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State: A Note on
Joachim Hirsch
WERNER BONEFELD
reface Globalization has become an organizing term
His notion that the national state has been "hollowed out"
focuses this difficulty.fHe argues this in three ways. First,
from a post-Fordist analytical perspective, he argues that
the "state form" is determined by the "needs" of the accu-
mulation regime and he identifies the way in which the post-
Fordist state has adjusted to the requirements and challenges
of globalized capital. At the same time, however, he argues
similar to Held4 that previous state-centred strategies of de-
mocratization are outmoded and rendered obsolete. This sec-
ond view suggests that globalization has tipped the balance
against the ailing "democratic" state and that a democratic
movement would be well able to redress this loss of national
democratic control over capital by making democracy a tran-
snational affair. Third, with the neo-Gramscian school of
international political economy.> Hirsch argues that the na-
tional state has not come to an end but, rather, it has been
transformed. In this view, the state was, in the past, able to
regulate its national economy but since the onset of the capi-
talist crisis in the early 1970s, the state has been interna-
tionalized by adapting to the exigencies of the world
economy. This led to a greater role for more market-oriented
state apparatuses and a new form of consensus formation
between these and non-governmental international institu-
tions such as the IMF. In this view, the state is actively
involved in adjusting the national economy to global capital
requirements.
Each of these theoretical perspectives poses quite a dif-
ferent view on the "hollowing out of the state" thesis. The
first perspective suggests that the state is powerless vis-a-vis
economic relations; it merely responds passively to a Fordist
or post-Fordist economy and provides the political "func-
tions" adequate to economic "needs." The second suggests
that the democratic state was powerful in the past but has
become powerless because of globalization and that democ-
ratization adequate to the new reality of capital would redress
the imbalance. The third argues that the state has not been
hollowed out but that it is, in fact, actively involved in regu-
lating capital/labour conflicts through the internationaliza-
tion of state functions. Hirsch's account endorses each of
these views but his argument develops none of them in a
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state not only strong and capable but also directly involved
in the managing of the "labour question." It also suggests
that the state does so by trying to insulate itself from the
social consequences of its policies through the depoliticiza-
tion of policy-making.s'' In Hirsch's account, both answers
are affirmed. Yet the second is of little consequence to his
analysis because the resolution to economic crisis has been
effected by globalization. His emphasis falls on the first
part of the answer: de-democratization is conducive to the
survival of national states within the global world of "foot-
loose" capital.
De-democratization, then, is not seen as a "class politics."
Rather, it seems to mean that the "state" no longer has the
ability to respond in a democratic fashion to the social and
ecological consequences of capital's crisis resolution. Social
demands, the human rights of citizens and calls for ecologi-
cal protection appear cut-off from previously existing chan-
nels of democratic influence and expression. In this way,
Hirsch's analysis emphasizes democracy's reforming poten-
tial to cope with the social, economic, and ecological con-
sequences of capitalism's "economic mechanisms." Is it
really possible to overcome ecological destruction, to secure
human dignity and to achieve democratic self-determination
without touching relations of exploitation and therewith ana-
lyzing relations of class? The solution to ecological destruc-
tion is not just a question of the relationship between nature
and Man but, rather, a question of the relationships between
the human beings themselves, and that would imply the over-
coming of relations where humans exploit humans for the
sake of an accumulation of abstract wealth.
Notes
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14. R.B. Reich, The Work of Nations (Vintage, New York, 1991); M.
Bienefeld, "Is a Strong National Economy a Utopian Goal at the End
of the Twentieth Century," and R. Mishra "The Welfare of Nations,"
both in R. Boyer and D. Drache (eds.), States Against Markets (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1996).
15. On this: R. Murray "The Internationalisation of Capital and the Na-
tional State," New Left Review 67 (1971); E.A. Brett, The World
Economy since the War (London: Macmillan, 1985); E. Mandel,
Europe versus America (London: New Left Books, 1970).
16. C.P. Kindleberger, American Business Abroad (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1969), p. 207.
17. See for example A. Glyn, "Social Democracy and Full Employment,"
New Left Review, 211 (1995).
18. On this: E. Helleiner, States and the Re-emergence of Global Finance
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); G. Epstein, "International
Capital Mobility and the Scope for National Economic Management,"
in R. Boyer and D. Drache, States Against Markets, (1994).
19. On this issue in relation to the debate on globalization see: L. Panitch
"Globalization and the State," in R. Miliband and L. Panitch (eds.),
Socialist Register 1994 (Merlin, London, 1994).
20. On this in the context of the British national economy: W. Bonefeld
and P. Burnham, "The Politics of Counter Inflationary Credibility in
Britain, 1990-94," Review of Radical Political Economy 30 (1998).
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