Coercion and Consent

Studies on the Modern State

John R. Hall, John A. Hall

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745611952, 9780745611945
• eBook ISBN: 9780745666921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the key institutional structures and processes of modernity. Combining historical insight with sustained political and social analysis, Hall analyses the form and character of capitalism, war, late development, civil society and the the causes and collapse of socialism and addesses the revival of nationalism and the possibilities of democratization.

1

CAPSTONES AND ORGANISMS

The state is once again at the forefront of our attention. Although this development is, given the importance of political coercion and military activity in history, much to be welcomed, it must be admitted that there are few solid results to show for considerable labours.¹ Two particular problems, especially manifest in Marxist attempts to come to terms with the state, spring to mind. Firstly discussions of the state have tended to be formal and abstract, as the merest glance at the writings of, say, Nicos Poulantzas on the capitalist state demonstrates. Underlying this is, one suspects, an attitude quite familiar from traditional political science which habitually considers that the state can be treated timelessly on the grounds that the problems and tasks of government must be met in any historical circumstance. Secondly, it is not clear whether marxists really do allow for the independent impact of politics, as talk about ‘relative autonomies’ of one sort or another indicates. It is worth while distinguishing three positions in this connection. Naive marxism denies the importance of the state altogether, whilst more sophisticated marxists take coercion seriously yet remain true to the commanding heights of their ideology by insisting that the state’s autonomy is only relative: that is that the laws of historical motion remain dependent upon class.

A third position, stating that marxism can remain marxism whilst admitting that political power, and not just economic exploitation by class, is an autonomous source of evil in human affairs, has never yet been spelt out. Frankly, I believe that this last position can never be created without the destruction of the conceptual apparatus and the promise of salvation inherent in marxism.²

It would be possible to present an account of recent attempts to grapple with the state at a conceptual level, but an entirely different tack is adopted here. An account of the relation between political forms and the triumph of capitalism, concentrating on a comparison between the West and China, is offered in order that some advance may be made beyond the impasses noted. For the sake of clarity, it is as well to spell out my attitude towards the problems that have been highlighted. Firstly, formalistic concern with the state seems to me misguided as different types of state are present in the historical record. Secondly, I shall argue that political forms matter. A strong line is thus being taken against existing marxist accounts, although something will be said in favour of the more sophisticated versions of that approach.

One final preliminary is in order. Discussion centres on two classic theories of the relation between state forms and economic development, both neglected recently to our loss. The first of these is that of Max Weber, who insisted that bureaucratic states in the pre-industrial epoch killed off capitalist development.³ The second is Adam Smith’s contention that, in the West, there was, to use the Weberian term, an ‘elective affinity’ between commerce and liberty.⁴ These are interesting and powerful claims which deserve to be brought back into general discussion.

Empires in the Abstract

When we think of empires the image at the front of our minds is that of great strength. This is largely the result of the mental image created by the monuments and records of arbitrariness empires have left behind; this image has been formalized by Wittfogel, whose view of hydraulic empires stresses their total control of their societies.⁵ A moment’s reflection must make us doubt all this. It is always dangerous to take written records at face value, and this is especially true in pre-industrial empires where the demands of ideology and myth-making are great. We know that such empires could not have been so strong: economically they remained segmentary, unless there was water transport, since large-scale transportation over land was impossible, and this in turn logistically limited the means of military power.⁶ All this is more than confirmed by what we know of limits to the powers of emperors themselves.⁷ In the later Roman Empire, for example, the emperor was quite incapable of seeing every paper sent to him. He threatened all administrators who prepared or submitted illegal rescripts. But he openly admitted his impotence by declaring invalid in advance any special grants in contravention of the law, even if they bore his own signature.⁸

Those who have written about empires have tended to stress one or the other of these factors. In fact both were present: the paradox of empire is that its great strength – its monuments, its arbitrariness, its scorn for human life – is based upon and reflects social weakness. Put thus, this sounds a straightforward contradiction rather than a paradox, but that this is not so can be seen by identifying two distinct faces of power.

