organizing production and labour, based on
specific technologies, which permits the production and realization of surplus value. It
included five structural forms: the reproduction of capital; the wage relation, state
intervention, the relation between capitalist and non-capitalist sectors, and integration
into the world-market (1987: 652). Second, a mode of regulation (MR) is the concrete
relation between these structural forms. It comprises a manifold structure of economic
and socio-political institutional forms, steering mechanisms, and normative

8
orientations that together generate a certain equilibrium and stability (Husler and
Hirsch 1987: 652; Hirsch and Roth 1986: 44). It can therefore be understood as the
specific historical content of the formal accumulation regime: "the most complex form
in which a social relation reproduces itself" (Hirsch and Roth 1986: 38).2 Third, a
hegemonial structure (HS) forms the basis of an historic bloc. It is the historically
specific connection between an accumulation regime and a mode of regulation that,
together, can secure the long run economic (valorization) and political-ideological
(legitimation, force, and consensus) conditions for reproducing the total system under
the dominance of the ruling class despite the conflictual character of capitalist social
relations (Husler and Hirsch 1987: 653; Hirsch and Roth 1986: 38-9; Hirsch 1983a:
163). An historic bloc comprises "a unity of a distinct accumulation strategy, of a
peculiar ensemble of class relations and social forms, and of a particular hegemonic
structure" (Hirsch 1984: 157).

In contrast to the differential positioning of Parisian concepts in terms of movement

from abstract-simple to more concrete-complex theoretical objects (see above), it
sometimes seems that Hirschs concepts provide three alternative perspectives on the
same concrete, complex object. This is suggested, for example, when Husler and
Hirsch treat these three concepts as alternatives to the orthodox Marxist distinction
between economics, politics, and ideology. They suggest that an accumulation regime
is mainly economic, a mode of regulation mainly political, and a hegemonial structure
is mainly political and ideological (Husler and Hirsch 1987: 652-3). Elsewhere,
however, it seems that the concepts are more or less abstract. Thus modes of
regulation are analysed as concrete forms of an abstract accumulation regime.

This means that Hirsch's analysis starts from somewhat 'chaotic conceptions' (Marx
1857) rather than from relatively abstract, one-sided arguments that are gradually
made more concrete and complex. This is reflected in two areas above all: the failure
to present an abstract model of Fordism and then to specify its West German variant
(especially as Hirsch and Roth often stressed that there was no single model of
Fordism); and the difficulties Hirsch found in combining a general explanation for
capitalist crisis tendencies with a concrete analysis of the crisis of Fordism.

9
To balance the critique, we should note that Parisian regulationists had (and still have)
an underdeveloped theory of the state and have not developed a concept equivalent
to hegemonial structure. This made it easier for them to separate out different levels
of economic abstraction at the cost of neglecting the political and ideological
dimensions that were of central concern to Hirsch and his colleagues. Often there is a
gestural reference in Parisian work to the heuristic power of Gramscis analysis of the
state and state power, especially the concept of hegemony (references). However, as
most Parisian regulationists were professional economists and its pioneers were often
employed within the state planning apparatus, they have shown little interest in
elaborating a sophisticated analysis of the state.

Structural-Strategic Duplication

It is also unclear how these categories are related to strategic issues. Sometimes it
seems that categories have been 'doubled'. Thus, each concept occurs twice: once as
a structural category and once as a strategic category. Accumulation regime is
coupled to accumulation strategy; Regulationsmodus with Regulationsweisen; and
hegemonial structure with hegemonic projects. This poses two sets of potential
dangers. First, and more seriously, the structural category could simply be reduced to
and/or derived from a strategic category (or, alternatively, a single strategy could be
derived from a given regime). But neither an accumulation regime nor a mode of
growth can be understood as the product of a single accumulation bzw. national
growth strategy. Except when analysed at high levels of abstraction, accumulation
regimes and modes of growth have only a relative unity: they are better described as
structural ensembles than as simple structures. Among the elements that could be
articulated into an accumulation regime or mode of growth on a given territorial space,
there will be many irrelevant, residual, marginal, secondary, and even potentially
contradictory elements and the unity of the more central elements will always be
marred by gaps, redundancies, interstices, and contradictions. Likewise, given the
complex and overdetermined structure of an accumulation regime (or mode of growth),
one could not calculate an effective general strategy to maintain it: the relative success
or failure of a strategy typically depends on unacknowledged structural conditions of
action that may alter as well as on the changing balance of forces (including changing
organizational capacities and strategies) relevant to its successful realization. In

