MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

The Democracy That Never Was

A Critique of Liberal Democracy

Gary Teeple
Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
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 Gary Teeple

The Democracy That

Never Was
A Critique of Liberal Democracy
Gary Teeple
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC, Canada

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 Preface: Why This Book?

There is no shortage of books and articles on ‘the crisis of democracy’ and

even on ‘the end of democracy.’ Some authors are preoccupied with recur-
ring and seemingly irresolvable dilemmas of democracy,1 some are search-
ing for an imagined democratic past,2 and some yearn for a return to the
postwar welfare state, while others are concerned about a future of grow-
ing authoritarianism. A history of such diagnoses, dreams, and disquiet
from the early twentieth century to the present could probably be written.
To add, then, another book to these many reviews of the apparent dilem-
mas of liberal democracy needs justification.
Although these crises and problems have been widely acknowledged
and debated, one reason for yet another analysis is that there is still little
agreement on what democracy is, what makes its history so crisis-ridden,
and why since the mid-twentieth century so many democratic states have

1
R. Graf, “Either-Or: The Narrative of ‘Crisis’ in Weimar Germany and in Historiography,”
Central European History, Vol. 43, 2010 (592–615); C. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary
Democracy, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985; Cram, R. A., The End of Democracy,
Marshall Jones Company, 1937 (https://archive.org/details/cram-r.-a.-the-end-of-democ-
racy-1937/page/n5/mode/2up); M. Crozier, S. P. Huntington, J. Watanuki, The Crisis of
Democracy: Report on The Governability of Democracies, 1975; C. Schmitt, The Crisis of
Parliamentary Democracy, The MIT Press 1988 (1923);
2
A. Huq and T. Ginsburg, How To Save a Constitutional Democracy, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2018;
A. Huq and T. Ginsburg, “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy,” UCLA Law Review
2018 https://www.democratic-erosion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Huq-and-
Ginsberg-2018.pdf; D. Hand, The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for
Media Reform, London: Verso, 2012;

v
vi PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK?

joined supranational treaties and trade agreements that usurp their national
role and authority.3 The analysis offered here, it is hoped, will help to
explain the meaning of liberal democracy and its current seemingly world-
wide self-dissolution.
Liberal democracy appears at present to be a political form that has run
its course, a form whose content has moved to the regional and global
levels where it has created new ruling agencies. The expansion of capital,
in other words, for which national and even regional markets are now too
small, has left the liberal democratic form with no rationale for further
development, except to serve as a national political adjunct to transna-
tional corporations.4 Liberal democracies, as depicted in their constitu-
tions, have lost their national economic foundation, and their historical
role is being transformed. The end of a long period during which liberal
democracy developed and became the reigning ideal of political rule over
a national jurisdiction has arrived. The global economy has transcended
the system of national states and made liberal democracy increasingly
impotent, a pretence of national rule.5
Its citizens implicitly understand this changed role, revealed in perva-
sive political disillusionment, decreasing electoral participation, waning

3
Regional unelected ‘governments’ exist at many levels, see for instance: the European
Union (EU), BRICS, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Southern Common
Market (Mercosur), African Union (AU), East Asian Economic Union (EAEU); and global
agencies and institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World
Trade Organization, and other global treaties like the Charter Treaty. All clearly undermine
national sovereignty. (BRICS is the acronym formed by the first letter of its founding mem-
bers: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Although recently established, it is a
fast-growing economic bloc acting as an alternative to the G7 and the so-called Rules-Based
International Order (RBIO).
4
This is the significance of neoliberalism: policies crafted at the global level by and for
transnational corporations and imposed by global agencies on national governments, leaving
little alternative other than adoption or economic isolation.
5
Member states of the European Union, for instance, have abandoned much of their
autonomy to the European Union. The NATO nations, South Korea, and Japan have relin-
quished much of their military and foreign policy, not to mention economic independence
to American demands. National monetary policy was given to independent central banks
long ago, and their policies are tied to the Bank of International Settlement (BIS), which is
overseen by representatives of capital. Overall, global production chains and capital move-
ments dominated by corporate cartels or oligopolies prevail as the universal frame for politi-
cal activity.
 PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK? vii

legitimacy, and massive wide-spread extra-parliamentary demonstrations.6

And this transformation of the state has required ever greater measures of
deceit from corporate-owned media and political leaders, increased use of
coercive social control such as militarized police, pervasive electronic
surveillance,7 government authorized news censorship and persecution of
journalists, and state violations of national and international law.8 The
political turmoil of the early decades of the twenty-first century has left
most analyses of democracy in a state of disarray, and created another rea-
son for further analysis.
Liberal democracy, moreover, is usually treated as an independent vari-
able, unrelated to the mode of production it serves, and presented as an
ideal form of governing accountable only to an electorate. If this is true,
how do we account for the persistent and widespread popular dissent from
state policies9 and the numerous violations of the principles and practice of
liberal democracy by the state itself? The history of liberal democracy is

6
The growth of extra-parliamentary demonstrations, namely, farmers’ and truckers’ block-
ades, workers’ strikes, anti-war demonstrations have been greater than any other period since
World War II.
“Researchers have defined an unprecedented global wave of more than 12,500 protests
across 148 countries over food, fuel and cost of living increases in 2022. And the largest were
in Western Europe.” S. Savage, “Protests over food and fuel surged in 2022 – the biggest
were in Europe,” Politico, January 17, 2023.
https://www.politico.eu/article/energy-crisis-food-and-fuel-protests-surged-in-
2022-the-biggest-were-in-europe/; I. Ortiz, S. Burke, M. Berrada, H. S. Cortes, World
Protests: A Study of Key Protests in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022; D. Imig,
“Contestation in the Streets: European Protest and the Emerging Euro-Polity,” Comparative
Political Studies, Vol. 35, No. 8, October 2002, (914–933); E. Bush and P. Simi (eds.),
Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity, Oxford: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2001.
7
S. Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, New York: Public Affairs Books, 2019;
E. D. Cohen, Mass Surveillance and State Control. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2010.
8
Phillipe Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules,
Allen Lane, 2005. See also footnote 10 below.
9
On 15 February 2003, the world witnessed the largest protest to date against liberal
democracies making war on Iraq on the basis of lies and obvious fabrications. See: “The
Largest Protest Ever Was 15 Years Ago. The Iraq War Isn’t Over. What Happened?”
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-to-the-antiwar-movement_n_5a
860940e4b00bc49f424ecb]; according to the BBC “between six and ten million people
took part in protest in up to sixty countries over the weekend of 15 and 16 February.”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February 2003 anti-war protests]. See also: S Rampton
and J. Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq,
New York: Penguin, 2003.
viii PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK?

comprised of these conflicts and changes, and they call for explanation that
can only come by analysis of the influences outside the political institu-
tions and their formal processes. Cast as the political forms of a content
that lies in an ever-changing civil society, as analysed here, liberal democra-
cies appear different from what their formalities would suggest.
But why a critique of the principles and institutions of liberal democ-
racy as offered in this book? Most assessments of liberal democracies
assume that their constitutions contain the fundamentals of democracy
itself. If they are corrupted, it is believed that at one time they performed
as constitutionally laid out and that there was genuine democracy before
politicians or state officials or corporate demands or criminal organizations
or other nefarious forces prevented its proper functioning. Corruption is
usually treated as a product of dishonest individuals or corporations and
not as part of the very structure of liberal democracy, reflecting its premise
in the contradictions of the marketplace.10 The assumption that liberal
democratic principles are above questioning and have a universal and per-
manent validity prevents or skews a critical analysis of the institution itself
and allows for continuous hope for reform as a solution to its enduring
corruption and perennial crises.
The argument in this book is that the absolutes of liberal democracy
were never anything but the abstracted principles of the marketplace,
appearing in different political/legal forms that reflected the changing
structure of national capital. This premise of democracy has now become
visible for what it was because the original premise as the development of
national capital has changed, leaving liberal democracies as forms without
their original content, but rather a content that no longer reflects a national
jurisdiction. As a political form, liberal democracy persists, but its role has
changed from the regulation of national capital accumulation to the enforcer
of the demands of global configurations of capital and their agencies.
The overarching function of liberal democracy, in all its forms, has
always been to defend the prevailing property relations and to ensure that
the total social product was divided in accordance with those relations.
Unequal and exploitative relations based on corporate private property,
which define modern liberal democracy, require forms of social control
that are both constitutional and extra-legal and coercive. Liberal

10
Most studies of political corruption avoid analyzing the structure of liberal democracy as
the political platform for competing sectors of corporate capital to contend the use of the
state as necessary to advance capital accumulation.
 PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK? ix

democracy has provided both: when the formalities of the political mas-
querade have failed, the police or military have been ever-present. How
liberal democracy reflects the prevailing property relations and provides a
certain legitimacy to the veiled coercive extraction of surplus from the
majority are central to our argument.
This is the democracy that never was: what is understood as a form of
government fairly elected as a democratic expression of a civil society com-
prised of atomized and abstractly equal individuals has only ever been a
form of government whose history has been a series of conflicts within and
between classes. It has always been a political form for the containment of
these struggles while allowing them to persist as essential to the system.
And for these tasks, there were always two categorical, albeit implicit, pre-
requisites for its existence: first, the class representing the prevailing prop-
erty forms would always dominate politically, and second, the contradictions
of capitalist property relations on which the system has depended would
be deemed natural and normal, even sacrosanct, their possible resolution
dismissed as impossible, and their supplanting deemed criminal or
subversive.
By the late twentieth century, the process of capital accumulation had
moved to the global arena, leaving the jurisdiction of national states, and
obliging liberal democracies to abandon national policies.11 The result has
been to produce widespread political cynicism and disillusionment. In
response, since the 1980s, there have been many proposals made to recon-
stitute liberal democracy at the global level,12 but such prospects are prob-
lematic given that this political system was predicated on competitive
national capital and labour markets, and a nationally defined electorate
persuaded that the periodic casting of a ballot for candidates already cho-
sen within a national jurisdiction amounted to democracy. As the limited
national social reforms won after decades of struggle have been

11
Even the policies of the US and EU are the policies of global capital, albeit dominated
by nominally American (and European) corporations, providing the illusion of national
interests.
12
For a review of theories and bibliographies on global democracy to the end of the twen-
tieth century, see: Barry Holden (ed.), Global Democracy: Key Debates, London: Taylor and
Francis Group. 2000; for a review of more recent theories see: Jonathan Kuyper, “Global
Democracy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/global-democ-
racy/>. See also: H. Patomaki, “A World Political Party: The Time Has Come,” GTI website
2019, < https://greattransition.org/publication/world-political-party >.
x PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK?

systematically retrenched, such a belief has become increasingly untenable.

With the corporate capture of liberal democracies,13 or the pervasive priva-
tization of the public sphere, and the breakdown of the system of interna-
tional law and treaties once by and large respected, the decline of the era
of liberal democracy is increasingly too obvious to deny.14 Given the cur-
rent state of the global political economy, a credible case for establishing
liberal democracy at the global arena would appear to be far-fetched.
Because politics is the relation between state and civil society (Chap. 3)
and because the modern state cannot be more completely divided into
these two separate spheres, the modern liberal democratic state represents
the coming completion of politics. In other words, further possible devel-
opment of political relations is possible only where there has not been a
complete development. One example would be constitutional monarchies
in which a monarch has retained a claim to sovereignty, however circum-
scribed, and another with governments where the ‘second chamber’ of the
legislature and/or the judiciary remain unelected, and where the central
bank has been granted overarching independent powers over finan-
cial policy.
With this near completion, the current state of liberal democracy sig-
nals the approaching end of its development. There can be no return,
moreover, to the past welfare state compromise because the requisite con-
ditions found in the post-World War II era are no more; there can be no
resurrection of meaningful national policies because capital has gone
global and is marked by globe-spanning production and distribution
chains; and there are no significant and largely independent military forces,
except for the United States, Russia, and China because most of the rest,
including all the industrial capitalist nations, are tethered by military trea-
ties and procurement agreements.15
13
M. A. Manahan and M. Kumar, The Great Takeover: An Introduction to Multi-Sectoral
Mapping of Multistakeholderism in Global Governance, Amsterdam 2021; S. S. Whitehouse,
Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy, New York: The New
Press, 2017.
14
N. Deller, A. Makhijani, J. Burroughs, Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of
U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, New York: The Apex Press,
2003; P. Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, Allen
Lane, 2005.
15
B. Watson, ‘Mapped: America’s Collective and Defense Agreements’ in Defense One,
February 3, 2017.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/02/mapped-americas-collective-defense-
agreements/135114/.
 PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK? xi

Given this state of affairs, it is possible to argue that the long struggle
by national working classes for the right to vote, to stand for elections, and
to petition the government has been realized. What was won, however,
was not what was sought but was instead liberal democracy, a begrudging
political and economic compromise, concessions from national capital,
now being exposed for what it was and remains. This accommodation,
however, was all that was possible for the working class in a capitalist sys-
tem because class conflict has been institutionalized,16 its essential interests
have been confined largely to debates in the political domain, and its
struggles hampered by its stratified nature, which meant part of it could
find satisfaction in a merely reasonable standard of living. It was the best
that could be achieved under capitalism. While liberal democracies still
seem to be accompanied by an acceptable standard of living for large num-
bers across the globe, they cannot resolve the destructive wars amongst
themselves or against the environment, or the chronically falling living-­
standards that can no longer be mitigated. And they cannot change from
a form of government for capital to one providing for the active participa-
tion of the people.
This book is an attempt to grasp the many paradoxes of liberal democ-
racies by mounting a critique of the hidden contradictions found in the
principles and institutions that characterize their constitutions, and by
analysing the changing nature of the class conflicts in civil society, the
foundation of all political systems. It is an attempt to contribute to the
critique of liberal democracy by showing that liberal democracy was never
and could never be what it pretended to be.

Vancouver, Canada Gary Teeple

Bibliography
Bush, E., and P. Simi (eds.), Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an
Emerging Polity, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Cohen, E. D., Mass Surveillance and State Control. Palgrave Macmillan,
New York 2010.

16
This institutionalization of class conflict is, as in all nations, a patch-work product of
many years of the legalization of trade unions, regulations for the workplace, labour codes
for collective bargaining and striking, wage minimums, the legal limits to the working day,
and so on. See: A. Lo Faro, C. Heath, L. Petit, Regulating Social Europe: Reality and Myth
of Collective Bargaining in the EC Legal Order, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000.
xii Preface: Why This Book?

