Critical Theories of the State
In this section I take a look at the theory to be applied to the data. The theory is referred to as “systems analytic” a post-marxist theory (identified as post-marxist category #1) in Clyde Barrow’s small book (1993) “Critical Theories of the State.” The value of theories according to Barrow is, “their ability to reduce the complexity of historical developments and empirical data to a few orderly relationships that explain these developments and data” (p. 9). The problem with theory is its derivation because theory limits us to a focus on a certain set of empirical phenomena. In terms of ‘state theory’ the data under review in this research (education commission reports and other significant governmental inquiries) presents a ‘set of empirical phenomena’ worthy of further investigation. It can offer additional information to state theory since public education is an integral component in liberal democracies. Additionally, the research here can also test the theory as presented, mainly that accounted for by Habermas, provide arguments to dispute it, or give additional evidence that supports the theory and ideally broadens it. Considered against Ronald Manzer’s 1994 interpretation of public education historical change, what is possible is discussion concerning “historical interpretation” of the public education policy data. To interpret the data I have selected the post-Marxist category outlined by Barrow emphasizing ‘testing of the limits’ of capital accumulation and state legitimation. To test the limits researchers must interpret the points where ‘crisis’ has arisen as a consequence of the state’s contradictory involvement with facilitating capital accumulation as well as seeking state legitimation through policies incompatible with capital accumulation. Public education plays a very important role in mediating capital accumulation and state legitimation. For example, as Barrow writes, “public education may be viewed as a public subsidy to private business, because education defrays labour costs” (p. 6). This is one example. Public education, particularly public post-secondary education, produces the technical expertise to propel research that has potential to facilitate new capital accumulation. On the other hand, public education also reproduces the necessary liberal ideology to build state legitimation, and it also is responsible for creating space for transformation and democracy. Public education systems also covertly 'warehouse' students and release them slowly into the capitalist economy offsetting increases in unemployment in times of recession, while buffering a potential rush on social supports such as welfare. It may be that such a chameleon role for public education may make the application of the theory a little more challenging since public education bridges both state legitimation and capital accumulation, but this is why public education policy is often the focus of the state in times of economic crisis and a focus for capitalists in times of economic growth. As a consequence, however, it is likely that the reports studied will identify a 'crisis' as well as respond to a 'crisis' by revealing the contradiction that the systems-analytic is interested in. If the reports do not respond to a 'crisis' then the systems-analytic applied to this research may not stand up as a theory.
In respect of the tensions existing between Manzer's and Barrow's models -- Manzer proposes what appears to be a Canadian historical incremental (perhaps even teleological) progress through a series of liberal 'ideas' beginning in the 19th century and proceeding into the early to mid-20th. These steps move from political to economic to ethical liberalism. The systems-analytic proposes three subsystems, the political, economic and social. Against these alternative subsystems we may consider the term "liberal" as providing important clarification. In the political definition, liberalism refers to freedoms, such as religious and political freedoms. Also, political liberalism refers to an ideology that protects individualism and promotes access to middle class status on a merit-basis derived through the vehicle of public education and not necessarily as a consequence of property ownership. In the economic definition liberalism refers to the market with the degree of state intervention depending on the political party in power. Liberalism in the social domain refers to 'ideology' where, for example, 'ethical' values are predominant. Such 'ethical' values would protect the social safety net for example. Considering the categories Manzer proposes against the systems analytic subsystems, it is difficult to view the different categories of liberalism Manzer sets out as representing a logical series of stages in Canadian public education history development because the term 'liberalism' refers to values derived from all three areas of political, economic and ethical perspectives. It isn't a valid argument to suggest that the public education commission reports of the 1970s are more "ethical" than the commission reports of earlier decades, with earlier decade commission reports being more political or economic in their ideological content. The 1911 report is more economic than political, and British Columbia's 1925 document is very much an 'ethical' document.
For the 1990s Manzer proposes 'technological liberalism' as a late 20th century category, however, the term 'technological' is specific to science and doesn't maintain continuity with the other broader social categories (i.e.: political, economic, and ethical). The term 'technocratic' to the late 20th century liberalism would be more fitting if it were not that the mentioning is a moot point as Manzer's overall model for explaining Canadian public education policy development is debatable, although the public education history he organizes around the model is stellar.
How interesting that Barrow proposes five separate models for Marxism when one can see the Marxist model mimicking the historical stages that Manzer is referring to in his model for analyzing Canadian public education from the 19th century, political to economic to ethical liberalism. Habermas' theory is perhaps more 'ethical' with its focus not only on sensual but also communicative action and the 'lifeworld'. The five models set by Barrow could be representing Marxist theoretical advances and or stages rather than distinct categories. Habermas' work support this idea and Habermas' asserts that features such as state involvement in funding research and technology (particularly for military purpose and particularly through universities), has an integral involvement with the concept of the falling rate of profit, thus producing a theory of marxism that is substantially different from Marx's original idea The definition of Marxism has advanced from orthodox marxism to include ethical considerations. And there are more complex arguments raised by Habermas. Indeed, David Held writes that Habermas came to argue Marxism to be inadequate as an explanation for crisis tendencies in capitalism. Marxism provided a foundation, but it needed to be substantially revised. Marxism as a theory was inadequate because Marx's framework was too reductionist, it reduced human action to instrumental action. Habermas proposes 'communicative action' as of equal weight with instrumental action:
Marx does not actually explicate the interrelationship of interaction and labour, but instead, under the unspecific title of social praxis, reduces the one to the other, namely communicative action to instrumental action … the productive activity (p. 268)
The first model proposed by Barrow is "plain Marxism." In this category, the state is an instrument of class domination where the state serves the class in power and the main administrative functions of the state including the education system serve the bourgeoisie. By extension, the explanation for the emergence of the 'welfare state' in relation to this explanation is an attempt by the capitalist class to undermine working class politicization or 'corporate liberalism.'