10
addition, of course, there are always competing strategies. Thus the actual course of
accumulation (over a given economic space from global to local levels) always results
from their interaction in particular circumstances on a given terrain constituted not only
by the existing regime or industrial profile but also by existing modes of regulation.
Similar arguments clearly hold for hegemonial structures. They cannot be reduced to
a single hegemonic project; nor can a single project be derived from a hegemonial
structure.

More generally, it is just as unclear what relations obtain among the three types of
strategy as it is for the relations among the three types of structure. Does the
successful pursuit of an accumulation strategy depend on prior (or simultaneous)
success in pursuing a hegemonic project? Or must a hegemonic project have a
'decisive economic nucleus' through its inclusion of and/or articulation with a feasible
dominant economic strategy? What role do modes of regulation play in mediating the
relations between accumulation strategies and hegemonic projects? These and other
questions remain largely unasked theoretically and are not resolved empirically.

Thus, Hirsch argued that an accumulation strategy requires a corresponding

hegemonial structure, materialized in a specific ideological programme and a specific
political formation (Hirsch 1983b: 163). It is less clear whether a hegemonial structure
can be based on a hegemonic project. The latter claim is justified. But it also applies
to the emergence of accumulation regimes - implying that the concept of accumulation
strategies is also dangerously close to planful action. Moreover, if accumulation
strategies can be successfully realized (which Hirsch does not doubt, e.g., 1983a: 163,
165-6) but must be accompanied by a matching hegemonial structure, might there not
also be hegemonic projects? Indeed, if social democratic governments can organize
Fordist class compromise and secure the continuing functionality of the
Sicherheitsstaat (security state) (Hirsch 1983a: 168), this suggests a measure of
strategic calculation around hegemonic issues as much as around accumulation.
Clearly one must avoid both the Scylla of a strategic voluntarism and the Charybdis of
chance structural affinities. But it remains to be shown both theoretically and
empirically how this can best be accomplished.

Fordism and Post-Fordism

11
The regulation approach is usually ambiguous about the nature of Fordism and post-
Fordism: should they be defined through the organization of the production process,
in terms of the accumulation regime, and/or through the mode of regulation? A further
issue is what the temporal prefix post- signifies substantively? This is a challenge
because post-Fordism differs from Fordism in a key particular: whereas Fordism
involved the diffusion of the American model to other national economies and its
heyday coincided with a period of national, autocentric growth, there was no single
hegemonic growth model for post-Fordism. At a minimum, Japanese, American, and
West German models were in competition and these were also associated with
contrasting modes of regulation and societal paradigms. Furthermore, ever more
extensive financial and industrial internationalization makes it even more important for
most national economies to find distinctive niches in the worldwide division of labour.
These issues are now discussed exhaustively (and to the point of exhaustion) in the
recent literatures on comparative capitalism, varieties of capitalism, and variegated
capitalism (references).

