Q-8 | Paper 2

 Qn. 8. Critically examine the Marxist aspect of political economy approach to the study of comparative politics. (2016/II/1a/10m)

Marxist aspect is one of the broad academical categories of political economy. Political economy approach refers to interdisciplinary studies, which draws upon various social sciences to explain the role of politics in influencing economics. Comparative politics compares various political systems.

Aspects of political economy approach can be categorised as classical school, Marxist school, welfare school (Keynes, Galbrith), dependency school (Frank, Wollerstien, Furtado), neo-rightist school (Hayek, Olson, Buchanan) and welfare economics (A. Sen and J. Dreze).

Marxist political economy denotes a range of perspectives that are broadly connected to the tradition of Karl Marx historian and economist. It comprises an integrative analysis of the economy, society and politics.

It started in the 1840s when Marx shifted his attention from jurisprudence to economic matters. He gave his materialistic interpretation of history – that social structure and state are products of history. It relates state with productive (economic) base of society. The ‘base’ or economic structure is the foundation on which people enter into relations and have little control over. The legal and political ‘superstructure’ becomes a reflection of that base. And only political economy can connect the base with its superstructures. Marxist aspect of political economy demands historical and holistic approach (to understand social issues) and the combination of politics with economics (to avoid distortion of reality and theoretical difficulties).

Critical examination of Marxist political economy approach to comparative politics, through various theoretical developments**:**

1. According to Marx, the base-superstructure economic model exists predominantly in the west – advanced, capitalist, liberal polities. His model was a critique of Adam Smith’s economic conception (which had influenced the west). So, it compared capitalist and non-capitalist political systems.
2. Marx’s ‘relative autonomy’ offered a sophisticated explanation of the origins and functions of political power within capitalism. This perspective assumes that the state must exercise a certain historically specific degree of autonomy from capital, if it is to successfully serve its reproductive functions for capital. Marx portrayed this functioning in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ (1852). ‘Relative autonomy’ is a contested concept.
3. Italian Marxist and politician Antonio Gramsci principally differentiated ‘civil society’ from ‘political society’. For Gramsci, ‘State’ is a sum of political society and civil society. Control of the state is accomplished through hegemony in civil society. Compared with the liberal concept of civil society, which favoured the protective role of civil society toward the individual against the state, Gramsci’s civil society instead functions as a protective filter for the state.
4. Marxist approach has been further studied, for the development of welfare state by instrumentalists such asRalph Miliband, in his ‘The State in Capitalist Society’ and structuralist for understanding of ‘relative autonomy’ such as Nicos Poulantzas, in his ‘Political Power and Social Classes’. Miliband distinguished between the ruling class of civil society and the governing class which held positions in the institutions of the state. He held that the institutions of the state met the needs of capitalists, even when the state was relatively autonomous from the capitalist class. Poulantzas argued for objective structural relations that linked the state to class struggle. For him, the relative autonomy of the state in the capitalist mode of production was due to a spatial separation of the juridico-political level from the economic level.
5. In the 1950s behaviouralists led by David Easton, G. Almond and others, discarded the traditional concept of state. The believed the concept of state was limited by legal and institutional meanings. This stage, also called behavioural revolution, diverted attention to the neutral concept of political ‘system’ instead of ‘state’. It took away attention from class-society, i.e. relationship of class-divide to means of production. Later, Marxists would claim that behaviouralism rose against Marxism as a subtle defence of status quo (American liberal political values).
6. The 1960s saw the advent of dependency school for the analyses of developing countries (such as in Latin America and Asia). Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It keeps the poor dependent on the rich. Proponents include Hans Singer, Raúl Prebisch etc. The theory arose as a reaction to modernization theory - which held that all societies progress through similar stages of development. This school shares many points with earlier Marxist theories of imperialism by Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin.
7. The 1970s witnessed scholars like Hamza Alavi applying Marxist relative autonomy for post-colonial states. He employed the classical Marxist theory of the State to analyse and compare South Asian states.

Conclusion: Marxist conception of political economy has evolved as a methodology. Contrasting methodologies exist in political economy and distinctions should be kept in mind.