Open Marxist State Theory Analysis Of The 2013 Welfare Reforms

An Open Marxist State Theory analysis of the 2013 Welfare Reform Act in Britain

This essay seeks to analyse the recent welfare cuts by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the implementation of which began on April 1^st 2013 with the Welfare Reform Act, from an Open Marxist state theory (OMST) perspective. To achieve this, the theoretical framework of OMST will be outlined against the insufficiencies of firstly, the Weberian approach to theorising the capitalist state, arguing that such a state form is incompatible with the very form of a welfare state and secondly against derivationist state theory, which does account for such a state form. However, derivationist theory will be shown, as Clarke argues, to suffer from ontological problems that lead to crude functionalism and economic determinism which is insufficient in accounting for the volition of capitalist elites in directing cuts to the welfare state. The essay will then move on to show that Open Marxist State Theory overcomes the insufficiencies of the previous two state theories, and provides the best framework with which to analyse the Welfare Reform Act 2013. The case of the 2013 cuts will be shown to illustrative of the way in which welfare provisions conceded to labour can be retracted and targeted by particular capitalist elites toward the goal of the subordination of labour, and will show the way in which these cuts are justified by recourse to the notion of austerity as necessary to fulfil the national interest of deficit reduction.

This essay defines capitalism as a system of productive relations in which surplus value is extracted from a producing class, by the selling of labour to a capitalist class who own the means of production, in order to produce commodities surplus to the labour necessary to produce the means of subsistence which are sold on for profit. Such a relation of production necessarily puts the interests of capital and labour in diametric opposition to one another and is fundamentally unstable.

The traditional Weberian conception of the state, in focusing on a plurality of interests and the notion that political action is directed to the achievement of political power for its own sake (Burnham, 2006: p.70) is insufficient to analyse the existence of a welfare state in an otherwise capitalist system. By such a model, the state in a capitalist system would exist as that which merely represents the interests of the most powerful at the explicit and visible expense of the rest of society and would be unable to incorporate nor account for the existence of a particular form of state the Welfare State. Furthermore, such a conception cannot account for limitations and the constraints within which states attempt to overcome barriers to accumulation/growth that are inherent in capitalist relations of accumulation and economic growth (Burnham, 2006: p.71). The state, in a Weberian sense, is reduced to an autonomous and neutral institution that is merely filled by the prevailing power. Weberian state functions are perceived to be empirically identifiable but suffer from recourse to tautology as powerful interests are those that prevail and they prevail because they are powerful (Burnham, 2006: p.71), and thus offer little methodological advantage in assessing how a state may ameliorate inherent contradiction between labour and capital accumulation.

Identifying a theory that accommodates the potential necessity of a welfare state to ameliorate tensions between labour and capital is central to analysing why it may be cut. Derivationists appear to provide such a theory, deriving the existence of the state from the idea that capital and labour exist in perpetual conflict. The state, acting relatively autonomously but ultimately subordinate to the interests of capital, must, in Offe s terms, function to balance the labour/capital tension in order to reproduce the relations of production necessary for capital accumulation without appearing to do so (for fear of exacerbating class struggle). From this contradiction between capital and labour interest, Offe logically derives the conflicting state functions of legitimacy and accumulation. The destabilising potential of class conflict must be mediated, and it is for this reason that Offe, and later Hirsch, points to the necessary emergence of a particular state form the welfare state. However, this produces further problems, as welfare spending detracts from profit and the interest of capital engendering further labour/capital struggles. Ultimately, the interest of capital wins out over the interest of labour, and welfare spending cuts become necessary and unavoidable to preserve capital accumulation it is with this politically neutral assertion that Clarke and other Open Marxists take issue the presentation of the state as the ideal and fictitious collective capitalist acting in the general interest of capital. According to Clarke, the logical derivation of state functions from the need to reproduce conditions for capital accumulation engenders an economic determinism which is unable to account for the volition of particular capitalist elites utilising state apparatus and power in order to further their particular interests. Derivationists accept that the result of cuts to welfare is the continued subordination of the working class in the general interest of capital, but this is presented as an economic inevitability and not the result of intentional manoeuvres of particular capitalists to this end. This essay will now show how Open Marxists theorise the state as an arena of class struggle to overcome the absence of capitalist agency in derivationist theory.