The solution to these challenges developed by Hirsch and his colleagues was to
extend the Argumentationskette further to define Fordism and post-Fordism in terms
of more general societal patterns rather than accumulation regimes or modes of
regulation. They defined Fordism's essential structural features as mass production
and mass consumption; the separation of production and reproduction; the central role
of the nuclear family in the reproductive sphere together with a range of state
apparatuses to support and flank it; the development of mass integrative apparatuses,
such as the Einheitsgewerkschaft (unitary industrial union as opposed to unions
divided on confessional, political, or other grounds) and the bureaucratic, catch-all
Volkspartei (people's party as opposed to parties based on class or other social
cleavages); the Keynesian welfare state and corporatism; and modernism in the
aesthetic and cultural spheres (e.g., Esser and Hirsch 1984: 54-56; Hirsch and Roth
1986).

This list mixes elements from Fordism in general and the specific West German case.
This is a problem because, in my view (and that of others), West Germany was never
fully Fordist in the sense of a balance between mass production and mass

12
consumption. This can be seen tendentially in such factors as the greater weight of
capital goods production compared with the Fordist norm of balance between capital
and consumer goods sectors, small batch production compared with assembly-line
production, export-led compared with auto-centric growth, the role of Facharbeiter
compared with the Fordist mass worker, the role of the Handwerk sector compared
with the 'Sloanist' corporation, and the slow penetration of mass produced consumer
durables sold through supermarkets compared with the artisanal consumer goods
sector (cf. Jessop, 1988; additional references).

Likewise, the Bundesrepublik developed a distinctive Fordist mode of regulation.

Before he fully embraced regulationist concepts Hirsch provided many insightful and
original analyses of this mode of regulation and how it corresponded to the West
German mode of growth. He analysed it primarily in terms of modes of mass
integration and their articulation into a social democratic Modell Deutschland. It is not
clear what theoretical gain stems from introducing regulationist concepts into this
analysis. Indeed, the analyses in Hirsch and Roth (1986) or Husler and Hirsch (1987)
differ little from those presented in Hirschs pre-regulationist studies. This may not
matter for two reasons. First, regulation theorists do not hold a monopoly over
theoretical insight and their work has long been more concerned with accumulation
regimes and modes of growth than modes of mass integration or political regulation.
And, second, Hirsch could have developed an implicit, 'pre-theoretical' regulationism
(with an equivalent set of concepts) in his earlier work and/or re-interpreted that work
in the light of his interest in the regulation approach to provide a clear account of the
material basis of the West German mode of political regulation in the specific features
of the West German model of Fordism. Without explaining how his earlier work was
modified by engaging with the Parisian regulation approach, however, it is unclear why
and how the new account constitutes an advance on his earlier work.

For regulationists in general are weak on the capitalist state and its associated modes
of mass integration and political class domination; and the transition will clearly occur
in a structural and strategic context inherited from the Modell Deutschland system.

Hirsch and Roth certainly discussed some possible routes beyond the current crisis
into a post-Fordist social formation. They admit that the structures of a new, post-

13
Fordist hegemony, which could support a new, stable phase of capitalism, are, as yet,
scarcely discernible (1986: 103). Nonetheless they argue that elements of a post-
Fordist model are already present even if their eventual articulation into a coherent
historic bloc has not yet been accomplished. In particular they argue that mass
production will be replaced with flexible specialization based on micro-electronics and
information technology; that mass consumption will be replaced by differentiated
consumption norms associated with deeper social divisions; that the relative weight of
different industrial, financial, and service sectors will change (perhaps in the interests
of the military-industrial complex and the business-to-business service sector); that
the growth of social polarization and marginality will require the restructuring of the
welfare state with greater selectivity and group-specific policies; that a universal social
partnership will be replaced by a more selective corporatism involving greater self-
regulation by giant industrial and financial concerns and a micro-level, workplace-
oriented union policy; that the hitherto 'catch-all' people's parties will play a reduced
role in interest representation as mass integrative apparatuses and become vehicles
for individual careerism and market-research based public relations and manipulation
of specific 'target groups'; and that the new hegemonial project will combine elements
of authoritarian populism, the reassertion of familial values, individualism, ecological
liberalism, and (Spaethkapitalismus)3. Since these tendencies are still developing,
precise predictions (even for West Germany) are naturally difficult to make.

