Interrogations #1 with Eow Comments Sociology 924 Session 2: Class-analytic Approaches to the State State Power and State Apparatus

In his book What Does the Ruling Class Do When it Rules?, Goran Therborn draws the distinction, following Nicos Poulantzas, between state power and the state apparatus. Furthermore, he defines state power as " a relation between social class forces expressed in the content of state policies, " and says that it " is exercised through the state apparatus, or more precisely, through a system of state apparatuses " (pp. 34-35). My memo will take a closer look at these concepts. My guess is that the idea of the state as a social relation is intended to follow Marx's idea that capital is a social relation, and more generally that classes are social relations. Social relations are " relations of production " that persons enter into " independent of their will " rather than immutable properties of individuals. [A small terminological point here: I wouldn't say that social relations per se are " relations of production ". Relations of production are a specific type of social relation – gender relations are also social relations of production, for example.] For example, only under capitalism do we observe privatized and commodified means of production and commodified labor power. We can give social relations a greater degree of precision by using legal terminology to define class boundaries across different modes of production. (I believe Erik Wright does this in a recent essay.) For example, capitalists enjoy near exclusive control over their means of production, including rights to sell, purchase, use, and enjoy profits from them. But capitalists don't have rights to own labor power— labor, yes, but labor power, no [another minor technical point: capitalists don't exactly " own " labor – except maybe their own labor. They have rights of control over labor, but they don't own it] —since this would constitute indentured servitude or slavery. On the other hand, under feudalism, merchants were often subject to arbitrary exactions and rules promulgated by the noble classes, and did not enjoy the full range of rights and powers over their goods as do modern capitalists. Likewise, serfs could not fully and freely dispose of their labor power, like modern day workers, but were obligated to perform labor or pay fees and taxes to their noble superiors purely by virtue of their status rather than by virtue of " freely " contracted agreements. This is a long way of saying that these social relations, …