Barrow's second model is "neo-Marxism." In this category the state mediates class conflict by regulating the conflict through welfare programs. In this category welfare policies silence workers with incentives and also leave the state in a position to facilitate capitalism. The third model bridges neo-Marxism and post-Marxism. It is "derivationist" theory where the state provides the infrastructure that capitalism needs as well as asserting the legal framework required through private property law. On this model, the welfare state is explained as the failure of capitalism to produce a stable economic system.
The forth category is the systems-analytic:
This particular type of post-Marxism argues that welfare states must simultaneously promote capital accumulation and maintain democratic legitimacy. Therefore, to the extent that these dual systemic imperatives are often mutually contradictory, the state emerges as an increasingly incoherent institutional matrix that necessarily generates a steady stream of policy failures. In failing to perform its functions adequately, the state is seen as tending toward a multiplicity of potential crises. (p. 8)
In the fifth model described by Barrow, organizational realism, a model defined in large part by the work of Theda Skocpol, the state is an entity that exists outside the confines of capitalism. It does this through territory and the military and the control of people and resources. The welfare state is explained in this model as opportunistic state control of people during times of crises and includes taking control of resources from the capitalists.
Looking at the Marxism as it was deployed following its invention in 1860s as a response to the industrial revolution, plain Marxism, was a product of clear class lines between the capitalists and workers. As technological innovation followed and provided support to the First and Second World Wars, the workers in North America began to counter exploitation (in Canada we think of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike setting a new pattern) and forced the Barrow model as described to shift toward neo-Marxism. With the depression (a consequence of lack of state regulation on capitalism) and the need to build an economic system using the human capital that was available after extensive WWII loss of human capital, the derivationist model was applicable particularly in North America where the state provided legal and infrastructural supports to capitalists. In this category we think of the building of railways, roads and schools, and stringing of telephone and electricity lines (in Canada these activities escalating exponentially post-war) to support capitalistic growth.
As we move to the fourth category, the defining of the 'welfare state' as a category resulting out of state failure, appears according to the literature early 1970s to facilitate the competing interests of capitalism and state legitimation, overtakes the 1990s and early 21st century Marxist theory. Barrow's model indicates a progression, the category of systems-analytic underlines what Barrow argues is inevitably a product of crises, state retraction from intervention toward a reindorsement of neo-classical liberalism, leaving the market free from state intervention and regulation. The consequence to such a shift is the loss of state legitimation. Barrow writes that the Reagan/Thatcher period proves the systems-analytic weak as a model because no state legitimation was lost, instead fear likely operated to strengthen the state apparatus, justify its neo-liberal shift to welfare state reduction.
The fact is that systems analysts failed to anticipate or to understand the degree to which normative loyalty is attached to political myths, national symbols, and rituals of participation which in principle are unrelated to fiscal considerations. Hence, crisis theory failed dramatically in not being able to anticipate the way that neoconservatives have redefined the rules of legitimacy by invoking symbolic myths that explicitly discount the state's responsibility for economic growth, individual well-being, and distributive justice.
Another factor during the 1990s is “globalization” the loss of western industry to the Pacific Rim and the exploding of the notion of states as “closed systems.” Writes Barrow,
…those systems analysts who concentrated on the dynamics of late capitalist societies, such as Offe and Habermas, were unable to anticipate the immense structural leverage that capital would achieve over labour and the state through globalization and international capital mobility. The threat of international relocation has provided multinational capitalists with enormous leverage to exert downward pressure on wages and social expenses by fleeing the high wage-high tax metropoles, thus utilizing the power-generating capacities of an international labour market to render the metropolitan working classes more dependent on capital for access to national or local labor markets. Over the long run, it is entirely possible that any legitimation deficits stemming from globalization and welfare rollbacks will give way to popular acquiescence and a heightened sense of dependency….In summary, the welfare state has shown a much greater capacity to shed its fiscal and administrative ballast than was expected by systems-analytic crisis theory. (p. 122)
But considered in light of the 2008 market crash (this crash has its roots in the type of deregulation begun under Reagan and Thatcher), the value of systems-analytic as a theoretical model is restored as a legitimate theory. According to the systems-analytic, policy inputs into one subsystem (there are three – political, economic and socialization) result in an output into another. Under Reagan and Thatcher, the input was in the economic and political subsystems and a reduction in state regulation. The output was loss of policy in the social system, and a decline in state legitimation. According to the theory the state’s involvement in capital accumulation conflicts with policies involving state legitimation such as those found within a welfare structured system working in concert with other social systems such as public education. But, economic and political inputs emptied the socialization subsystem so we should see such “emptying” addressed in mediating policy arenas such as public education policies. The public education policy is likely to express either as propaganda to obscure policy failure (evidence of “failure”), or hand-wringing, short-term fixes, as evidence of crises. Reagan-Thatcher-nomics is countered with the market crash of 2008 following lack of regulation of the banks and investment firms on the part of government in the 1980s. In public education commission reports we see in the 1980s document the roll-back of funding due to economic crises, with an increase in 1990s in legitimation and/or ideological responses.
No comments:
Post a Comment