Cram, R. A., The End of Democracy, Marshall Jones Company, 1937 (https://
archive.org/details/cram-­r.-­a .-­t he-­e nd-­o f-­d emocracy-­1 937/page/n5/
mode/2up);
Crozier, M., S. P. Huntington, J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on The
Governability of Democracies, 1975.
Deller, N., A. Makhijani, J. Burroughs, Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment
of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, New York: The
Apex Press, 2003.
Graf, R., “Either-Or: The Narrative of ‘Crisis’ in Weimar Germany and in
Historiography,” Central European History, Vol. 43, 2010 (592–615).
Hand, D., The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for Media
Reform, London: Verso, 2012.
Holden, B., (ed.), Global Democracy: Key Debates, London: Taylor and Francis
Group. 2000.
Huq, A., and T. Ginsburg, How To Save a Constitutional Democracy, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Huq, A., and T. Ginsburg, “How to Lose a Constitutional Democracy,” UCLA
Law Review 2018 https://www.democratic-­erosion.com/wp-­content/
uploads/2018/03/Huq-­and-­Ginsberg-­2018.pdf.
Imig, D., “Contestation in the Streets: European Protest and the Emerging Euro-
Polity,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 35, No. 8, October 2002,
(914–933).
Kuyper, J., “Global Democracy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter
2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
win2016/entries/global-­democracy/.
Lo Faro, A., C. Heath, L. Petit, Regulating Social Europe: Reality and Myth of
Collective Bargaining in the EC Legal Order, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000.
Manahan, M. A. and M. Kumar, The Great Takeover: An Introduction to Multi-
Sectoral Mapping of Multistakeholderism in Global Governance, Amsterdam 2021.
Ortiz, I., S. Burke, M. Berrada, H. S. Cortes, World Protests: A Study of Key Protests
in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Patomaki, H., “A World Political Party: The Time Has Come,” GTI website
2019, <https://greattransition.org/publication/world-political-party>.
Rampton, S., and J. Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in
Bush’s War on Iraq, New York: Penguin, 2003.
Sands, P., Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules,
Allen Lane, 2005.
Savage, S., “Protests over food and fuel surged in 2022 – the biggest were
in Europe,’ Politico, January 17, 2023. https://www.politico.eu/arti-
cle/energy-­c risis-­f ood-­a nd-­f uel-­p rotests-­s urged-­i n-­2 022-­t he-­b iggest-­
were-­in-­europe/;
 Preface: Why This Book? xiii

Schmitt, C., The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press, 1985 (1923);
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in Defense One, February 3, 2017. https://www.defenseone.com/
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Books, 2019.
 Acknowledgements

The completion of a work such as this brings one last task, and the most
gratifying, and that is to thank all those whose knowledge and friendship
and willingness to debate or listen made contributions to the outcome.
The author’s name represents more a large array of influences too numer-
ous to count than the result of the solitary labours of one author. Not that
these many contributors are responsible for the arguments that follow, but
they must know that they had a hand in producing whatever merits the
book may have.
Much of the text is the product of many years of lecturing on the sub-
ject, and numerous students during that time offered critical comments,
pointed questions, and interesting examples, and in the process helped to
produce better and clearer arguments. This book, however, would not
have appeared without the suggestion from Paula Rauhala that I submit a
proposal to Palgrave, and her critical comments on some early chapters
helped make it a more cogent work. Several people read the entire manu-
script and made valuable comments. A more even-handed and incisive
critic than Steve McBride I cannot imagine; he has been a friend and col-
laborator, a consummate diplomat, and a willing debater for many years.
Mohammad Ferdosi read the entire text and provided insightful criticisms,
perceptive comments, and thoughtful suggestions that were more than
helpful and gave me pause many times. Joel Warren read early drafts of the
chapters and provided a keen critical eye on their strengths and weak-
nesses. John Malcolmson also read many of the first chapters and gave his
time for valuable discussions about the arguments. Morgan Young also
read the full draft, provided an editor’s astute eye on the writing, and

xv
xvi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

made many penetrating comments that always went to the heart of the
arguments.
Marcello Musto, one of the editors of the Marx series at Palgrave/
Macmillan, was encouraging from the beginning; both Marcello and
Terrell Carver, co-editors of the series of which this book is a part, were
supportive of the initial proposal; I hope that this book adds to the quality
of their series. Antony Sami, production editor, politely and patiently pro-
vided constant reminders of my many missed deadlines; they kept me
focused over the three years of research and writing, and I thank him for
that. The comments from anonymous readers were reflective and discern-
ing, and I have tried to integrate their suggestions.
Galina Martyniouk was a combined critic, debater, and loving compan-
ion through the entire process. We engaged in many discussions about the
topics covered in the book. She challenged many ideas, forced me to clar-
ify arguments, and provided support when the research and writing fal-
tered. Her thoughtful comments and unwavering affection have left a
positive mark on this book and its author.

Vancouver Gary Teeple

August 2024
 Contents

1 Introduction: Definition of the Problem, Outline

of the Argument  1

2 Politics: The Problem of Definition 31

3 The Meaning of Politics 65

4 The Origin of the Modern State or the Transition from

Feudalism to Capitalism 91

5 Human Rights and Private Property155

6 The Constitution217

7 The Executive267

8 The Legislature325

9 The Law and Judiciary349

10 Suffrage and Citizenship419

xvii
xviii Contents

11 Political Parties: The Bridge Between State

and Civil Society449

12 Politics and Religion489

13 The Completion of Politics and the End of Liberal

Democracy525

Index533
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Definition of the Problem,

Outline of the Argument

Definition of the Problem

The fundamental principles and institutions of modern liberal democracy
arose for the most part during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries out of the conflict between persisting monarchies and rising capitalist
classes. They were the political forms whose content lay in the property
relations of the incipient capitalist mode of production, and whose struc-
tures allowed different sectors of capital to compete for power over public
policy and purse. They amounted to a shift in political power from abso-
lute monarchies to representatives of capital.
In the nineteenth century the struggles of the rising working classes
forced the expansion of political participation by winning universal enfran-
chisement and modest social reforms.1 These class struggles also gave rise
to changes in the form and principles of governance, resulting in institu-
tional structures designed to accommodate and restrict the continuing
conflict between sectors of capital, and capital and labour, within legal
boundaries.

1
H. Mitchell and P. N. Stearns, The European Labor Movement and the Origins of Social
Democracy 1890–1914, Itasca, Illinois: F. E. Peacock Publishers 1972; A. Przeworski, “Social
Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon,” New Left Review, 1/122, July/August 1980;
G. Benedetto, S. Hix, N. Mastrorocco, “The Rise and Fall of Social Democracy, 1918–2017,”
American Political Science Review, Vol. 114, Issue 3, 2020 (928–939).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_1
2 G. TEEPLE

It has never been a harmonious resolution or a peace accord between

equals, but closer to a supervised armistice or ceasefire. It is a political
form devised to contain a dynamic content of discord, but more impor-
tantly, a conflict in which one party, the working class, has no vested inter-
est in the system: it exists to create wealth not to enjoy its benefits. It is
when these underlying frictions are difficult to contain, when the content
threatens to overwhelm the form, that the many crises of democracy appear.
In the aftermath of World War I, this discord divided the politics of
most of the world into liberal democracies and the state socialism of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a new political form that was
implied in the struggle for universal suffrage. By the early 1920s the impact
of the Bolshevik Revolution on these liberal democracies, both at home
and in the colonies, gave new life to class and anti-colonial struggles that
defined them. If liberal democracy allowed for contending classes to vie
for political power over the distribution of the social product, a depressed
economy would increase conflicting demands for more from each side,
capital and labour. The difficult postwar economic conditions and the
Great Depression of the 1930s presented this very challenge to the
begrudging compromise that was liberal democracy. To maintain the sys-
tem, governments had few options but to favour the corporate sector,
while to retain systemic legitimacy the working class had to be placated or
suppressed.2 To achieve this political conjuring, two different routes were
followed.
One of the attempted solutions was to abandon liberal democracy and
promote forms of arbitrary rule under the banner of the ‘nation.’ And one
of the first of such moves was in Italy with Mussolini and his National
Fascist Party, which engineered a coup d’état in 1922. Similar conditions
during the economic depression of the 1930s led to coups in Germany in
1933, in Spain in 1936, and in Japan in 1937 when the government
assumed absolute powers and later in 1940 disbanded all political parties.
Although in other Western democracies there were many fascist sympa-
thizers amongst the corporate, political, and state officials during this
period, these nations opted to dampen the class conflict of the period with
a different solution, namely, modest social reforms. In the United States,
the New Deal of 1933, and later similar efforts in France, Britain, and

2
This was one of the reasons for the crisis in liberal democracies mentioned by J. Schumpeter
in his well-known article; see: J. Schumpeter, ‘The Crisis of the Tax State,’ International
Economic Papers n. 4, 1954 (1918).
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 3

Canada, were early expressions of such reforms, helping to save these

­liberal democracies from the turn to fascism.3
After World War II, the defeated Axis powers—Italy, (West) Germany,
and Japan—were politically reconstituted as liberal democracies. The post-
war conditions did not leave much choice given the revealed horrors of
German and Japanese dictatorships, the radicalizing effects of the war
effort on both soldiers and civilians, the dominant role played by the
Soviet forces in defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in China,4
and the then positive impression of the USSR around the world. The eco-
nomic and social conditions at the time created the necessity to re-­establish
liberal democracy for the class compromise that it was.
But liberal democracy in the industrial nations did not mean liberal
democracy in the colonies of Britain, France, Belgium, or the Netherlands,5
and so after the defeat of the Axis nations, there began about two decades
of more war pursued by the liberal democracies, considerably aided, and
in some cases led, by the United States, against their colonial subjects who
were demanding democracy or, in many cases, socialism. Liberal democ-
racy in the industrial nations sought to suppress the democratic aspirations
of their colonial subjects. But more than this, liberal democracy, especially
that of the United States, was destroying attempts to create liberal democ-
racy that arose after 1945. Among the best known were French Indochina
in 1946, Malaysia in 1948, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo in
1960, Cuba in 1961, Brazil in 1964, Dominican Republic in 1965,
Indonesia in 1965, Ghana in 1966, Greece in 1967, Chile in 1973, and
Argentina in 1976. These were but some of the US interventions in the
postwar era to oppose attempts to establish different forms of democratic
government and national not colonial economies.6 Liberal democracy was

3
It must be pointed out, however, that the social reforms of the Nazis in the 1930s were
in part not so different from the reforms adopted in the USA. See: K. K. Patel, Soldiers of
Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America 1933–1945, Cambridge
University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139052399; K. K. Patel, The
New Deal: A Global History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. https://doi.
org/10.1515/9781400873623; R. Lubove, ‘Economic Security and Social Conflict in
America: The Early Twentieth Century, Part II,’ Journal of Social History, Vol. 1, No. 4,
325–350.
4
J.J. Stephan, “The USSR and the Defeat of Imperial Japan, 1945,” Soviet Studies in
History, Vol. 24, Issue 3, 1985, (3–25).
5
Not to mention Spain and Portugal, but at the time they were not liberal democracies.
6
Blum, W., Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,
Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998; Blum, W., Rogue State, Monroe: Common Courage
4 G. TEEPLE

leading the way in countering or destroying existing liberal democracy and

the struggle for it. Yet more, the liberal democracies of the industrial
nations also took initiatives to create or support dictatorships wherever
there was a chance of democracy or socialism that spelt national indepen-
dence or socialized capital.7
From 1945 to the early 1970s, while many wars were taking place and
dictatorships were established, the working classes of the industrial nations
were demanding better wages and more social reforms. Because they had
won universal suffrage and industrial production and global trade were
expanding, wages and social reforms could be improved year after year.
The growing acquisition of material wealth for the majority seemed end-
less, and hope in the future was widespread. In the industrial nations, this
postwar era was probably the most secure and materially beneficial in
modern history for wage and salaried workers.
But all was not well. By the early 1960s, Keynesianism, the widely held
economic theory that underlay the postwar recovery and the welfare state,
came under attack by a counter-movement labelled monetarism to pro-
mote laissez-faire capitalism as the foundation of democracy.8 Less than a
decade later, the US Chamber of Commerce sought to combine practical
urgency with monetarist ideas by commissioning a report on the growing
political instability and loss of legitimacy by the US government due to its
prosecution of the war in Vietnam. The Powell Report was not merely an
enthusiastic defence of free enterprise, but a set of recommendations for
corporate control of the political system.9
Two years later in 1973, the newly formed Trilateral Commission under
the direction of David Rockefeller, commissioned a study of liberal

Press, 2000; McGowan, D., Derailing Democracy, Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2000;
Chomsky, N., Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991.
7
J.J. Kirkpatrick, ‘Dictatorships and Double Standards,’ Commentary, November 1979. It
is worth noting that the ideas in this influential article arguing in favour of dictatorships
remain current in American foreign policy. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/arti-
cles/jeane-kirkpatrick/dictatorships-double-standards/ (13/4/21); R. Whitney, ‘US
Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships,’ Truthout, 23 September
2017 (https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistance-to-73-percent-of-
world-s-dictatorships/) (13/4/21).
8
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
9
L. F. Powell, ‘Confidential Memo: Attack on American Free Enterprise System,’ 1971,
Greenpeace, The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy,
[https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-
blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/].
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 5

democracy in Japan, Europe, and the United States.10 In this report, three
social scientists reviewed the state of democracy and associated rights in
the industrial nations from a strikingly instrumental point of view: democ-
racy and human rights were seen not as ends in themselves but as the
means to an end, and that end was patently corporate interests. The prob-
lem, as they saw it, was that there was ‘too much democracy,’ a conclusion
drawn because the demands for ever higher wages and more social reforms
in the late 1960s and early 1970s were encroaching on the share of the
total social product that capital needed to continue to expand. The com-
promise that was liberal democracy in the postwar era was allowing the
working classes to advance their interests and increase their share of the
total social product, which increasingly became problematic for capital.
Among the conclusions of the report was a list of suggested government
policies to dampen working-class political leverage, much of which can be
classified as privatization of state enterprises, deregulation of economic
controls, and retrenchment of the welfare state. These were to become the
fundamentals of neoliberal policies that were gradually adopted by gov-
ernments in all the industrial nations during the 1980s.11
If the 1980s were the beginning of neoliberalism in the West, it was
also a decisive decade for the USSR. After World War II, the rapid expan-
sion of mass production of consumer goods and relative prosperity of the
working class in the West made the postwar recovery of the USSR, which
had suffered the main impact of the war, appear to be slow and inade-
quate, especially for the postwar generation. With the death of Stalin in
1953, a more open window to the West was allowed. A string of older
leaders drawn from the ruling party hierarchy, however, provided few new
initiatives, and a growing cynicism in the USSR about ‘socialism,’ predi-
cated on the ‘dead weight’ of a governing bureaucracy spread throughout
Soviet society. The questioning of socialism and a desire for the ‘freedom’
of the West was promoted by unrelenting ideological pressure from the
West about ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy.’12