One view of power has always seen it in terms of command, of the ability to get people to do something against their will. But there is a different view, which has stressed that power is an enabling means, created by an agreement about what is to be accomplished. Something follows from this: social capacity is likely to be enhanced if agreement can be reached. The argument to be made is that a contrast can be drawn in terms of this dimension between a capstone state, strong in arbitrary power but weak in its ability to penetrate its society, and a more organic state, deprived of arbitrary power but far more capable of serving and controlling social relations within its territory. We can now turn to explaining this variation.

Splendours and Miseries of the Chinese Imperial State

Marx’s theory of history posited that capitalism would follow feudalism. At first glance this theory receives decisive refutation from the Chinese case, for a long period of feudalism was ended in 221 BC when one border kingdom, that of the Chi’n, making use of large citizen armies and acting with a brutality of Assyrian intensity, united all China in an empire. It is important to note that despotism had little to do with water control of any sort: arbitrary rule of a military type came from the west of China, where no water control was needed: the empire was in place before much advantage was taken of the loess soils of the great river valleys; and, more generally, the bureaucracy never planned or managed irrigation works, for reasons to be noted.⁹ Where does all this leave marxism? One commendably blunt retort is that given by Witold Rodinski in a recent history of China:

The political structure of the Chou era clearly and unambiguously deserves to be referred to as feudal; confusion ensues when some historians, who restrict the meaning of this term to political phenomena, see in the creation of a centralised, absolute monarchy, beginning with Chi’n and Han, an end to feudalism in China. In reality, in its socioeconomic sense, it was to be present up to the middle of the twentieth century.¹⁰

This is a very bold statement indeed; it says, in effect, that the fact of empire made no real difference. And the same argument underlies the refusal to allow the military factor any real autonomy in Chinese history. It may well be that an army is not always exploitative: Michael Mann has argued that the creation of an empire, by establishing peace, allows for an expansion of regular economic activity, a process sometimes aided directly by the state.¹¹ But the marxist position does lead us to ask not just about the creation of empires (often, by means of booty, ‘cost free’) but about the continued maintenance of such military power. What were the relations between state and society? Did the former have any substantial autonomy over the social classes of the larger society?

There is no doubt that there is much to be said for the marxist-inspired scepticism about the power of the state. All pre-industrial regimes must tax through local notables, and China, despite having a historically large bureaucracy, was not different in this respect. We can see that Wittfogel’s thesis of a state exercising ‘total power’ over its society is a fantasy by looking at simple figures. The first Ming emperor in 1371 sought to have but 5,488 mandarins in government service. This number did expand, yet in the sixteenth century, the last of the Ming dynasty, there were still only about 20,400 in the empire as a whole, although there were perhaps another 50,000 minor officials.¹² As a very large number of these were concentrated in Peking, an official in one of the 1,100 local districts might well have managed 500–1,000 square miles with the aid of only three assistants. Weber’s comment remains apposite:

The officials’ short terms of office (three years), corresponding to similar Islamic institutions, allowed for intensive and rational influencing of the economy through the administration as such only in an intermittent and jerky way. This was the case in spite of the administration’s theoretical omnipotence. It is astonishing how few permanent officials the administration believed to be sufficient. The figures alone make it perfectly obvious that as a rule things must have been permitted to take their own course, as long as the interests of the state power and of the treasury remained untouched … ¹³

All in all, the Chinese state simply did not have the means by which to exercise the total control envisaged in Wittfogel’s picture. Of course it sought, as did other imperial states, to gain such autonomy, and the use of eunuchs – supposedly biologically loyal to the state – is one index of this. Importantly, the mandarinate was always jealous of eunuchs, since it was aware that an increase in central power would be at its own expense. When the state was strong, most usually when it had just been founded, decentralizing tendencies were strongly counteracted. Land was shared out, taxes were collected and abuses corrected; at the accession of the Ming in 1371, over 100,000 members of the gentry were executed. Moreover, individual members of the gentry always had something to fear from the arbitrary exercise of state power; thus the making of a fortune in state service was best followed by a discreet withdrawal to the country, where profits could be enjoyed in peace. Nevertheless, arbitrary action against individuals was counterbalanced by a fundamental inability of the state to go against the gentry class as a whole. Reformer after reformer tried to establish a decent land registry as the basis for a proper taxation system, but all were defeated by landlord refusal to cooperate. Chinese society thus witnessed a ‘power stand-off between state and society, a situation of stalemate that led to the inability to generate a large sum of societal energy.