A Substantive Critique

Now I discuss three main substantive problems in his overall approach and its
application to the BRD.

First, in re-interpreting the Marxian TRPF as societal in character rather than purely
determined at the economic level of value relations, Hirsch turns it into a highly non-
specific crisis theory. In particular, whilst arguing that the tendential fall in profit rates
is determined in part through the rising organic composition of capital, he also refers
to the economic class struggle; and, even more significantly, the counter-tendencies
are seen to depend on the changing balance of forces across a range of societal
institutions. This has two main consequences. On the one hand, it appears to reduce
all economic crises to the TRPF (never discussing other types of economic crisis) and

14
thereby runs the risk of subsuming all the various crises and crisis forms under one
all-purpose law.4 This contrasts with the greater specificity of the French regulationists
in their analyses of crisis tendencies (e.g. the review in Boyer 1986a; or Lipietz 1985a,
1986). On the other hand, this law becomes the condensation of all manner of
economic, political, and ideological factors and can therefore explain nothing. Thus
the actual movement in the rate of profit is in the first instance the explicandum: only
then can it enter into explanations through its structurally mediated effects and/or
through the responses it elicits from economic and political forces. In both cases one
should focus on the specific forms that the profits crisis takes and/or the typical
strategic responses that it prompts: and this puts more weight on the distinctive
features of Fordism (or its specific variant modes of growth) than it does on any
tendential fall in profit rates operating at the level of capital in general. This does not
mean that Hirsch has failed to account for the crisis of West German Fordism but it
could mean that the TRPF is now redundant as an explanation and only has a
polemical function. For, whether in its original version or as redefined by Hirsch, it still
implies that capitalism must always develop in a crisis-ridden manner even though it
cannot explain the particular forms or timing of a given crisis.

Second, although Hirsch correctly notes that history is a process without a

(transcendental, transhistorical) subject, he does not go on to discuss the particular
subjects whose strategies and actions bring about the transition to post-Fordism.
Hirsch and Roth (1986) certainly talk of a rebellious subjectivity and also refer to new
accumulation strategies and hegemonic projects. But the driving forces behind these
new strategies and/or projects are not analysed beyond references to the 'pressure to
adapt' rooted in international competition and the consequences of this
Anpassungsdruck for firms, unions, parties, state managers, and other social forces.
But they leave largely unexplored and largely unexplained the question as to who
actually formulates the new strategies, how they are realized, what forces must be
overcome, etc. Thus, although they deny that the transition is inevitable, it sometimes
seems as though the forces working for post-Fordism have the historical advantage.
And, though he denies the existence of global subjects, the state often seems to be
endowed with amazing powers of coordination. Thus Hirsch (1980) and Hirsch and
Roth (1986) describe many crucial changes in the organization and functioning of the

15
state in response to the crisis of Fordism and/or the Modell Deutschland without really
specifying how and why they arose and/or succeeded.

The most likely explanation is one given elsewhere in Hirsch's collective work. Esser
and Hirsch (1984) and Husler and Hirsch (1987) have paid more attention to the role
of political parties in elaborating a political Regulierungsmodell (regulation model) that
can establish the basis for a new accumulation strategy and an appropriate
hegemonial structure (e.g., Esser and Hirsch 1984: 57, 61; Husler and Hirsch 1987:
655-9). This in turn depends on the capacities of political parties to articulate a new
political-ideological discourse that can reorganize the state system and its associated
political modes of political (dis)organization (Esser and Hirsch 1984: 60-2). This
analysis apparently accords explanatory primacy for the emergence of new regimes
accumulation and/or modes of growth to the state's role in societal regulation; and
hence to political struggle in the overall pursuit of strategic objectives. Even if we
accept this emphasis (and I am sympathetic to it), it still leaves unanswered in general
terms the questions of how accumulation strategies and hegemonial structures are
related and how capitalist forces and interests are actually taken up by political parties
and other mass integrative organizations. Husler and Hirsch suggest that the success
to date of the Christian-liberal coalition is not so much attributable to the successful
elaboration and realization of a new societal-political concept as to the liberation of
capitalist restructuring processes from their statist and corporatist fetters and to the
promise of future prosperity (1987: 669). This implies that the economic retains
primacy and capitalist forces have a more central role than other arguments suggest.