10
Crozier, M., S.P. Huntington, J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: report on the govern-
ability of democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University
Press, 1975.
11
Sklar, H. (ed.), Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World
Management, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980.
12
R. Brier, ‘Beyond the “Helsinki Effect”: East European Dissent and the Western Left in
the “Long 1970s,”’ in P. Villaume, R. Mariager, H. Porosdam (eds.), The ‘Long 1970s’:
Human Rights East-West Détente and Transnational Relations, London: Routledge, 2016,
6 G. TEEPLE

Along with these developments, there grew internal arguments that the
solution to a perceived stagnant economy lay in more market reforms,
from which incipient experiments many factory managers and state and
party officials benefited. When Mikhail Gorbachev (USSR President from
1985 to 1991) proposed in 1986 the policies of ‘glasnost’ (political liber-
alization) and ‘perestroika’ (market reforms), he was following trends
already in motion,13 albeit not without criticism. These policies helped to
precipitate the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. By 1992, the 15
republics that made up the USSR were independently establishing their
own political systems, re-writing their constitutions with the assistance of
the European Council, and restructuring their economies with widespread
privatization and free-enterprise policies.
Soon after the dissolution of the USSR, Boris Yeltsin, the President of
Russia, the largest of the 15 republics, following the advice of American-­
trained advisors, introduced economic ‘shock therapy’ in 1992–1993 as
an ostensible means of transforming a socialized economy into a capitalist
one. Natural resource companies were sold at give-away prices, and money
laundering, tax evasion, offshore accounts, criminal activities of all sorts,
and widespread wage and pension theft quickly became the order of the
day. Capital was spirited out of the country, state industries sold off for
fractions of their worth, and the fate of the large state gold reserves of the
USSR was left an open question.14 Almost all the social programmes—
healthcare, daycare, pensions, artists’ salaries, ballet companies, orchestras,
music schools, and so on—were cut off from state support and the many
tens of thousands of artists and caregivers left to fend for themselves. The
social, cultural, and technological achievements of the USSR were, by and
large, lost in the scramble by the rich and privileged for the

71. See also: O. Bange and G. Niedhart (eds.), Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of
Europe. Berghahn Books 2008. These are two collections of articles on the centrality of the
Helsinki Accords to the fall of the USSR.
13
Bloomfield, J. (ed.), The Soviet Revolution: Perestroika and the remaking of socialism,
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989; D. Mandel, Perestroika and the Soviet People,
Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1991; M. Gorbachev, Perestroika, New Thinking for Our
Country and the World, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1987.
14
A. Cherniak, “Russia’s Gold,” Russian Politics and Law, Vol. 35, Issue 3, 1997 (35–45);
F. X. Clines, “Soviet Aide Asserts Gold Reserves Were Sold Off,” New York Times, November
24, 1991; Caden Wilcox, “The 1991 Project: November 13–19. Gold Reserves and
Monetary Power”.
https://sites.miamioh.edu/havighurst/2021/11/19/the-1991-project-november-
12-19-gold-reserves-and-monetary-power/.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 7

socialized wealth and associated power arbitrarily on offer. Numerous

­billionaires grew from the opportunism of the moment, while the majority
suffered the sudden and near-complete shutdown of the system.
The ‘shock therapy’ provided a near free-for-all for Western companies
and some Soviet-era officials, but at the enormous cost of extensive misery
for the people. The supposed economic ‘turn-around’ did not come; dur-
ing the Yeltsin years (1991–1999), Russia and the other independent for-
mer republics faced a massive shift in wealth from the state and working
classes to a few who quickly became economic oligarchs. For the rest,
more than a decade of poverty and hopelessness followed. The result of
the reforms to introduce liberal democracy led to widespread privatization
of state-owned companies and social programmes and to the subordina-
tion of the political to the economic. It brought the rule of the oli-
garchs, whose new wealth remains a legal question mark, the destruction
of the social, artistic, scientific, and technical achievements of the USSR,
and a precipitous fall in the general standard of living and the average
lifespan.15 This is how liberal democracy came to the Soviet people.
There is much more that could be added to this short survey of the his-
tory of liberal democracy, but it will suffice for our purposes simply to
mention some of the more well-known ‘inconsistencies’ of this political
form. Liberal democracy and its agencies, the preeminent shape of govern-
ment in the industrial nations, the high point of political development, the
and supposed meaning of democracy itself, has systematically resisted the
democratic aspirations of people everywhere. After World War II, it fought
long wars against colonized peoples,16 interfered widely in European
politics,17 carried out coups d’état to destroy existing liberal democracies
favouring nationalist or socialist goals,18 promoted dictatorships to advance
corporate interests,19 encouraged the militarization of police forces at

15
For an analysis of the collapse of the USSR and critique of the ‘shock therapy’ see:
D. Kotz and F. Weir, Revolution From Above, The Demise of the Soviet System, London:
Routledge, 1997.
16
N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism,
Boston: South End Press, 1979.
17
P. Agee and L. Wolf (eds.), Dirty Work: the CIA in Western Europe. London: Zed
Press, 1978.
18
S. Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Times
Books, 2006.
19
See Note 7.
8 G. TEEPLE

home and abroad,20 endorsed policies of torture,21 assassination,22 and

rendition,23 organized “death squads” for political ends,24 defended its
economic and political preeminence with hundreds of US military bases
around the world,25 promoted corporate control of mass media,26 actively

20
W. McElrath and S. Turberville, ‘Poisoning Our Police: How the Militarization Mindset
Threatens Constitutional Rights and Public Safety,’ POGO (Project on Government
Oversight), June 9, 2020; Julian Go, ‘The Imperial Origins of American Policing:
Militarization and Imperial Feedback in the Early 20th Century,’ American Journal of
Sociology, Vol. 125, No. 5, 2020; D. Meeks, ‘Police Militarization in Urban Areas: The
Obscure War Against the Underclass,’ The Black Scholar, Vol. 35, no. 4, Winter 2006
(33–41).
21
Human Rights Watch, ‘USA and Torture: A History of Hypocrisy.’ [https://www.hrw.
org/news/2014/12/09/usa-and-torture-history-hypocrisy]; Psychology Today (July 13,
2015) ‘Torture, APA, and the Hoffman Report: What Now?’ https://www.psychologyto-
day.com/.../torture-apa-and-the-hoffman-report-what-now; D. H. Hoffman, et al., The
Hoffman Report [https://www.apa.org/independent-review/revised-report.pdf], July
2, 2015;
The Economist (Jul 28, 2015): ‘How America’s Psychologists Ended Up Endorsing
Torture,’ [www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/.../terror-torture-and-
psycholo...]
K. Greenberg (ed.), The Torture Debate in America, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006; J. Harbury, Truth, Torture, and the American Way, Boston: Beacon Press, 2005;
A. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on
Terror, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.
22
B. M. Johnson, ‘Executive Order 12333: The Permissibility of an American Assassination
of a Foreign Leader,’ Cornell International Law Journal, Vol. 25, Issue 2, Spring 1992.
[http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cilj/vol25/iss2/6].
23
L. N. Sadat, ‘Ghost Prisoners and Black Sites: Extraordinary Rendition Under
International Law,’ Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 37, Issue 2&3,
2006 (309–342); S. Grey, Ghost Flight: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture
Program, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006; Human Rights Watch, ‘20 Years of US
Torture – and Counting: Global Costs of Unlawful Detention and Interrogation,’ January 9,
2022, [https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/09/20-years-us-torture-and-counting].
24
E.D. Cohen, “The American Death Squads,” in: E. D. Cohen, Mass Surveillance and
State Control. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2010.
25
D. Vine, Base Nation: How US Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World,
New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2015. (“They… undermine
American democratic ideals, pushing the U.S. into partnerships with dictators …They breed
sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local economies. And their financial
cost is staggering… the bill approaches $100 billion per year.”)
See also C. Lutz, The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S Military Posts,
London: Pluto Press, 2008.
26
H.I. Schiller, Culture Inc., The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1989; H.I. Schiller, Information and the Crisis Economy, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 9

prosecuted ‘whistle-blowers’ and investigative journalists,27 rigged

elections,28 broke international laws with impunity,29 adopted new statu-
tory emergency laws,30 and promoted their international acceptance via
the United Nations, and since 1980, it has introduced neoliberal policies
to subordinate national economies to global investment and to retrench
the welfare state lowering the standard of living of its own citizens.31 After
2010, it added austerity policies to saddle its working classes with the bur-
den of growing national debt, a product of global corporate financial mal-
feasance that exploded in 2007–200932 and carries on to the present.33
If this is democracy, it is a curiously contradictory phenomenon. Or,
perhaps, liberal democracy is not what it is purported to be.

Outline of the Argument

The focus is on the current form of liberal democracy, but the analysis is
not only political, it is also in part historical and economic. This ‘actually
existing democracy’ is widely recognized to be the preferred or even ideal
form of political rule across the world. Despite the many variations in
actual practice and in the definition of liberal democracy,34 the common
use of the term suggests that there is a dominant set of principles and
institutions that comprise its defining characteristics, and it is these that we

27
K. Gosztola, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2023.
28
D. H. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Election
Interference, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
29
N. Andersson, D. Lagolnitzer, D. Collier (eds.), International Justice and Impunity: the
case of the United States, Atlanta: Clarity Press 2008; M. Mandel, How America Gets Away
With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity, London:
Pluto Press, 2004.
30
R. J. Daniels, P. Macklem, and K. Roach (eds.), The Security of Freedom: Essays on
Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Bill, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
31
M. Pilisuk and J. A. Rountree, The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from
Global Violence and War, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015.
32
S. McBride and B. M. Evans (eds.), The Austerity State, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2017.
33
A. E. Wilmarth, Taming the Megabanks, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020;
A. E. Wilmarth and L. E. Mitchell, The Panic of 2008, Edward Elgar Publishing 2010.
34
Lijphart, A., Democracies, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984; Lijphart, A.,
‘Democratic Political Systems,’ Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1 (1) 1989 (33–48); Lijphart,
A., Patterns of Democracy, New Haven: Yale University, 1999.
10 G. TEEPLE

have made our main subject matter and that comprise the topics in the
table of contents.
More specifically, the focus is on the nature of the formal processes and
principles and not on the endemic corruption that has characterized lib-
eral democracy from its beginning.35 Although regularly violated in politi-
cal practice, the principles themselves are contradictory because the system
they reflect is defined by inherent and irreconcilable conflicts. Such is the
thrust of the argument and the focus of the analysis.

What Is Democracy?
Most assessments of liberal democracy today assume that its principles and
institutions are the fundamentals of democracy itself. If they are corrupted,
it is believed that they at one time did or could work as constitutionally
spelled out or that there was a genuine democracy before politicians or
state officials or corporate demands or criminal organizations or other
nefarious forces prevented its proper functioning. However popular these
ideas are, the history of liberal democracy presents a different picture. A
short look at the past will help to produce a working definition of this
form of rule.
Perhaps the broadest and most widely employed is that democracy is
government by, for, and of the people.36 Unfortunately, this description
has its shortcomings, namely, it does not define the meaning of “by, for,
or of,” or the meaning of “the people,” or, for that matter, “government.”
Nevertheless, this definition, however simple, is useful as an abstract mea-
suring stick for assessing existing purported democratic governments.
One of the earliest examples in the history of this notion of democracy
is a constitution from ancient Athens, which was examined in detail even
in its time37 and has served ever since as an early example of this form of
rule. While it contained some of the principles and institutions that have
come down to us as central to modern versions of democracy, there were
aspects that were far from resembling modern liberal democracy. But then
modern liberal democracies also have many decidedly undemocratic
35
A. Pabst, The Demons of Liberal Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019; P. Heywood,
“Political Corruption: Problems and Perspectives,” Political Studies, XLV 1997 (417–435).
36
A paraphrasing of Abraham Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg Address.
37
J.M. Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon: On Democracy and Oligarchy, London: Chatto &
Windus, 1975; E. Baker (ed. and trans.), The Politics of Aristotle, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1970 (Appendix IV).
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 11

elements; reality, it is well known, never quite matches its concept; and
with respect to modern democracy, the relation sometimes appears more
imagined than real. Nevertheless, there are many insights to be gained
into what is called democracy today by examining its origin in Athenian
democracy and the dynamics that gave rise to it.
This origin, it is often argued, lies in Solon’s constitution for Athens
early in the sixth century BCE. By this time, the tribal formations that had
converged in the area around Athens had largely disintegrated with the
coming of marketplace society during the seventh century BCE38 although
persisting clan divisions remained, despite the rise of social classes based
on degrees and types of wealth and rule by an aristocracy, which traced its
ancestry to clan chiefs and notables. The inequalities that accompanied
commodity production, the market, and coined money, however, saw
large numbers in the lower strata reduced to penury and extreme indebt-
edness, creating chronic social and economic instability, and threatening
aristocratic rule and its premise, the spread of private property.39 Faced
with this crisis, the Athenian nobility commissioned Solon (640–559 BCE),
who, although one of their own, possessed a reputation that gave him
broad legitimacy.40
His constitution can be understood as an attempted political solution
to an economic crisis by providing a qualified “debt jubilee,”41 a ban on
the enslavement of debtors, the introduction of “people’s courts” allow-
ing a limited judicial role for the peasant-citizen, and the promotion of
coinage that facilitated the growth of trade and usury, among other