The mechanism of this power stand-off can be seen at work in the dynamic process of Chinese history already noted, that is in the cyclical pattern, well known to the mandarins themselves, whereby disintegration of the empire was followed by imperial reconstitution. Naturally, each historical case had its peculiarities, but it is nevertheless possible to detect a habitual pattern. A newly established dynasty sought to create a healthy peasant base for both its tax and military potential. To this end, seeds were distributed and some attempt made, usually with striking success, to promote agricultural development, not least through the printing of agricultural handbooks. Yet even without internal or external pressures, the state tended to lose control of society. The local power of the gentry was transformed into the ability both to increase their estates and to avoid taxation. But pressures were in any case usually present. Internally, prosperity led to an expansion of population, by no means discouraged by the gentry, and this eventually caused land hunger and peasant rebellion.

Externally, the nomads on the borders found the empire more and more attractive as its prosperity waxed in front of their eyes. There is some scholarly debate as to whether such nomads invade of their own will, or whether they are forced into such action by mercantilist policies of the state itself, keen to keep its riches to itself and loath to treat with nomads for whom trade is virtually a necessity.¹⁴ Whatever the case, nomads do not often, as Hollywood representations might suggest, come into empires intent on loot, rape and destruction – although these were precisely the aims of the Mongols. Barbarians wish to possess the benefits of civilization and prove increasingly capable of getting them. For barbarians are often employed as mercenaries by empires in their later days and, as a result, they learn military techniques that, when allied with their inherent military resource of great mobility, make them a formidable force.

In these circumstances, the imperial state is, of course, forced to increase taxation, and it is at this moment that the power stand-off between state and society proves to be important. Many landlords choose to shelter peasants who refuse to pay such increased taxation, and thereby increase their own local power. The combination of feudal-type disintegration and overpopulation led to a constant decrease in the number of taxpaying peasant smallholders. Rodinski cites as one example of this process the census of 754, which showed that there were only 7.6 million taxpayers out of a population of 52.8 million.¹⁵ In such circumstances the state is forced to tax even more heavily where it can, and is driven to arbitrary action of all types; this in its own turn fuels peasant unrest.

This situation of breakdown and division could, as noted, last for a long time, but a new dynasty was established in the long run, usually in one of two ways. Nomads succeeded in establishing only two dynasties that united all of China, namely those of the Mongols and the Manchu, although they ruled various segments of northern China on several occasions. Other dynasties resulted from peasant revolt. It is worth nothing that peasants were not able to link their laterally insulated communities horizontally, so that successful and non-local revolt often depended upon the help of déclassé mandarins, members of millenarian groups or discontented gentry. The leaders of such revolts, when they proved successful, eventually cooperated with the gentry and founded a new dynasty–which again began the cycle of Chinese history.

This has been a long description of the perpetual cycle of Chinese civilization, and certain points at issue in it need to be spelt out. In so far as nomad pressure ran according to its own logic, it is inappropriate to say that the whole cycle of Chinese history can be seen in internal class terms. The empire was, to borrow a famous description of the Fall of Rome, at least sometimes ‘assassinated’ from the outside. But sophisticated marxist analyses have important points to make, and these have been made, for a different empire, with marvellous acuity by Geoffrey de Ste Croix in his Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World.¹⁶ Such analyses powerfully draw our attention to the thoroughgoing class nature of the imperial state and to the extreme selfishness of the upper classes in refusing to place the situation of their civilization above their own personal liberties. Had this class domination been absent, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Capstones and Organisms
• 2. A Curious Stability?
• 3. An Absolute Collapse
• 4. State Power and Patterns of Late Development: (written with Ding-Xin Zhao)
• 5. Consolidations of Democracy
• 6. Nationalisms, Classified and Explained
• 7. Will the United States Decline as did Britain?
• 8. The Weary Titan? Arms and Empire, 1870–1913
• Conclusion: The State of Post-modernism
• Index