Third, in this context, Hirsch and Roth examine the role of the working class movement
and new social movements (NSMs) in the transition to post-Fordism. They suggest
that the working class movement (whatever might be the case with trade unions or the
social democratic party) is essentially pre-Fordist and that the proletariat can no longer
play a revolutionary role. Indeed they argue that the proletariat has instead developed
"interest representation without a social movement" (Hirsch and Roth 1986: 175).
Although they trace this decline to the nature of the wage relation, the more general
cash nexus, and the societalization form of Fordism, Hirsch and Roth are less clear
about the role of new social movements in the current crisis or their future role in a
post-Fordist society. In particular there is little discussion of whether NSMs are one of

16
the (inherently transitional?) crisis phenomena of Fordist society in decline and/or have
a positive (if unintended and unanticipated) role to play in that transition; and there is
little discussion of whether NSMs have a potentially revolutionary role within post-
Fordism or could become just as integrated into post-Fordist politics as the unions and
social democratic parties under Fordism. In turn this raises problems about the general
nature of the party form, the relations between parties and new social movements,
and twin dangers of crude populism and/or class reductionism in the treatment of new
cleavages.

Concluding Remarks

I have now considered how Hirsch and his colleagues have attempted to combine
French regulation theory and German state theory to produce a novel political
economy of West German capitalism. I draw three main conclusions.

First, there are good prima facie grounds for attempting to combine the regulation
approach and materialist state theory. Both posit that form problematizes function
(whether this be the form of the capital relation or the form of the capitalist state) and
conclude that this requires an analysis in terms of provisional, dynamic regulation
rather than static, invariant reproduction. Furthermore, the respective strengths and
weaknesses of the two approaches are complementary: The Parisian regulation still
lacks a nuanced account of the state and political system and materialist state theory
(especially when it is developed with the aid of Gramscian and Poulantzasian insights)
can provide this. Conversely, given his early reliance on the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall as a catch-all economic and political explanation for capitals crisis-
tendencies, Hirsch once needed a more nuanced institutionalist account of capitalist
periodization and the variety and interaction of its crisis-tendencies and crises.

However, successful integration of Parisian concepts and materialist state theory was
harder for Hirsch than might have been expected. Neither was clear about the relations
between structure and strategy. In the Parisian case, this was because their initial
focus was on an already consolidated Fordism and its crises leading its pioneering
theorists to focus on the coherence of structural forms; and, in relation to post-Fordism,
to highlight the need for trial-and-error experimentation to find an exit from the crisis

17
of Fordism. Only later has there been more interest in examining competing economic
and political imaginaries and how these are translated into competing strategies and
eventually crystallize into different kinds of post-Fordist regime. Conversely, in the
case of Joachim Hirsch, the initial response to this problem was to duplicate his three
core concepts into structural and strategic moments. Another obstacle to successful
integration was that Parisian regulationists presented their core concepts as a nested
set whereas Hirsch initially presented his core concepts as providing different entry-
points (economic, political, ideological) to the same concrete-complex phenomenon.

Second, although one can identify the influence of Parisian concepts on Hirschs more
economic analyses, they have had none on his analysis of the political. His account of
recent West German developments remained the same as he integrated the
regulationist approach into his theoretical paradigm. In part this reflected the different
strengths of the two approaches but it also reflected his continuing commitment to the
catchall TRPF as an explanation for capitalist crisis as well as his basic failure to
distinguish between Fordism and its West German variant.