38
M. E. Polakoff and P. J. Dhrymes, “The Economic and Sociological Significance of Debt
Bondage and Detribalization in Ancient Greece,” in Economic Development and Cultural
Change, Vol. 6, No. 2, January 1958 (88–108).
39
A. French, ‘The Economic Background to Solon’s Reforms,’ The Classical Quarterly,
Vol. 6, No. ½, 1956 (11–25); J. Romm (ed.), Plutarch: Lives that Made Greek History
Indianapolis: Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2012: 27–38.
40
There is considerable debate on the content of Solon’s reforms and the social and politi-
cal structure of Athens of his time, but not so much as to prevent describing both in broad
strokes. Plutarch provides an excellent sketch: Ian Scott-Kilvert, The Rise and Fall of Athens:
Nine Greek Lives by Plutarch, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960, Chapter 2 “Solon.”
See also: G. R. Stanton, Athenian Politics: c800–500 BC: A Sourcebook, London: Routledge,
1990: 76; and J. R. Ellis and G. R. Stanton, “Factional Conflict and Solon’s Reforms,” in
Phoenix, Vol. 22, No. 2, Summer 1968 (95–110).
41
Hudson, M., ‘…and forgive them their debts,’ Dresden: ISLER-Verlag, 2018: 31;
E. M. L. Economou and N. C. Kyriazis, “The emergence and the evolution of property
rights in ancient Greece,” Journal of International Economics, Vol. 13, No. 1 2017 (53–77).
12 G. TEEPLE

reforms. Perhaps of more lasting importance, he codified individual rights

of ownership, defined boundaries to land claims,42 and authorized staged
levels of political participation by the four main social classes then existing
in Athens. Participation by these classes was carefully distinguished by
property qualifications, and only those classes or strata that had real assets
from which they drew annual incomes were given rights that allowed for
significant or meaningful participation. The class that had few if any real
assets, and lived by wages, was given some but very limited rights. In other
words, participation in Athenian politics was carefully apportioned accord-
ing to one’s stake in this incipient stage of development of private prop-
erty—and by extension, the definition of the citizen was to be attached to
a property qualification.43
Solon’s constitution was an intervention invited by the aristocracy of
Athens to produce a ruling structure that allowed for compromise between
the strata of rulers and ruled. He acted as a mediator in the near civil war
between debtors and creditors; by seeking concessions from both sides, he
created a political structure that prevented or circumvented an open con-
flict that could have ended the system of exploitation benefiting the clan
chiefs, now become aristocracy, resting on their wealth accumulated in
large part by the dispossession of their own clan members.
This was the beginning of modern democracy, as we know it. It was a
ruling structure that arose from the contradictions of a system of private
property, marked by social and economic inequality, which produced a
class structure predicated on stratified wealth. Solon’s constitution was
grounded in this system of inequality; it was a form of rule designed to
allow those with a stake in the system to contain class conflict and yet
continue to determine public policy and the disposition of the public
purse while maintaining the prevailing property relations that produced
the inequalities. It was a political system that accommodated and institu-
tionalized the discord endemic to the system, a conflict that defined the
marketplace and so had to be addressed in a way that allowed it to persist
by providing the illusion that all had a hand in its governing.44 The

42
P. B. Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990, Manville, 126–127.
43
Ibid., 125–130.
44
C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1964: “A market society generates class differentiation in effective rights
and rationality, yet it requires for its justification a postulate of equal natural rights and ratio-
nality” (269).
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 13

containment of conflict was managed under the guise of a degree of par-

ticipation in ruling through an allocation of differential rights; it was the
institutionalization of class antagonisms in political forms allowing for
debate and compromise but not fundamental change. It was an illusory
reconciliation of class strife placed in an institution separated from the
antagonists. This is what we have come to call democracy: a political sys-
tem designed to mitigate the irreconcilable.45
But we can say more: democracy is the necessary form of rule in a fully
developed marketplace society. And the reason is that the market defines
all members as equal embodiments of the rights belonging to private
property, yet results in greater or lesser economic inequality, often provid-
ing little for many and nothing for some. The productive classes, however,
do not usually have alternatives to their exploitation or impoverishment
and so present a source of inherently chronic social instability. The ‘solu-
tion’ to the market-induced conflicts and contradictions offered by
democracy is an apparent share in political power and a limited redistribu-
tion of the ‘surplus,’ which in ancient times came in many forms, such as
a “debt jubilee,” a share of war booty, a fragment of conquered land,
limited political participation, “bread and circuses,” and other forms of
religious, state, and private charity.
Modern liberal democracy shares some fundamental characteristics
with the Solonian and early Athenian constitutions; above all, both are
grounded in a system of private property. Through the institutionalization
in political forms of the resulting class conflict between producers and
appropriators or debtors and creditors, and an adjustable redistribution of
surplus, democracies allow for the perpetuation of a private property
regime despite the chronic and irresolvable disharmony that it produces.
This description will be part of the working definition of existing democ-
racy; however, the subject matter here is more specifically modern liberal
democracy.

45
Bailkey, N. M. (ed.), Readings in Ancient History, D. C. Heath and Company, 1969:
148–158. At the end of his “Life of Solon,” Plutarch points out how short-lived Solon’s
compromise was; after a very few years, the conflict between the rich and poor continued
until the coming of the dictatorship of Pisistratus from 561 to 527 BCE. See also: P. B. Manville,
The Origins of Citizenship…, Op. cit., Chapter 6. French writes: “…Solon’s work was fol-
lowed, not by a period of stability, but by wave after wave of popular agitation which finally
culminated in revolution.” A. French. ‘The Economic Background…,’ Op. cit., 24.
14 G. TEEPLE

What Is Liberalism?
The modern use of the term liberal is central to understanding just how
modern democracy has continued to maintain a high degree of legitimacy
while the economic system it rests on is less and less able to provide an
acceptable living standard for increasingly large numbers of its members.
Like the concept of democracy, liberalism has many definitions, but
nevertheless, the literature points to broadly identifiable classical and
modern versions. There are certain common elements to both views, that
is, the fundamentals include the individual as such, a set of individual free-
doms, and the subordinate position of government in relation to the ‘peo-
ple.’ The American Declaration of Independence in 1776 provides an
early summary of these rights and relations, although they are best seen as
an expression of classical liberalism, which resonated well in a society com-
posed mainly of small commodity producers as was the case in the United
States in the eighteenth century.
This classical version,46 however, makes no allowance for the real-life
consequences of a marketplace society, namely, social and economic
inequalities, which could not be ignored in the political domain. More
importantly, it could no longer resonate in the nineteenth century when
the working class, without real assets or means of production, grew to
become the main productive class and then the majority of the population.
By the late nineteenth century, classical liberal ideals could be taught and
promoted as articles of patriotic faith, but they had become little more
than an abiding ideological counterweight to the working class whose
needs were being addressed largely through collective struggle and whose
essential goals lay in a future far outside the tenets of liberalism. The neces-
sity for unrelenting struggle and these essential goals together provided
the fundamentals of socialist theories.

46
A well-known review of the classic variants can be found in C.B. Macpherson, The
Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964: “…the
individual is human only in so far as free, and free only in so far as a proprietor of himself,”
owing “nothing to society,” which “can only be a series of relations between sole proprietors,
i.e., a series of market relations.” And freedom is to be free of “the will of others,” “except
those relations” voluntarily entered into “with a view to his own interest” (263–4).
It could be argued that under capitalism all labour is unfree, but even if we allow that
wage-labourers are free as proprietors of their own capacities, capitalism is not inconsistent
with degrees of unfree labour. See: R. Miles, Capitalism and Unfree Labour, London:
Tavistock Publications, 1987; and R. J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor. Chapel Hill
and London: The University of North Carolina Press. 1991.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 15

Modern versions of liberalism arose more or less with the coming of

industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
when a growing number of the productive classes were becoming wage-­
labourers, as opposed to petty-commodity producers such as self-employed
artisans and self-subsistent farmers, a status that meant that their liveli-
hoods no longer rested on their own assets but with the business interests
of employers or impersonal economic forces. In the event of unemploy-
ment, there was no longer recourse to self-subsistent means of production
or rural communities of extended families. The precarious economic and
voiceless political condition of the growing working class created increased
demands for social and political reforms, not to mention for the transfor-
mation of the system as argued in modern theories of socialism and com-
munism that accompanied the rise of the working class in the nineteenth
century.47
As workers’ theoretical understanding of capitalism deepened and their
movements grew in number and importance, their demands for social
reforms and transformation could not be controlled by coercion alone,
and because wage-labourers soon became the main producer class and
gradually the main consumer class, their demands had to be addressed in
some manner, however begrudgingly. This accommodation of the work-
ing class took two forms. One was the legislation of incremental social
reforms over many decades that allowed for the staged institutionalization
of the conflict in the form of workplace regulation, modest insurance
schemes for industrial accidents, sickness, death, and old age, and trade
union and bargaining rights—reforms that comprised small claims or enti-
tlements to a portion of the social product above the basic wage. The
other was the reluctant and gradual expansion of the right to vote by
means of a slow reduction of property qualifications and other restrictions.48
These were the two components of the modern notion of liberalism as
it came to be defined in the late nineteenth century in Britain, Europe,
and the United States, and that remain today: the working class achieved
concessions that amounted to a set of countervailing rights to part of the
social product and a qualified political voice over the disposition of part of

47
W. Abendroth, A Short History of the European Working Class, London: NLB, 1972;
J. Kuczynski, The Rise of the Working Class, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967; J. H. Rose, The
Rise of Democracy, London: Blackie and Son, 1897.
48
Mitchell, H., and P. N. Stearns, The European Labor Movement, the Working Classes and
the Origins of Social Democracy 1890–1914, Ithaca: F.E. Peacock publishers, 1972.
16 G. TEEPLE

the total social product, in short, a limited role in governing. To put it

another way: workers’ collective struggles secured a restricted right via
state allocation to the product of their own labour beyond the individual
wage, and they achieved with suffrage a limited right to participate in
overseeing their own exploitation in a regime of private property. Both
amounted to interventions by the working class in the distribution of the
total social product, the fruit of their labour. From the side of capital,
these concessions were accepted, however reluctantly, because the demands
for relief from the effects of capitalism presented a chronic threat to social
and economic stability, and because, while the essential interests of the
working class lay outside this system, modest reforms subject to a contin-
ual give and take could dampen protests over immediate issues, under-
mine socialist theories, and forestall the demands for more radical change.
This was the modern version of liberal democracy, or as it came to be
called in late nineteenth-century Europe, social democracy, “parliamen-
tary socialism,” “socialism-in-capitalism,” “democratic socialism,” or “lib-
erals in a hurry,” among other labels.49 All were references to the same
phenomenon, namely, the struggle for universal suffrage and state redistri-
bution of part of the social product to alleviate the worst effects of a sys-
tem of private property. And these reforms have worked to maintain and
advance capital accumulation and its changing forms of exploitation of
labour across liberal democracies over many decades and even into the
twenty-first century.
Liberal democracy, defined by universal suffrage and a set of inconsis-
tent and shifting entitlements, is no benevolent compromise, however; it
was and remains the political institutionalization of continuous class con-
flict. The rationale for these concessions lies in the threat emanating from
workers’ organizations, political movements, strikes and work stoppages,
theoretical analysis, and even attempted revolutions that have been ever-­
present. The state, moreover, has undertaken many reform initiatives on
its own to contain class conflict with institutional or legal bounds to ham-
per working-class demands and restrain capital from damaging the pro-
ductive powers of the working class and latterly the environment. In short,
social reforms have been necessary for the stability of the system and have
required a degree of redistribution of part of the social product, beyond
what the working class can extract unevenly and unequally by way of wages
and salaries. This class compromise in the political domain is liberal

49
Gay, P., The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism, New York: Collier Books, 1962.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 17

democracy; it does not, however, imply a genuine sharing of power

between capital and labour, the corporations and working classes.

What Compromise?
The assumption in liberal democracy is that politics is about the distribu-
tion of the total social product—“who gets what, when, how,” as Lasswell
famously put it.50 Abstractly, this is true, but there are limits to this distri-
bution. One is the fact that its agent is the state, which is the embodiment
of the principles of a regime of private property (Chap. 4). Another is the
fact that workers’ countervailing rights have always been defined as
reforms, that is, designed not to challenge the existence and centrality of
free enterprise or, more to the point, capital accumulation. There is, more-
over, the necessity to maintain the average rate of profit for capital invest-
ments in a given jurisdiction; lastly, political distribution is mostly a
redistribution of wages and salaries after the prior economic division of
total new value into surplus value and wages/salaries.
If the system is to be maintained, the political allocation of shares of the
social product can only be done within these limits—the agency of the
state, the prevailing property relations, the degree of class conflict, and the
average rate of profit. It cannot, in other words, disturb the initial division
of new value (v + s)51 that is created in the sphere of production, a division
fought over or negotiated by labour and capital. Here class conflict is insti-
tutionalized in law by a labour code, collective bargaining regulations,
workplace standards, and related labour legislation, which are weighted in
favour of capital, allowing the state to appear as neutral while giving capi-
tal legal advantages in the bargaining process and assistance in the exercise
of economic coercion.
The reproduction of the working class, however, cannot be left to this
initial division of new value negotiated in the sphere of production because
what the market allows for wages and salaries provides a decent standard
of living only for some and not always regularly, and the potential labour
unrest from wages chronically below the value of labour-power presents

50
H. D. Lasswell, Politics: who gets what, when, how. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936.
51
Following Marx, total new value is the combination of the value of wages and surplus
value: ‘v’ represents variable capital or the value of wages and salaries, and ‘s’ refers to surplus
value, the remaining portion of total new value that goes to capital and is redistributed as
interest, rent, profit, etc. K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, ‘Chapter Eight.’
18 G. TEEPLE

an ineradicable threat to the system. For this reason, reproduction of the

working class is in part carried out by the state in the name of the whole.
But what appears to be a redistribution of the total social product52 is in
fact the redistribution of a portion of state revenue from wages and sala-
ries; the initial division of the total between labour and capital has already
been more or less determined in the sphere of production between capital
and labour, ostensibly outside the purview of the state.
The main dilemma embedded in liberal or social democracy has been
that the ‘social reproduction’ of the working class assisted by ‘political
redistribution’ of tax revenues cannot be allowed to interfere with the
accumulation process, the extraction of the average rate of profit, which is
the heart of ‘economic growth,’ the point of the system, in a way that it
prevents or frustrates reinvestment or an expected standard of living for
the capitalist classes. Political redistribution, then, is restricted, by and
large, to the redistribution of wages and salaries, not the redistribution of
surplus value.
This restriction has meant that wages and salaries must be sufficiently
high to allow for deductions to finance their redistribution in the form of
‘public’ works, infrastructure, education, healthcare, pensions, utilities,
social security, state operations, and so on, which allows for a standard of
living that is tolerable or acceptable and necessary for a productive work-
ing class. This portion of wages and salaries has been referred to as the
‘social wage,’ a ‘surplus’ in wages appropriated by the state in the forms of
taxes, premiums, and deferred income that is used for redistribution as the
fiscal foundation of the welfare state.53 What is left after these deductions
is sometimes referred to as the ‘disposable wage,’ which together with the
redistributed ‘social wage’ comprises the income of the working classes.
If the redistribution of wages and salaries is what underlies the welfare
state, what then happens to surplus value, the other side of the division of
new value that is appropriated by capital? On the one hand, it is divided
amongst the various fractions of capital in the forms of profit, rent, inter-
est, reinvestment, and so on, but on the other hand, more importantly, in
whatever form the division takes it meets with very limited taxation. Large