Clarke rejects the notion of state autonomy in derivationist theory, arguing that such an account fails to show WHY the state develops in the first place. He asserts that the contradictory and self destructive foundation of the capitalist mode of production does not necessitate the emergence of a state institution autonomous but subordinate to the needs of capital if labour were simply to acquiesce to their subordination to the interests of capital there would be no need for a state (Clarke, 1991: p.10, 169). The state from an OMST perspective is an historical necessity emerging from the development of particular class struggles engendered by capitalist relations of production, following Marx s historical materialist analysis of the capitalist system. The state emerges because of the conflicting needs of capital and labour as both a form and an arena of struggle through which the subordination of the working class to capital is reproduced (Clarke, 1991: p.176). Welfare provision constitutes a concession to the working class to ameliorate the destabilising potential of their collective power (as with derivationist theory) but is won by the working class through struggles it is not a logical necessity. Amelioration of the working class is manifest in terms of direct welfare provision but also in incorporation into state structures in the form of parliamentary representation. However, in his analysis of the rise of the New Right, Clarke identifies how state welfare provision can be rolled back provided the working class is sufficiently divided, hierarchised and incapable of collective organisation. This is achieved through elites utilising state power to disseminate the idea that cuts are necessary for the national good (budget deficit reduction), unavoidable, or inevitable because of abuse of the system. The state is not a tool of general capital interest for Clarke and Burnham, as capitalist elites can use the apparatus of the state and its power to subordinate the working class to further their particular interests, restructuring the forms of political domination and social relation in a time of crisis along ideological and self-interested lines, and present this as to the general benefit of the nation. Thus the state does not always intervene in the general interest of preserving the conditions of capital accumulation. The presence of different forms of state, and of different forms of welfare provision, around the world is accounted for a historical materialist conception of the state presented by Clarke and Burnham, as there is sensitivity to the particularities of class struggle in different societies which constitutes the state.

Having outlined why OMST presents a much more nuanced analysis of the emergence of the capitalist state form than other approaches, this essay will now present the 2013 cuts and show how these can best be described and analysed by an OMST theoretical framework. The widespread welfare reforms set in motion by the Welfare Reform Act 2013 illustrate an asymmetric distribution of the burden of cutting deficit spending, with those most vulnerable such as the disabled, unemployed and those relying on housing benefit bearing the brunt of the cuts. The vast majority of welfare spending in the UK is on state pensions and not jobseekers allowance, disability and housing benefit. Despite this fact, the coalition government have directed cuts at those who receive this minority of welfare spending through the bedroom tax and the cap on benefits, as well as stopping benefit from rising with inflation, instead capping it at 1%. The bedroom tax, which limits the benefit recipients of social housing can claim, has been shown to disproportionately affect divorced parents who share custody of children and the disabled or long-term ill who may require extra space. Jobseekers benefit is a mere 3% of the budget, though government has perpetuated a myth that the dire state of the country s finances are due to an over-generous and easily exploitable benefits system, serving as justification for benefit caps and cuts. More generally, the austerity approach of the coalition government has seen a threefold rise in the number of people using food banks, as they are unable to adequately afford food. In contrast, it has been argued that the removal of the 50p tax rate will result in over 13,000 millionaires receiving a tax cut of c. £100,000 per year.

It is clear to see how an OMST approach provides the framework within which to best analyse the cuts. Elite rhetoric on the need to reduce the budget deficit, and that the most beneficial way to do this is to cut tax to the highest earners whilst reducing the welfare provisions received by those most vulnerable in society, is a clear example of the way in which capitalist elites can utilise the state framework in pursuit of their particular interests whilst simultaneously presenting these interests as in the general interest of society. The attacks on George Osborne s austerity programme, of which welfare reform is a constitutive part of public spending reduction, by the IMF, can be seen in this light as supporting the Open Marxist analysis that the state does not always act in the general interest of capital, as derivationists would assert, and indicating an ideological component to the cuts. The most explicit manifestation of the subordination of labour to the interests of capital to come out of the Welfare Reform Act are the proposals to remove Universal Tax Credits from those recipients deemed to be doing too little work in return for them, forcing them to work longer hours (thus generating more surplus value to be accumulated by the capitalist class). The Welfare Reform Act represents a clear manifestation of the state as an arena class struggle, in which the state seeks to reproduce the subordination of the working class to the needs of capital by removing the concessions made to labour in the form of welfare achieved through collective organisation and power, whilst at the same time protecting the interests of particular capitalists (the 13,000 millionaires receiving a £100,000 p.a. tax cut is but one example). Having divided the working class through perpetuating the idea of scroungers and benefit cheats as causing the circumstances of the working class, the rhetoric of the coalition government can be seen as using ideology and the political power of the state to create the conditions necessary to ensure the subordination and division of the working class through cutting the welfare that provides a degree of amelioration of class struggle. The combined effect of the ideological rhetoric employed by capitalist elites intervening in the state, and the material immiseration of the working class through welfare cuts most particularly in the cuts to housing and jobseeking benefit that this essay has presented, subordinates the working class to the interests of capital by crushing the capacity of labour to present a powerful collective opposition to capital.

The Welfare Reform Act 2013 has been shown in this essay to be illustrative of the exploitative social relations inherent in capitalist society and the manifestation of the state as emerging from the particularities of class struggle in Britain as conceived in Open Marxist state theory, whilst avoiding an economic determinist and structural-functionalist analysis such as that of derivationist theory, by accounting for the volition of particular capitalist elites in targeting welfare cuts. The state role in reproducing the social conditions necessary for capital accumulation has been illustrated first with recourse to why a particular state may emerge to have a welfare state in the first place, from an OMST perspective that recognises the inherent conflictual social relations of capital and labour as resulting in necessary concessions to labour to ensure the stability of the system of capital accumulation. The application of OMST analysis has shown the Welfare Reform Act as evidence of the way in which elites can intervene in the state and use its political and ideological power to protect their particular capital interests, retracting concessions made to labour in such a way as to materially subordinate the working class, and reduce the capacity for collective organisation that may necessitate future concessions.