A final problem concerns the relationship between description and explanation. It often
seems that the concern to analyse conjunctures that is central to the regulation
approach and materialist state theory and to explain them in all their overdetermination
in terms of a contingent interaction of several causal chains. However, this tends
mainly to produce complex descriptions. In turn, explanations are either limited to
equally complex genealogies from some arbitrary starting point and/or tend to switch
according to the aspect that is currently under detailed scrutiny. Complex genealogies
are quite appropriate to the realist methodology involved in Marxism and to the
overdetermination of actual economic, political, and social events. More problematic
is the failure to integrate the different lines of causal analysis that conjunctural
analyses demand: the tendency to switch between economic, political, and
ideological-discursive primacies in explaining complex events is probably due to the
lack of theoretical work on the interpenetration and mutual conditioning of different
institutional ensembles. But it still produces inconsistencies in the analysis.

18
Endnotes

1 'Mode of growth' can be compared with industrial profiles (Esser 1985).

2. Elsewhere Hirsch defined hegemonial structure in very similar terms: "the forms of
regulation of capitalist reproduction and of class conflict, forms of dominant
ideologies and 'Weltanschauungen'" (Hirsch 1984: 157).
3 Marxists and critical theorists used Sptkapitalismus in describing capitalism during
the long postwar boom; Spthkapitalismus refers to Lothar Spth (1937-2016), the
premier of Baden-Wrttemberg, who advocated an interventionist, rightwing
modernization policy for his own Land and West Germany as a whole. Thus
Spthkapitalismus implies that Spth's policies could provide the basis for the next
long wave of capitalist expansion.
4 Strictly speaking, the Marxian TRPF should operate at the level of the capitalist world
market and not at the level of national economies; Hirsch and Roth seemed to imply
that there are various national TRPFs and various corresponding counter-tendencies.

Literaturverzeichnis

Aglietta, Michel 1979. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, London: NLB.

Boyer, Robert and Coriat, Benjamin (1987)
Boyer, Robert (1986)
Boyer, Robert (1987)
Boyer, Robert (2013)
Esser, Josef (1985) Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Partnerschaft, Gewerkschaftliche
Monatshefte, 11, 65061.
Esser, Josef and Joachim Hirsch (1984), Der CDU-Staat. Ein politisches
Regulierungsmodell fr den nachfordistischen Kapitalismus, Prokla, 56, 5165.
Esser, Josef and Joachim Hirsch (1989), The crisis of Fordism and the dimensions
of a post-Fordist regional and urban structure, International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research, 13 (3), 41737.
Esser, Josef, Christoph Grg and Joachim Hirsch (1994), Politik, Institutionen und
Staat. Zur Kritik der Regulationstheorie, Hamburg: VSA.

19
Gramsci, Antonio (1991ff) Gefngnishefte, Berlin: Das Argument Verlag.
Husler, Jrgen and Joachim Hirsch (1987), Regulation und Parteien im bergang
zum Post-Fordismus, Das Argument, 165, 65171.
Hirsch, Joachim (1973) Elemente einer materialistischen Staatstheorie', in C. von
Braunmhl et al., Probleme einer materialistischen Staatstheorie, Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Hirsch, Joachim (1974a) Staatsapparat und Reproduktion des Kapitals, Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp
Hirsch, Joachim (1974b), Zur Analyse des politischen Systems, in J. Hirsch (ed.),
Gesellschaft. Beitrge zur Marxchen Theorie, Band 1, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 78
131.
Hirsch, Joachim (1976a) Bemerkungen zum theoretischen Ansatz einer Analyse des
brgerlichen Staates, Gesellschaft 8-9, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Hirsch, Joachim (1976b) Rmarques thoriques sur l'tat bourgeois et sa crise, in N.
Poulantzas (ed.) La Crise de l'tat, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France
Hirsch, Joachim (1977), Kapitalreproduktion, Klassenauseinauseinandersetzungen
und Widersprche im Staatsapparat, in V. Brandes, J. Hoffmann, U. Jrgens
and W. Semmler (eds), Handbuch 5 (Staat), Frankfurt: Europische
Verlagsanstalt, 16181.
Hirsch, Joachim (1978) The Crisis of Mass Integration: on the development of political
repression in Federal Germany, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 2 (ii)
Hirsch, Joachim (1980a) Der Sicherheitsstaat, Frankfurt: EVA
Hirsch, Joachim (1980b) On Political Developments in West Germany since 1945, in
R. Scase (ed.), The State in Western Europe, London: Croom Helm
Hirsch, Joachim (1983a), Nach der Staatsableitung: Bemerkungen zur
Reformulierung einer materialistischen Staatstheorie, in E. Altvater, W.
Elfferding, W.F. Haug, K. Hbner, W. S and F.O. Wolf (eds), Aktualisierung
Marx, Berlin: Argument Verlag, 15970.
Hirsch, Joachim (1983b), The Fordist security state and new social movements,
Kapitalistate, 10/11, 7584.
Hirsch, Joachim (1985), Auf dem Wege zum Post-Fordismus? Die aktuelle
Neuformierung des Kapitalismus und ihre politische Folgen, Das Argument, 151,
32542.