52
This is the view that underlies the reformist views of liberal or social democratic political
parties.
53
The state can also incur debt in order to finance the welfare state and public works
schemes, but in the end, the burden of the national debt falls to the working class whose
taxes, since the late twentieth century, provide the overwhelming majority of state revenues,
and which are used to pay for the operation of the state, the military, and the interest and
principal on the national debt.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 19

corporations in particular are exempted from significant taxation or other

state appropriations because they are seen as the ‘engine’ of economic
growth, but even small corporations are allowed an array of exemptions,
concessions, grants, legal impunity, forgiven loans, and so on, available to
some degree to all corporations, not to mention the rich.54
The liberal democratic state, then, with its equal voting rights, has any-
thing but equal contributions to its revenues from its corporate entities or
wealthiest citizens. Since the late twentieth century, the budget revenues
in most liberal democratic states have seen a declining ratio of corporate to
personal income taxation. Many of the world’s largest corporations pay
little or no taxes; indeed, they receive enormous concessions and grants
from the states in whose jurisdiction they operate, not to mention a large
number of tax evasion and avoidance schemes and state reluctance to pros-
ecute corporate malfeasance. Similarly, the wealthy are in a position to
exercise a large number of methods to avoid or evade taxes.55
This then is modern liberal democracy: the working class gets the right
to vote in a system of structured inequality, in which deductions from its
wages and salaries produce by far the largest share of state revenues,
thereby assuming much of the total tax burden, easing the burden on the

54
The so-called corporate welfare state is largely hidden, but it exists in all liberal democra-
cies; it is extensive and includes legal measures, military expenditures, ‘public’ works, the
national debt, tax ‘freedom,’ and so on, all intended to advance capital accumulation. This is
what the system is all about, but the maintenance of the illusion that it does not exist is cen-
tral to the function of liberal democratic governments.
There is a large literature on the hidden tax privileges enjoyed by large corporations; see,
for example: the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported in 2021 that in the
United States “55 of the nation’s largest companies had paid no federal income tax the previ-
ous year.” T. DeHaven, “Corporate Welfare in the Federal Budget,” Policy Analysis, No.
703, July 25, 2012; R. Murphy, “The Missing Billions: the UK Tax Gap,” study for Trades
Union Council, 2008.
https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/1missingbillions.pdf; R. Nader,
Cutting Corporate Welfare, Penguin/Random House, 2000.
55
N. Shaxson, Treasure Islands, Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax
Havens, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; G. Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations:
The Scourge of Tax Havens, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015; A. Deneault, Off-
Shore: Paradis fiscaux et souverainete criminelle, Montreal: Les Editions Ecosociete, 2010;
A. Deneault, Paul Martin & Companies: Sixty theses on the alegal nature of tax havens,
Vancouver: Talonbooks 2006; M. Stanislawska, “Crime or Creative Accounting While Doing
Business,” International Journal of Business and Management, 2018 (17–28); K. Heggstad
and O-H. Fjeldstad, “How Banks Assist Capital Flight from Africa: A Literature Review,”
CMI Report, 2010.
20 G. TEEPLE

corporate sector and wealthy, paying for state operations and the public
debt, and whose own reproduction is assisted by the redistribution of its
own ‘surplus’ wages and salaries. The citizenry, which is largely the work-
ing class and which has no essential stake in the system, pays a majority of
the expenses of the state, while the corporate sector for which the system
exists pays only a small and declining share.56 Here is the real meaning of
liberal in modern liberal democracy: it is the pretence that the state oper-
ates in the interests of workers’ collective rights and redistributes to work-
ers part of the total social product and that the political right of the
working class to a share in the vote for this dissemblance amounts to
democracy. And all the while the principles of the marketplace remain the
operative principles of the system.

The Crises of Liberal Democracy

What we have come to know as liberal democracy has always been a com-
promise form of rule necessary for a system of conflicting interests; it is a
compromise necessary because the class that produces all the wealth has
no essential stake in the system. In other words, the working class as it is
exists for its exploitation. By appearing to be governance ‘by, for, and of
the people,’ liberal democracy plays a crucial role for a capitalist economy
by disguising its foundation in the exploitation of labour and legitimizing
the uneven division of the total social value. Through its legislative and
budgetary powers, it regulates, on the one hand, the initial division of the
new social product (v + s) and the secondary divisions of the redistribution
of the value of wages and salaries (v) and, on the other hand, the redistri-
bution of the value of surplus value (s), ensuring that the maximum pos-
sible share of the total social product from both divisions goes to
capital—the whole point of the system.
These divisions are continuously contested; they lie at the heart of the
chronic low-grade conflicts that provide the everyday business of politics.
They result in political crises caused by and large when the contestation can
no longer be contained by the established institutions. This happens from the
side of labour in the form of strikes, demonstrations, and industrial

56
A. J. Auerbach, J. M. Poterba, “Why Have Corporate Tax Revenues Declined?” in Tax
Policy and the Economy, Vol. 1, 1987(1–28); G; Cornia, K.D. Edmiston, D.L. Sjoquist,
S. Wallace, “The Disappearing State Corporate Income Tax,” in Andrew Young School of
Policy Studies, Research Paper Series, Working Paper 06–27, December 2004.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 21

sabotage; and from the side of capital it takes the form of lockouts, wage
and pension theft, overwork, arbitrary firings, mismanagement, fraudulent
bankruptcies, and corporate sabotage; and by government through a large
array of policies that skew the source of tax revenues, labour supply,
restricted labour rights, poverty level pensions, and so on, although few of
these common activities are reported or analysed. They are usually kept
under wraps through institutional secrecy, “reasons of state,” “privacy
rules,” complex lengthy judicial proceedings, and media suppression.57
But the capitalist mode of production is characterized by chronic cycli-
cal disequilibrium and corporate corruption58 that results in regular crises
in the rate of accumulation that take the form of economic recessions or
depressions, frequently sufficient to threaten the operation of the system
or economic sectors or significant individual corporations.59 At these
times, given its role in the division of the total social product, liberal
democracy must address the crisis in the political domain: the dilemma is
how to adjust this division when the social product declines but the
demands from both capital and labour increase. The demands from labour,
which has at best a limited stake in the system but whose exploited labour
is the source of wealth, amount to the basic demands of life itself—food,
shelter, clothing, education, healthcare, and so on. The demands from
capital are to save the system, which is to say itself. And the state has
demands as well—the existence of its vast military and state bureaucracies
depends on the well-being of capital, the ideological disorientation of the
working class, tax revenue, and state debt.
The dilemma becomes how to continue the ‘political redistribution’ of
wages in a time when wages are falling and the ‘surplus’ in wages is no

57
Winter, J., Democracy’s Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News, Montreal: Black
Rose Books, 1997; Raboy, M. and G. Daganais (eds), Media, Crisis and Democracy: Mass
Communication and the Disruption of Social Order. London: Sage Publications, 1992;
Schiller, H. I., Information and the Crisis Economy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
58
Corporate crime is endemic; much of it is in the category of cheating other corporations,
governments, consumers, and the future of the planet in the ‘externalities’ of environmental
pollution. See: P. Mattera, “Conspiring Against Competition: Illegal Corporate Price-Fixing
in the U.S. Economy,” <https://goodjobsfirst.org/conspiring-against-competition/>;
A. Nesvetailova and R. Palan, Sabotage: The Business of Finance, Penguin/Random
House, 2020.
59
The crisis of 2007–2009 is a case in point. See, for example, S. Lendman, How Wall
Street Fleeces America, Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War, Atlanta:
Clarity Press, 2011; N. Prins, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, New York:
Nation Books, 2018.
22 G. TEEPLE

longer able to finance the welfare state. After World War II in the indus-
trial nations, wages continued to rise along with profits for about a genera-
tion, but come the 1970s, the circumstances that allowed for both wages
and profits to rise, albeit at different rates, were in decline. The ability to
finance the political redistribution that underlay the welfare state became
progressively more difficult, and although the resistance to its retrench-
ment has been persistent, the dilemma remains unresolved and has only
deepened.
It is the liberal democratic state that performs this balancing act of try-
ing to maintain a certain rate of accumulation for capital, which is impera-
tive for the capitalist economy, while playing a redistributive role for
labour, whose social wage cannot be maintained in economic downturns.
In these periodic slumps, and since the late twentieth century a chronic
decline in wages,60 we see ever more frequent moments of crisis. From the
side of labour, there is a crisis in falling living standards and declining
belief in political legitimacy;61 from the side of capital, there is a crisis in
accumulation as profits slide, and so, a crisis in democracy, ‘too much
democracy,’ because the economic downturn is attributed to working-­
class demands for an increasing share of the division of the total social
product.62 The accumulation process is the point of the system, and in its
everyday operation and in times of crisis, the liberal democratic state deals
only with a stacked deck, revealing why it has been the ideal political form
of the capitalist mode of production.
The crises of the twenty-first century, however, are of a different order
compared to previous ones. By the end of the twentieth century, the long
development of capital in national forms had largely come to an end with
the growth of transnational corporations, global production chains, and
unelected global governing agencies. The political form for the national
capital was coming to an end of its national rationale, creating political
crises for ostensibly democratic forms of rule whose functions were largely

60
L. Mishel, E. Gould, J. Bivens, “Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts,” Economic Policy
Institute, January 6, 2015; A. Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed, Finance, Globalization, and
Welfare, Oxford University Press, 2006.
61
D. Fuchs, E. Roller, “Globalization and Political Legitimacy in Western Europe.” In:
U. van Beek (ed.) Democracy under Threat. Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century.
Palgrave Macmillan 2019.
62
For an analysis of the ongoing US crisis, see: F. Moseley, “The U.S. Economic Crisis:
From a Profitability Crisis to an Overindebtedness Crisis,” Radical Review of Political
Economy, 45 (4), 2013 (472–477).
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 23

out of keeping with their content, the global accumulation of capital.

Given its transnational existence, capital no longer needs to address or
bend to the political leverage exercised by nationally defined working
classes. It has established deeply integrated production and distribution
chains that span the globe and require commensurate rules and regula-
tions that facilitate its operations at that level;63 in short, it requires new
political forms to match its new jurisdiction or fields of operation, and
these it established in the so-called rules-based international order at the
end of World War II.
Persisting divisions in competitive global capitals, however, have, to a
degree, prolonged a rationale for the continuing existence of national
states; they are necessary to maintain domestic social order, to circum-
scribe working-class resistance, to perpetuate nationally divided trade
unions, to employ the powers of state debt, to reduce or eliminate borders
for trade, commerce, and labour, and to preserve national military forces,
all to facilitate global capital accumulation.
The current political interregnum is characterized by this key dilemma:
a globally interlocked economy regulated by capital through its own agen-
cies without political accountability now confronts the Westphalian world
of sovereign nation-states, which accordingly must increasingly pretend to
be what they cannot be. With the consequent declining political
legitimacy,64 growing executive authoritarianism,65 large-scale social
unrest,66 and the shift from international diplomacy to national

63
P. Hansen and V. Aranda, “An Emerging International Framework for Transnational
Corporations,” Fordham International Law Journal 14, no. 4 (1990–1991): 881–891. By
1990, the Bretton Woods institutions were being recognized for what they were.
64
F. Kostelka and A. Blais, “The Generational and Institutional Sources of the Global
Decline in Voter Turnout,” in World Politics, Vol. 73, Issue 4, October 2021 (629–667);
J. DeBardeleben and J. H. Pammett, “Introduction,” in J. DeBardeleben and J. H. Pammett
(eds.), Activating the Citizen, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (1–14).
65
C. Franco, “Coercive Diplomacy, Sanctions and International Law,” Instituto Affari
Internazionali, 2015 (1–37). Most analyses of the use of sanctions as ‘diplomacy’ try to
evaluate their effectiveness. But the real issues are whether they are legal under international
law or illegal assertions of unilateral power and why only certain nations are in a position to
use them.
66
S. Bej, “‘The yellow vests will triumph:’ The middle and working class protests in
France,” NIAS Quarterly on Contemporary World Affairs, Vol. 2, Issues 2&3, 2020
<https://globalpolitics.in/pdf_file/articles/Sourinayellow.pdf >
24 G. TEEPLE

belligerence,67 the political form of liberal democracy comes increasingly

into question.

The Meaning of Critique

Critique is the last concept in our title that needs an explanation. In its
broadest sense, it refers to the general form of judgement that we engage
in all the time, even if unaware of it, as the assessment of what is (exis-
tence) in light of its concept (essence68), a process that is the starting point
of the process of thinking in general. This is a strictly logical process, with-
out the implications of moral obligation or correctness. Most analyses of
democracy, for example, define it as a form of governance ‘by, for, and of
the people’ and compare this concept to the principles and practices in real
existing democracies. The real world of liberal democracy, even on brief
examination, can be seen to be far removed from this concept. This is how
we determine the validity or genuineness of what is, but this process bears
no relation to normative debates about what ought to be.69
Critique of this sort, then, can show the profound disconnect between
the constitutional principles of liberal democracy and their actual practice.
The wide abuse of power, ubiquitous political corruption, and violation of
principles are now the subjects of the daily news, but this divide between
principles and practice is not new or anomalous—it has always been a
characteristic of liberal democracy. Critique here draws out the violations
as indicative of the class privilege that democracy veils, the dictatorship in
the workplace that it cloaks, the class compromise that is increasingly less
feasible, and the current subordination of national to global capital that it
hides. These revelations are not, however, the main thrust of this critique;

67
This is a reference to the questionable interventions by NATO in Yugoslavia (1999),
Afghanistan (2001–2021), Iraq and Syria (2003–), and Libya (2011), among other interven-
tions. For a critical appraisal of the role of NATO, see: H. Campbell, Global NATO and the
catastrophic failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa in the forging of African unity, New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2013.
68
One of the unfortunate effects of post-modern theories is to deride the mention or use
of the concept of essence, implying that it can be nothing more than Plato’s notion of Idea.
Any good dictionary should provide the necessary corrective by defining essence as the defi-
nition or ‘sine qua non’ of a thing. For the analysis in this text, this meaning is sufficient to
grasp its use.
69
To paraphrase Hume: “there is no ought from is.” Charles Pigden, “Hume on Is and
Ought,” in Philosophy Now, Issue 83, March/April 2011 https://philosophynow.org/
issues/83/Hume_on_Is_and_Ought.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 25

the argument is not intended as a contribution to the lament about the

current ‘state of politics,’ or to the call, so common in the United States,
to ‘take back our democracy,’ or to the claim that ending corruption will
‘restore’ democracy; it is rather to uncover ‘the democracy that never was.’
To this end, critique will also be used to analyse the constitutional for-
malities for the concealed contradictions found in these principles and
formal institutions themselves. Because the capitalist mode of production
is thoroughly contradictory, the abstracted formalities in its political con-
stitutions cannot be what they purport to be.
Critique is also used to give the lie to the common notion that liberal
democracy is an absolute, independent variable that is the best form of
governance and the model for all industrial societies. To disabuse us of
such an idea, we need only point to the fact that liberal democracy has a
history, one in which its structure has reflected changes in the prevailing
property relations and conflicts with countervailing demands. In other
words, liberal democracy has evolved through different forms, reflecting
different configurations of capital and labour and their conflicts over the
decades. Generally, its analysis overlooks this dependent existence, that is,
the fact it did not exist at one time, came into existence, evolved, changed,
and now, as it will be argued, is coming to an end.
It is being transformed because its foundation has superseded the
national boundaries, that is, the capitalist mode of production has
expanded and broadened its jurisdictions formed at its birth and then
gradually expanded until no longer national but global. Today, liberal
democracy finds itself subordinated less to national configurations of capi-
tal than to the global. Liberal democracy, as it has been known, has largely
lost its national foundation, and its meaning and previous historical role
are being transformed.
If critique casts light on the changing nature of liberal democracy, it
also reveals that it is a form whose content lies outside the political pro-
cess. All political systems are largely forms whose content is the economic
or, more broadly, the prevailing property relations. And property is about
‘who gets what, why, and how,’ and the state is about the realization,
defence, and regulation of these relations and the corporate and other
entities that embody their most concentrated existence. The prevailing
property relations are the content or the raison d’être of the state and its
26 G. TEEPLE

policies. In other words, the state has no substantial inherent interests of

its own—save for degrees of bureaucratic self-interest.70
As a last note, part of the argument is that liberal democracy has only
ever offered compromises as a temporary respite from intrinsic antago-
nisms, but now it is no longer amenable to reforms of any significance; its
persistence as a ‘democratic government’ is more form than content; neo-
liberal and austerity policies are not political choices and will not be
reversed by a change in government. The dream of much of the Left in
industrial nations for a return to the Keynesian welfare state of the postwar
era is not possible because the economic conditions that allowed for it to
become policy no longer exist. What is possible in political policy has
always been dependent on the strength and alignment of class forces and
the demands of capital accumulation, and in the West since the 1980s the
possibility of increased social reforms for the world’s working classes has
come to an end.71 Several decades of unrelenting neoliberal and later aus-
terity policies across the democracies of the world, resulting in declining
wages, unions sanctioned into retreat, and widespread extra-parliamentary
resistance suppressed or ignored, make the case rather well.
The present interregnum between the national and the global exposes
what previously—in the long national development of capital—was very
difficult to grasp, namely, that liberal democracy has been the political
form necessary for an economic system that needed to keep its source of
wealth, the working class, believing that sovereignty resided with them,
and that as the citizenry it was part of a political process in which all had
an equal vote and voice. Liberal democracy worked well, through many
adjustments and compromises, to help disguise the exploitation of a class
that has had no essential stake in the process of capital accumulation, and
to prevent workers from seeing that their future has always been outside
such a system.

70
Germany before World War I may be said to have had a state defined by the interests of
a class-based bureaucracy. The USSR is another plausible example, with its state and party
officials, the ‘nomenklatura’; when, by the 1980s, these bureaucrats sensed greater personal
benefits from a system of private property, the sabotage of socialized property began. In the
1990s a few became billionaires, and some just millionaires, but they lost far more than their
bureaucratic minds could ever imagine.
71
In the early 1980s, France under President Francois Mitterrand (1981–1995) tried to
maintain and even expand the welfare state, only to meet with resistance from capital and so
had to abandon the policies. See: J. Birch, “Francois Mitterrand’s Austerity Turn,”
Phenomenal World, February 20, 2021
< https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/mitterrands-austerity-turn/>.
 1 INTRODUCTION: DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, OUTLINE… 27

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 CHAPTER 2

Politics: The Problem of Definition

Liberal democracy is our subject matter, but this is only a particular expres-
sion of politics, and so to understand our topic, the analysis begins with a
search for a definition of politics.
The study of politics, however, has been plagued by an obstinate lack of
consensus about its content and, it follows, the approach to its subject
matter. Whatever national differences may remain in political science and
theory, there is a broad consensus in the discipline everywhere that there
does not exist a clear definition or any generally accepted agreement on
the meaning of the concept of politics.
Since World War II, many notable political scientists in Europe and the
United States have commented on this apparent oddity of a discipline
without a precise definition of its field of inquiry. The issue has been
repeatedly raised as a subject of some concern and debate.1 Even by the

1
D. Easton, ‘Political Science,’ in International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol.
12, 1968: 282; H. Eulau, The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics, (New York 1963) 5;
P. Beardsley, ‘Political Science: The Case of the Missing Paradigm,’ Political Theory, Vol. 2,
no. 1, February 1974: 58; E.C. Banfield, ‘Politics,’ in A Dictionary of the Social Sciences,
(New York, 1964) 515–517; W.J.M. Mackenzie, The Study of Political Science Today,
(London 1970) 14; S. E. Finer, Comparative Government, (Harmondsworth 1970) 4;
L. Robins, ‘An Introduction to Political Science,’ in L. Robins (ed.), Introducing Political
Science, London: Longman, p. 1; J. Blondel, Thinking Politically, Boulder: Westview Press,
date, p. 9, 157; M. Duverger, Introduction à la politique, Paris: Gallimard, 1964:19;
M. Duverger, The Idea of Politics, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1970, p. xi–xii; G. Sartori,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_2
32 G. TEEPLE

mid-1980s, David Easton could still write in the same vein: “[P]olitical
science seems to have lost its purpose. … There is no longer a single domi-
nant point of view that unmistakably catches the imagination … we can-
not speak of a single dominant tendency or direction.”2 There are reasons
for these admissions; we will examine them in the conclusions.
The fact that there has been no agreement on the meaning of politics,
however, has in no way discouraged continuing attempts to define or use
the term. The conceptual limits of the notion of the political have conse-
quently ranged from mere descriptions of the formalities of government
to the broadest conceivable idea of human biological or social nature, or
even “politics is everywhere.” So great are the variations in definition and
analytical focus that they make any attempt to categorize them a daunting
challenge, but it is worthwhile to explore some of them in order to see
what paths the discipline has followed in its search.
If we cast our net widely enough, using as categories several of the key
attempts to give coherency to the concept, it is possible to impose a degree
of order on the many definitions, ‘schools,’ and tendencies for the purpose
of analysing their notions of politics. In doing this, it must be stressed that
no detailed, comprehensive critical survey is intended; and this is, more-
over, not an attempt to provide a comprehensive typology of definitions or
approaches, if indeed that were possible.3 The objective is solely to explore,
isolate, and uncover the general shortcomings of the most commonly
employed definitions of politics in order to set the stage for a discussion of
the meaning of the concept.

‘What is “Politics”,’ Political Theory, 1973:17, 24; G. Sartori, F. W. Riggs, H. Teune (eds.)
Tower of Babel: on the definition and analysis of concepts in the social sciences, Pittsburgh:
International Studies Association, 1975; H. Heller, ‘Political Science,’ Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, Vol. 7, New York, 1962: 207.
2
D. Easton, ‘Political Science in the United States,’ International Political Science Review,
Vol. 6, No. 1, 1985, p. 143.
3
For well-known attempts at typologies, see: Lijphart, A., Democracies, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1984; Lijphart, A., ‘Democratic Political Systems: Types, Cases, Causes,
and Consequences,’ Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1 (1) 1989: 33–48; Lijphart, A., Patterns
of Democracy, New Haven: Yale University, 1999.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 33

Through the Prism of Orthodoxy

In the development of political thought, the earliest division of the subject
matter comprised two main subsets: one is political theory or philosophy and
the other is the study of constitutions, both of which have two main fields.
The former generally divides into the history of political theories and the
debate over what constitutes good government, liberty, justice, equality,
and other basic principles. The latter divides into the study of specific con-
stitutions and their histories and the debates over the significance of con-
stitutional principles, in a word, constitutionalism. Both began in ancient
Greece and have continued to the present day.
Political theory has been characterized by a few streams, one of which is
the history of social contract theories,4 still a common if increasingly hid-
den premise, despite the fact that all versions are based on a fiction.
Another is a focus on ‘great men,’ all of whom turn out to be men of their
times, a fact that does not detract from individual achievement but explains
very little. And there are the abiding debates within liberalism over the
ethical conundrums that arise from market principles as the starting point
of political theory.5
Such debates spill over into political philosophy or what we can classify
as normative theories, which includes a very long list.6 These theories seek
to develop arguments on which to ground assertions about fairness, jus-
tice, and good government, among other fundamental issues. They belong
to the mainstream or orthodoxy, even if their concerns seem to arise from
a disquiet about the difference between theory derived from market prin-
ciples and the social and political consequences of the market. The issues
of fairness, justice, and so on arise only when they become real questions
for a society, when they no longer exist in a meaningful way for the major-
ity. Ethical questions, in other words, arise when there are two or more
sources of virtue or honour, such as custom versus law, for instance, or
because the reality does not entirely match the theory, the official beliefs,
and presents serious or even existential questions not addressed by the

4
J. W. Gough, The Social Contract: A Critical Study of Its Development, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1963.
5
Sabine, G. H., A History of Political Theory, London: George G. Harrap and Co.
(1937) 1963.
6
This is a reference to the works, among others, of Plato, Machiavelli, Grotius, Croce,
Schmitt, Hayek, Popper, Habermas, and Rawls.
34 G. TEEPLE

theory. Simply put, when the consequences of the system violate the
premises, ethical questions arise.
This was as much the problem for Solon as it is in contemporary capi-
talism: working-class demands for the franchise and social reforms in order
to survive the system have amounted to countervailing rights, claims
incompatible with the basic rights of the marketplace. Here lies the conun-
drum for the political philosophers of liberal democracy7—its basic prin-
ciples mirror the market, but the market no longer works for the majority,
and so the principles of freedom, equality, justice, private property rights,
and tolerance become increasingly abstract and meaningless in practice.8
A high point in this discussion came with the fullest development of the
welfare state in the 1970s, when the market seemed to tolerate reforms for
‘a just society,’ an attempt at equity in the sphere of distribution. But since
the 1980s state retrenchment of social reforms and the promotion of mar-
ket principles in theory and practice have largely put paid to these princi-
ples and the possibility of their realization.9 The widespread acceptance of
postmodernism, moreover, which embraces as its own the absence of stan-
dards of the marketplace, has more or less silenced these ethical consider-
ations. What, after all, is ethics in an age in which all is seen as relative,
when the mode of production recognizes only the monetary value of peo-
ple and things?
The second subset of political theory has sought to analyse the constitu-
tional structure of government. If the first of these began with Aristotle in
the fourth century BCE,10 the modern version is more or less a product of

7
This argument is a variation on the position of C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
Possessive Individualism, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1962: 263–275.
8
These principles are often posited in the language of natural rights, as inherent, equal,
inalienable, and so on, but when cast as absolutes, they are all more difficult to see as objects
for critical analysis. Moral issues, we argue, are always tied to the nature of the system that
gives rise to them, although there may well be something to be said for the concept of natu-
ral law; not, however, when natural law is employed to legitimize a vision of humans made
in the image of marketplace society, as in human rights. See Ernst Bloc, Natural Law and
Human Dignity, Cambridge, Mass: the MIT Press, 1988.
9
R. B. Douglass, ‘John Rawls and the Revival of Political Philosophy: Where Does He
Leave Us?’ in Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, December 2012, Vol. 59. No.
133: 81–97. On the concerted retrenchment of labour rights, see: L. Panitch and D. Swartz,
From Consent to Coercion: The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms, Aurora: Garamond
Press, 2003.
10
Barker, E., The Politics of Aristotle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958; J. M. Moore,
Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy, London: Chatto & Windus, 1975.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 35

the nineteenth century, when the constitutions of liberal democracy, fol-

lowing the British or American constitutions as models, began to be pro-
mulgated.11 In these studies, all the formal rights, duties, and procedures
of the many institutions of the state defined by the constitution, or through
practice as in Britain, were set out in detail. In many nations, this emphasis
prevailed until World War II, and it can be taken as the beginning point of
the development of the modern discipline of political science.
By and large, these constitutional treatises were ahistorical and usually
merely descriptive of the proper course, of how the state was supposed to
operate. Implicit in the description is the sense that this was also the actual
practice, even though the practice of government and its constitutional
formalities do not necessarily coincide. Because descriptions of formal
practice are usually static and free of inherent conflict and inequalities,
they also conveyed the sense that what was described was the apogee of
political development. As a consequence, a tacit bias in favour of the status
quo pervades these formalistic studies. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake
to dismiss them for they serve the purpose of systematizing and explicat-
ing those unwritten and conventional aspects of formal governing prac-
tices, and of identifying and expounding the principles of the modern
state. But since explanation and not mere description must be the goal of
social science, such studies could never suffice as the purpose of the long-­
term development of the discipline. Their implicit notion of politics
amounts to a description of the formal functions of government.
Debates about the principles of constitutions, or constitutionalism,
have as long a history as these formal descriptions, and such exchanges are
pursued to this day. But they are burdened with premises that lie in the
marketplace or the capitalist mode of production, which are rarely ques-
tioned and so comprise the limits of deliberations on the matter.
By the end of the nineteenth century in the United States the obvious
limitations of constitutionalism, among other reasons, led to the develop-
ment of a broad, new focus. In sharp contrast to formal descriptions, there
emerged an interest in the real world of political practice. With a stress on
‘realism’ and not the formal constitutions, political scientists began to
study some of the actual processes of achieving and exercising state power.
As a result, part of the focus of political studies shifted to the examination
of legislative committees, state corruption, political parties, lobbies, inter-
est groups, extra-legal organizations, and so on. These studies did not

11
Marriott, Dictatorship and Democracy, Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1935: 7–8.
36 G. TEEPLE

eclipse a persisting interest in legal and constitutional issues, but the politi-
cal was being implicitly and newly defined as the process by which groups
competed for control over governing institutions.12
It was only after World War II that the discipline of political science
began to come into its own beyond its limited development in a few
nations, following the UNESCO conferences in 1946 and 1948.13 Soon
after, the new empirical focus promoted by the United States became the
general emphasis in the discipline throughout much of Western Europe.14
Innumerable detailed, specific studies were undertaken on the attitudes
and values of the electorate, on the effects of different variables on the
political process, and on policy formation and decision-making in govern-
ment institutions and political parties, among other issues. Valuable as an
antidote to constitutionalism, these studies for the most part remained
descriptive; and no consensual definition of politics or the political process
emerged from them. They did, however, highlight the difference between
formal and real processes, with the implication that there was an autho-
rized abstract process that could be referred to if real politics were cor-
rupted. But no critical appraisal of the formal structures themselves
emerged from these studies.
The Statistical Measurement of Politics. With this shift to the empirical,
begun in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century and
much expanded in the 1950s, the view of the state as an institutional force
in its own right was downgraded to a set of governing agencies, all suscep-
tible to individual or group pressures. Where the concept of the state con-
tinued to be used, it was, in the words of Easton, reduced “to a neutral
and empty conceptual shell for identifying the actors in the international
sphere.”15 In the mainstream for the most part, it was replaced with such
terms as ‘the political system,’ ‘government,’ or ‘process,’ also rather