20
Hirsch, Joachim (1990b), Regulation theory and historicalmaterialistic social
theory. Remarks on a shaky yet necessary relationship, conomies et Socits,
Srie R. no 5 [24 (1)], 97114.
Hirsch, Joachim (1991a), Fordism and Post-Fordism: the present social crisis and its
consequences, in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway (eds), Post-Fordism and Social
Form: A Marxist Debate on the Post-Fordist State, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 8
34.
Hirsch, Joachim (1991b), From the Fordist to the post-Fordist state, in B. Jessop, H.
Kastendiek, K. Nielsen and O.K. Pedersen (eds), The Politics of Flexibility,
Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, USA: Edward Elgar, 6781.
Hirsch, Joachim (1992), Regulation, Staat und Hegemonie, in A. Demirovic, H.-P.
Krebs and T. Sablowski (eds), Hegemonie und Staat. Kapitalistische Regulation
als Projekt und Prozess, Mnster: Westflisches Dampfboot, 20331.
Hirsch, Joachim (1995a), Der nationale Wettbewerbstaat. Staat, Demokratie und
Politik im globalen Kapitalismus, Berlin: Edition ID-Archiv.
Hirsch, Joachim (1995b), Nation-state, international regulation and the question of
democracy, Review of International Political Economy, 2 (2), 26784.
Hirsch, Joachim (1997), Globalization of capital, nation-states and democracy,
Studies in Political Economy, 54, 3958.
Hirsch, Joachim (2000), Die Internationalisierung des Staates. Anmerkungen zu
einigen aktuellen Fragen der Staatstheorie, Das Argument, 42 (3), 32540.
Hirsch, Joachim and Roland Roth (1986), Das neue Gesicht des Kapitalismus. Vom
Fordismus zum Post-Fordismus, Hamburg: VSA.
Jessop, Bob (1982) The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods, Oxford:
Martin Robertson.
Jessop, Bob (1988) 'Post-Fordismus, Zur Rezeption der Regulationstheorie bei
Hirsch', Das Argument, 169, S. 380-91.
Jessop, Bob and Ngai-Ling Sum (2005) Beyond the Regulation Approach: Putting the
Capitalist Economy in its Place, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Lipietz, Alain
Lipietz, Alain 1986:
Lipietz, Alain 1987
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1848) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei.

21
Mller, Wolfgang and Neus, Christel (1970) 'Die Sozialstaatsillusion und der
Widerspruch von Lohnarbeit und Kapital, Sozialistische Politik, 6/7
Pashukanis, Evgeny B. (1929) Allgemeine Rechtslehre und Marxismus (3rd German
edition)
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1973. Political Power and Social Classes, London: New Left
Books.

22