12
There is a good review of these pre-World War II studies in B. Gross, The Legislative
Struggle, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953; and in B. Crick, The American Science of Politics,
Berkeley and Los Angeles 1964; D. Easton, ‘Political Science in the United States,’ op cit.;
G. Almond, ‘The History of Political Science,’ in G. Almond (ed.), Ventures in Political
Science, Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner, 2002.
13
T. Boncourt, ‘A History of the International Political Science Association 1949–2009,’
Montreal: The International Political Science Association, 2009.
14
See: Jan Barents, Political Science in Western Europe, (London 1961); and G. W. Carey,
‘Beyond Parochialism in Political Science,’ in G.J.G. Graham and G.W. Carey (eds), The Post-
Behavioral Era, New York 1972.
15
D. Easton, ‘Political Science in the United States,’ op. cit., 283.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 37

empty, which presented a vision of an apparently disinterested governing

process that was open and responsive to the outcome of competition
between contending groups.
Pluralism. The empiricism implicit in these studies made them quite
compatible with the prevailing ideology of pluralism. They placed an
emphasis on a marketplace view of the determination of public policy and
tended to portray the ‘state’ or ‘government’ as merely an arena of con-
flict. If not societally reductionist,16 their focus of analysis was certainly
societal competition for influence over the state; and the question of state
autonomy was left more or less unaddressed or often eclipsed by the
emphasis on the ‘process’ of contending groups. In the end, the implied
definition of politics throughout these writings was that of an imperfect
but open system of competition amongst numerous organized and self-­
determining interests leading to the making of public policy—a partial but
uncritical reflection of the operation of liberal democracy, but no contri-
bution to understanding the meaning of politics.
Despite the varying subject matter (political parties, local governments,
extra-legal organizations, trade unions, corporations), pluralist studies
were infused with assumptions about liberal democracy. Implicit were the
ideas that government policy more or less reflected the general will, that
society was merely the aggregate of competing individuals or groups, that
class interests did not exist, and that equal opportunity and the merit sys-
tem underlay education, business, and government. Moreover, because
the system worked, was stable, and apparently benign, whatever flaws
existed could be remedied by reform. Criticism, in this context, was con-
fined to the limits of reformism, that is, the political system was fundamen-
tally sound, but if there were shortcomings they could be corrected or
improved. The authors of these studies never stepped outside the system
they were investigating; and their various definitions of politics became
little more than descriptions of the various processes under examination.
Behaviouralism. In the United States, many of these studies, coming as
they did before World War II, helped to set the stage for the postwar
shakeup in the discipline that made behaviouralism one of the most widely
accepted approaches to the study of politics. This shift in political science
brought with it the near abandonment of a concern for the definition of

16
See G.A. Almond’s case against this criticism in his, ‘The Return to the State,’ in
G.A. Almond, A Discipline Divided, Schools and Sects in Political Science, Sage Publications,
Newbury Park, 1990.
38 G. TEEPLE

the subject matter in favour of a concern for the mastery of research tech-
niques. To adopt research methods as a central concern, however, carried
numerous assumptions that were rarely critically examined by their practi-
tioners. It was assumed, for instance, that the methods themselves were
merely instrumental and therefore ‘value-free,’ that surveys, opinion polls,
questionnaires, and interviews, not to mention the statistical manipulation
of data,17 did not affect the results of research in some way. It was also
assumed that the only real knowledge of the political was that which could
be extracted by means of statistical research techniques and that the politi-
cal reality to be uncovered comprised regularities susceptible to measure-
ment. It followed that a discussion of inherent or structural inequality,
constitutional contradictions, or corruption in the political arena was pre-
cluded from this vision.
By the 1960s, these wide-ranging behavioural studies were subjected to
considerable criticism from within the discipline.18 In the end, they pro-
duced no generally acceptable definition of the political.19 To be without
such a definition or broader vision, however, meant that their authors
were often unaware of or unclear about the rationale for their work, or
what it meant in a larger context.20 As a result, they had little to say about
the civil rights movement, poverty in the midst of plenty, women’s libera-
tion, or the Vietnam war.21
Perhaps to address this obvious omission, they frequently invoked as
justification the notion of the forever elusive ‘middle-range’ theories to be

17
W.J. Reichmann, The Use and Abuse of Statistics, Harmondsworth 1971.
18
See, for example, G. Graham and G. Carey (eds.), The Post-Behavioral Era, New York
1972; C. McCoy and J. Playford (eds.), Apolitical Politics: A Critique of Behavioralism,
1967; E. Voeglin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago, 1952); D. Easton, ‘The New
Revolution in Political Science,’ The American Political Science Review, Vol. LXIII, no.
4, 1969.
19
C. Bay, ‘Politics and Pseudopolitics: A Critical Evaluation of some Behavioral Literature,’
in C. McCoy and J. Playford (eds.), Apolitical Politics… op. cit., 14.
20
A. Hacker dryly remarked: “[T]here may be cooperation among political scientists in the
sense that they share and criticize each other’s research. However, this communication does
not produce an agreed upon body of knowledge. … At this time, it is hard to point to any
‘findings’ that have been accepted by the scholarly community. As matters now stand, there
are cliques, coteries, and lone wolves talking past one another or to themselves.” ‘The Utility
of Quantitative Methods in Political Science,’ in J. C. Charlesworth (ed), Contemporary
Political Analysis, New York, Free Press, 1967:147.
21
T. J. Lowi, ‘The Politics of Higher Education, Political Science as a Case Study,’ in
Graham and Carey (eds.), The Post-Behavioural Era, op cit.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 39

built up from empirical research. It was soon clear that much of the work
was trivial and lacked relevance to key issues of the day, being preoccupied
as they were with method and subject matter that was measurable.22 They
were inherently conservative in outlook, studying only what is from the
perspective of the status quo without critical analysis. Many of these
researchers found themselves in an intellectual cul-de-sac of mere empiri-
cal detail.23 And others took their knowledge of technique to the business
world to service capital with research marketing or to political parties and
government with electoral polling studies.

Politics as Ubiquitous
Following the growing criticisms of these wide-ranging studies of political
processes and the near absence of studies on the state, there arose a solu-
tion of sorts to the lack of a definition of the political in the idea that poli-
tics was ubiquitous. Once the state was seen as a process, or set of honest
broker institutions, concerned with relations of power, authority, control,
conflict, and influence, it was an easy step to shift the focus to social life in
general, aside from their connection to the institutions of government. All
relations of domination and subordination, of power and authority,
became political in this view; stateless societies, non-governmental bodies,
and social and economic institutions (including the family, schools, clubs,
associations, trade unions, and corporations) were deemed to be political.
The idea of politics everywhere came to have and still has a very wide
currency across most tendencies in political analysis from conservatives to
Marxists.24 While this apparent solution to an elusive concept carries an

22
Leo Strauss was not alone in this opinion: “Generally speaking, one may wonder whether
the new political science has brought to light anything of political importance which intelli-
gent political practitioners with a deep knowledge of history, nay, intelligent and educated
journalists, to say nothing of the old political science at its best, did not know at least as well
beforehand.” “An Epilogue,” in H.J. Storing (ed), Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics,
(New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962:312).
23
Most political science journals still regularly publish examples of such empirical studies.
For a well-known and stimulating criticism of behavioralism or ‘methodism,’ see: S. Wolin,
‘Political Theory as a Vocation,’ American Political Science Review, LXIII (Dec. 1969).
24
Here are a few examples to make the point: S. E. Finer writes: “In modern society, poli-
tics is ubiquitous.” Comparative Government (Harmondsworth, 1970) 15; R. Miliband con-
curs: “[P]olitics is the pervasive and ubiquitous articulation of social conflict and particularly
of class conflict, and enters into all social relations, however these may be designated.”
Marxism and Politics (Oxford, 1977) 6; D. Held and A. Leftwich assert: “In our view, poli-
40 G. TEEPLE

aura of wisdom, it is anything but; if something is everything, then that

something has no specificity and is nothing but everything. The wide
appeal and acceptance of this idea probably lies in the fact that a market-
place society is predicated on private property, which produces pervasive
relations of domination and subordination throughout social life includ-
ing the political domain. This does not mean, however, that all such rela-
tions are political.
Some feminist writing in the 1970s made use of this idea in the form of
the aphorism: “the personal is political.”25 The phrase pointed to the real-
ization that the subordinate position of women in marriage and the family,
at work, in language and culture, and in sexual relations was not due to
personal or individual inadequacies but was the product of social, political,
economic, and historical forces. It embodied the understanding that
women’s oppression was systemic, that personal situations were largely a
consequence of social structures outside the control of the individual, and
that most relations in this system were relations of domination and subor-
dination. This increased consciousness about the social nature of individ-
ual experience was an essential preliminary to understand and confront the
subordination of women and the assumed privileges of men; but the
meaning of the phrase, the personal is political, became merely a short
form for saying that as social beings our individual circumstances are
broadly determined by forces outside our immediate relations. This is a
positive realization for all those indoctrinated by social structures and
practices to believe that they are somehow less or more than others.
The phrase, however, does not make the concept of the political any
clearer; in fact, it burdens or mystifies the concept by making ‘the political’
into a metaphor for all those societal forces that reproduce the dominant
and subordinate relations and institutions that provide the context and
content of our socialization. In short, the numerous books and articles on
“the politics of …” are really about the property matrix that defines our

tics is a phenomenon found in and between all groups, institutions … and societies, cutting
across public and private life.” ‘A Discipline of Politics,’ in A. Leftwich (ed), What is Politics?
(Oxford, 1984) 144; A. Leftwich is convinced: “[P]olitics is a universal feature of all societies
and all institutions and groups within them, not just some of them.” Redefining Politics
(London, 1983) 261; Wm. A. Welsh agrees: “For a good many years now most people have
recognized that politics is ubiquitous in human circumstances.” “[P]olitics,” he says, “is
everywhere” Studying Politics (New York, Praeger, 1973) 3, 8.
25
McCann, C., and S-K Kim (2013). Feminist theory reader: Local and global perspectives.
London: Routledge. 191.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 41

existence and our relative position in pervasive unequal power relations

that define capitalism. The idea of the political here does not advance our
understanding of the political any more than the notion that politics is
everywhere.
To broaden the concept of politics to include all relations of conflict
and inequality in no way clarifies the subject matter. While it might be
argued that it solves the problem of defining the political as a particular set
of specific relations, what it actually does is to deny political science an
object for study. When the definition is cast so wide as to include aspects
of almost all social relations it is rendered at best a synonym for relations
of differential power and at worst a concept without specificity and there-
fore in effect meaningless.
A brief conjecture as to the origin of the idea of ‘politics everywhere’
will help to explain its wide acceptance and misuse, and to grasp its posi-
tive significance. After World War I and the first experience of the con-
tending nations with the near complete mobilization of national resources
for war, there arose considerable growth in state regulation and associated
laws. Unprecedented state intervention in human mobilization, resource
allocation, corporate regulation, surplus disposition, trade union regula-
tion, and working-class reproduction, among other social relations, took
place in Europe and North America during the war and in the postwar
period. One of the earliest commentaries on this transformation of the
role of the state came in 1927 from Julien Benda in his The Treason of the
Intellectuals, in which he described this expansion of state administration
as the “politicization of society.” He wrote: “Nowadays it is politics every-
where, politics always, and nothing but politics.”26
After World War II, these words became a common refrain as a lament
of sorts from the political right for the purported demise of the classical
vision of liberalism of nineteenth-century marketplace society, that is, the
mythical world of the self-regulating market and minimal government.
After the two World Wars, state regulation appeared to be entering into all
social relations, ‘politicizing’ society, as it were. On the one hand, the
phrase was a statement of the obvious, pointing to the growth of the
administrative state, allowing members of all shades of the political spec-
trum to mouth it and sound as if saying something meaningful. But, on
the other hand, it was a rueful sigh about the loss of a romanticized society

26
J. Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, New York: Norton Library, 1969, 29. (Original
title: La Trahison des Clercs, 1927).
42 G. TEEPLE

of petty commodity producers and an implicit decrying of the spread of

state regulatory oversight, without an understanding of its rationale.
Whatever meaning is given to the phrase, its underlying significance is
that it points to the state regulation of our social relations as they are trans-
formed by industrial capitalism and challenged by both capital and labour.
As all our key relations become increasingly antagonistic, they require
state intervention to contain and control. This growth in regulation, then,
is not a matter for lament over a mythical lost marketplace society, but a
matter of the growth of consciousness about the nature of relations in a
capitalist society. The so-called politicization of society27 points to a grow-
ing awareness of the ubiquitous unequal power that is inherent in the
social relations of a capitalist mode of production and how consciousness
of such relations gives rise to countervailing demands, obliging state
regulation.
There have been two main reactions to the uncritical use of the numer-
ous concepts of politics. Perhaps in frustration over the numerous seem-
ingly irreconcilable definitions and the apparent partial validity of each,
one response has been to abandon the search for a single concept as an
impossibility (at least for the present) and to embrace the multiplicity of
definitions, not as something to lament but rather as a source of intellec-
tual stimulation and a sign of continuing development towards greater
conceptual adequacy,28 or as a natural consequence of the presumed inher-
ent relativity of political points of view.29 While a ‘hundred flowers bloom-
ing’ is certainly interesting, multiplicity in itself does not bring us any
closer to a clear definition of the political or necessarily lead in that direc-
tion over time. In fact, the acceptance of multiple definitions avoids the
question of a single meaning for the concept, implying that the subject
matter can be defined with equal validity as broadly as social life itself or as
narrowly as the formal functions of government. Stimulating it may be,
edifying it is not.
The other reaction, epitomized in the work of David Easton, has been
to delimit through a critique of existing concepts a single acceptable defi-
nition of the sphere. While it can be said that Easton’s definition of politics

27
K. S. Templeton (ed.), The Politicization of Society, Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979.
28
For this point of view, see: P. Nicholson, ‘What is Politics: Determining the Scope of
Political Science,’ Il Politico, Vol. 42, no. 2, June 1977: 245; and A.C. Isaak, Scope and
Methods of Political Science, (Homewood, Ill. 1969: 21).
29
P.L. Beardsley, ‘Political Science …,’ op. cit., 59.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 43

did hold prominence in the discipline for some time, especially in the
United States and was considered by some to be the consensus view, it did
not hold up to the criticisms levelled at it.30 The notion that politics is the
“authoritative allocation of values” lacks the specificity to distinguish it
from a number of institutionalized power relations. Today, it finds a place
as one example in the history of definitions, each with its own rationale,
shortcomings, and sometime defenders.

Politics as Power Relations

Perhaps the closest that mainstream political science has come to agree-
ment on its subject matter is over the notion of power; the agreement
here, however, is more illusory than real. The use of the word has a very
wide currency in the discipline, but there is no commonly accepted defini-
tion, and the various meanings are nothing if not disparate.31 Moreover,
when power is equated with politics it can “convert the study of politics,”
wrote Easton, “into the search for a general theory of power applicable to
all social relationships.”32 All relations of domination and subordination—
as characteristic of the workplace, educational institutions, and the family
in marketplace societies—are relations of power, but not all instances of
the assertion of power are political. To define politics as the exercise of
power is to deny the specificity of the political and to provide no insight
into the meaning of power.33 For political theory, the question of power is
the question of state sovereignty, the ultimate source of political power.

30
One version of D. Easton’s well-known definition is: “Political science is concerned only
with authoritative allocations or policies.” The Political System (New York, 1953) 131.
For criticisms, see: F.M. Frohock, ‘Notes on the Concept of Politics: Weber, Easton,
Strauss,’ The Journal of Politics, Vol. 36, no. 2, May 1974; P.C. Chapman and L.A. Scaff,
‘The Use and Abuse of Politics,’ Polity 8,1975–6; M. Evans, ‘Notes on David Easton’s
Model of the Political System,’ Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, 8, 1970.
31
For a brief critical overview of ‘the power conception of politics,’ see: P. C. Chapman
and L. A. Scaff, ‘The Use and Abuse …’ op. cit., 534–539; for an extended critical review of
the debates on the meaning of power, see: J.C. Isaac Power and Marxist Theory, A Realist
View, (Ithaca and London, 1987) Chapters 1, 3, 4.
32
D. Easton, ‘Political Science,’ International Encyclopaedia … op. cit., 248.
33
Hans J. Morgenthau offers this definition of the subject matter of the discipline:
“Political science deals with the nature, the accumulation, the distribution, the exercise and
the control of power on all levels of social interaction, with special emphasis upon the power
of the state.” Guzzini, S. ‘Hans J. Morgenthau and the Three Purposes of Power.’ DIIS
Working Paper 2018:4. The final qualifying phrase does not free his definition from the criti-
cism of Easton.
44 G. TEEPLE

The idea of ‘politics everywhere’ may well have found its origin in this
equation of politics with power. Some of the better-known theories of
power by, for example, Michel Foucault, Steven Lukes, and Michael Mann
include the political as a sphere of power, but they all cast their nets more
broadly to examine the nature of power in general and not specifically as
political power.34 In the end, these theories are more descriptions than
explanations. They state the obvious about power relations but do not
explain their source, ubiquity, or the meaning of political power.

Countering Orthodoxy
By the 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, mainstream pluralist
and behavioural studies continued to proliferate, but they could no longer
be carried out, published, or read for that matter, as if their attendant
assumptions and biases remained unchallenged and unexposed,35 both
empirically and theoretically.36 Among other reasons, the Cuban revolu-
tion, revelations about poverty in an ‘affluent society,’ the struggle for civil
rights, the rise of feminism, and pervasive criticism of the Vietnam war and
consequent crisis in legitimacy of American democracy, not to mention

34
Dahl, R. ‘The Concept of Power,’ Behavioral Science, Volume 2, Issue 3, 1957.
(201–215); B. Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis, London: George Allen and Unwin,
(1938) 1943; Brown, W. ‘Power After Foucault,’ in J. S. Dryzek, et al. (eds.). The Oxford
Handbook on Political Theory. June 2008; Lukes, S. Power: A Radical View. London:
Macmillan Press. (1974) 2007; Mann, M. The sources of social power. Volumes 1 and
II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
35
It is an interesting question why pluralism can remain a mainstream vision when its prin-
ciples and empirical accuracy have been so thoroughly exposed. That these studies continue
to be made is likely testimony to the fact that they conform to the prevailing power structure
and its ideological justifications.
36
This list represents only some of the critiques of pluralism and the vision of democracy it
embraced from this period. W. E. Connolly (ed), The Bias of Pluralism, (New York, 1969);
P. Green and S. Levinson (eds.), Power and Community: Dissenting Essays in Political Science,
(New York, Random House, 1969); W. E. McConnell, Private Power and American
Democracy (New York, 1966); R. Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London, 1970);
M. Parenti, Democracy for the Few (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1983) and Power and the
Powerless (New York 1978); M. Surkin and A. Wolfe (eds.), An End to Political Science (New
York, 1970); J. D. Wright, The Dissent of the Governed, Alienation and Democracy in America
(New York, 1976); A. Wolfe, The Seamy Side of Democracy, Repression in America (New
York, 1973).
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 45

the by then evident biases and questionable motives underlying much

quantitative research,37 all had their effects and were likely in part respon-
sible for a shift to more critical studies.

Elite-Stratification Theory
After World War II, one of the opening salvos against orthodox theories
was the critical studies by C. W. Mills. In 1951 he published White Collar:
The American Middle Classes, which traced the postwar transformation of
the class structure and associated corruption, and in 1956 The Power Elite
appeared and provided a dramatic challenge to the reigning pluralist views
of American politics, the myths of an egalitarian meritocracy. It described
what he saw as three elite social groupings, namely, the corporate, military,
and political establishment, ‘the corrupters-in-chief,’ linked together in
determining public policy. While acclaimed as “controversial” and “bril-
liant and illuminating” by younger American social scientists, it was treated
with considerable scepticism by mainstream social theorists. It provided,
nevertheless, a very stimulating and new perspective on the structure of
power in the United States.
But it was not without its problems that both ends of the political spec-
trum were soon to point out. The main criticisms were aimed at the con-
cept of elite, which was poorly defined, leaving the questions of the history
and foundation of these social units and related issues unaddressed.
Although the elites he described with empirical evidence did exist, shared
interests, and possessed power, the book did not explain the source of the
power that made them what they were. That they had power was a given,
but just what it was, how it was acquired, maintained, and advanced were
questions left unexamined. There was, furthermore, no theory of change;
implicit was the sense that fundamental change did not happen, only
changes of key members of the elites.
Without an analysis of the source of power in private property, we are
left with a theory that asserts the existence of elites motivated by personal
interests, which superficially is the case; but we are none the wiser about
37
Crass monetary motives, that is, government and foundation funding, were held to be
an important factor in the rise and promotion of ‘behavioralism.’ See: A. Somit and
J. Tanenhaus, The Development of Political Science, (Boston 1967: 183,185); and
H.R.G. Greaves, ‘Political Theory Today,’ in C.A. McCoy and J. Playford (eds), Apolitical
Politics, op. cit., 236; and D. Easton, ‘The New Revolution in Political Science,’ The
American Political Science Review, 1969.
46 G. TEEPLE

the structure of inequality that is the result of a system of private property

and that would provide an understanding of what appears on the surface
to be elites wielding power in their own interests.
Despite the negative mainstream reviews of The Power Elite, it proved
to be very influential, spawning a large literature especially in the United
States, but also in Canada and the United Kingdom. The work of William
Domhoff deserves mention as having carried Mills’ thesis forward and
developed the ideas into a series of incisive empirically grounded studies of
American political power.38 Avowedly non-Marxist, he nevertheless thor-
oughly embraced and advanced the sort of critical and empirical study
needed by critics on the left to reveal the nature and functioning of politi-
cal power.39
The work by Michael Parenti should also be mentioned here, although
it is not in the category of elite-stratification theory or critical liberalism.
But like Domhoff’s work, it stands outside the orthodox academic work
that defines the discipline and this despite or perhaps because of its pene-
trating and critical analysis of American liberal democracy.40

Critical Liberalism
In Anglo-American studies, the new approaches appearing in the 1960s
often took the form of critiques of mainstream political and social theories
by demonstrating their lack of correspondence with the empirical ‘facts.’
The data to refute the claims of these theories were in effect there for the
gathering, and these studies quite successfully revealed a socio-political
order in which business interests were closely linked to agencies of political
power, in which the people did not determine public policy, and which
were unjust, undemocratic, corrupt, discriminatory, and coercive. In

38
His insightful studies span several decades including Who Rules America? (1967), The
Powers That Be (1978), The Power Elite and the State (1990), State Autonomy or Class
Dominance? (1996), and The Myth of Liberal Ascendancy (2013). This list is neither complete
nor apparently the end of it.
39
G. W. Domhoff, et al., Studying the Power Elite: Fifty Years of ‘Who Rules America?’
New York: Routledge, 2017. This search for the ‘who’ and not the ‘what’ as the ruling force
in capitalist society is the central problem in all power elite studies. The individuals, classes,
and strata that ‘rule’ or determine public policy do so as the personifications of configura-
tions of capital, as framed or bounded by the demands of the capital they represent.
40
Among his books, see especially, Power and the Powerless, New York: St. Martin’s Press
1978, and Democracy for the Few, New York: St. Martin’s Press 2002.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 47

short, a reality was revealed which contradicted the visions of politics

embedded in the orthodox theories.41
To attempt to refute these theories on the empirical level (that is, the
theories did not match the facts) without challenging their premises and
assumptions was to place the focus of the criticism implicitly on the side of
practice and not on the conceptual side. As a consequence, although the
results of these studies convincingly revealed that the practice of democ-
racy was corrupt, unjust, biased, and so on, the theory of liberal democ-
racy was left more or less unchallenged. The reality was shown to be
wanting, but very little criticism of the theory itself was developed.42 In
the end, the question of the principles of modern democracy or, more
broadly, of the definition or meaning of politics remained largely
unexamined.
These studies were limited because they did not pose critical sets of
alternative concepts by means of which the mainstream paradigms and the
reasons for the defective reality could be evaluated, but they were useful to
the degree that they helped to de-legitimize the status quo by exposing a
reality seriously incongruent with its concept. They also opened new are-
nas for study which orthodoxy had kept firmly closed, namely, the perva-
sive inequalities of wealth and power, the influence of class interests in
politics, the state as an institution and not mere process, illegal state activi-
ties, and the relation between the state and the economy.
Studies such as these, however, soon reached a limit. Once the side of
practice in many of its manifestations was shown to lack correspondence
with accepted visions, the analyses became exhausted. The incongruence
was exposed, but the causes were for the most part not pursued in the
nature of system itself. Instead, the implicit logic on that level of analysis
frequently led to conclusions that pointed to an irredeemable human

41
See note 35 above.
These studies were often inspired by the work of C.W. Mills, especially his, The Power Elite
(1956), but they seldom adopted his implicit thesis of moral decline. See, for example,
G. Kolko, Wealth and Power in America, New York: Preager, 1962; M. Harrington, Poverty
in America, 1962; J. Porter, The Vertical Mosaic 1964; G. W. Domhoff, Who Rules America?
1967; R. Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society 1969; among many other studies.
42
This criticism, made of Miliband’s book on the state by N. Poulantzas, is equally appli-
cable to all the studies of this sort. See: N. Poulantzas, ‘The Problem of the Capitalist State,’
in R. Blackburn (ed), Ideology in Social Science, (London 1972) 240–241. See also: I. Balbus,
‘Ruling Elite Theory vs. Marxist Class Analysis,’ Monthly Review, May 1971.
48 G. TEEPLE

nature as cause and to more police or moral rearmament as solutions. Such

conclusions easily beget cynicism, hopelessness, despair, or resignation.

The New Corporatism

Like power elite theory, the new corporatism emerged as an alternative to
or implicit critique of pluralism43 and, similarly, it succeeded in showing
that aspects of the pluralist vision did not stand up to empirical examina-
tion. As a conceptual framework in its own right, however, it had several
shortcomings which do not deny its efficacy as a descriptive concept but
do preclude it from becoming an integrated, comprehensive approach to
its subject matter, namely, the role of the state vis-à-vis civil society, as
some of its proponents would have it.44
There appears to be considerable variation in the meaning of the con-
cept45 and its use has spanned a number of definitions including forms of
fascism,46 organizations of self-regulating interest groups, state-regulated
economic planning,47 systems of state intervention or interest intermedia-
tion in the economy,48 and state-dominated economic systems,49 among
others. Despite the differences, these definitions do share a central point,
namely, that the state as the state plays a much more significant role than
is admitted by the pluralist notion of government as a process or arena of
competition.
Without denying its descriptive accuracy, the concept came under con-
siderable criticism for its largely descriptive nature by many of those actu-
ally connected to these studies. Most of the formulations of the concept
are in fact on the descriptive level and, therefore, do not go beyond an
analysis of surface relations, despite explanatory ambitions.50 There have
been attempts to explain the phenomenon of corporatism by reference to
43
P.C. Schmitter, ‘Introduction,’ Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1, April
1977; 4.
44
J.T. Winkler, ‘Corporatism,’ Archives Europeenes de Sociologie, (1976) vol. xvii, no. 1; 100.
45
L. Panitch, ‘Recent theorizations of corporatism: reflections on a growth industry,’
British Journal of Sociology, vol. 31, no. 2, June 1980; 159.
46
F. Chabod, A History of Italian Fascism, (London 1963) 71–81.
47
A. Shonfield, Modern Capitalism, (Oxford 1977) 230ff.
48
P.C. Schmitter, ‘Modes of Interest Intermediation and Models of Societal Change in
Western Europe,’ Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 1977; 9.
49
J. T. Winkler, op. cit., 103.
50
B. Nedelmann and K.G. Meier, ‘Theories of Contemporary Corporatism: Static or
Dynamic,’ Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 1977; 40.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 49

group conflict or class contradictions,51 external to corporatism, but what-

ever success there was in this in explaining the phenomenon, the concept
of corporatism remained by and large merely descriptive of a form of polit-
ical relationship.
While it was an advance over pluralism to conceive of the state as an
actor in these corporatist arrangements, new corporatism generally implied
a more or less neutral state whose interventions were for the purpose of
the regulation of competition between corporations or industrial rela-
tions.52 The concept of the state, moreover, was decidedly unclear;53 and
similarly unclear was the source of the state’s motivations, the nature of its
autonomy, and the relation between the state and the interest groups it
attempts to organize under its auspices.54
These shortcomings are best seen as criticisms of the implied ambitions
or aspirations of the concept of corporatism, rather than of the concept as
descriptive of a certain phenomenon.

Postwar Neo-Marxism
At about the same time as these above critiques of mainstream orthodoxy
were unfolding, the new debates in Europe took two other paths, both of
which were neo-Marxist and quite different in their approaches from the
critical Anglo-American studies. Whereas the latter stressed the unity of
the state and the ruling classes and sought to demonstrate that relation-
ship empirically, the European (in effect French and German) debates
attempted to explain the separation or quasi-independence of the state
from the ruling classes or, more broadly, the economy, and were much
more theoretical than empirical. They were attempting to address the
nature of this apparently autonomous sphere, the political, but they were
approaching it very differently by making their focus not the sphere itself,
but the relation of the state to the economy.
The debate in France began in the 1960s and centred on the work of
Louis Althusser whose structural Marxism55 helped to resurrect an

51
P. C. Schmitter, ‘Modes…,’ op. cit.; and L. Panitch, op. cit.
52
G. Lehmbruch, ‘Liberal Corporatism and Party Government,’ Comparative Political
Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 1977: 95–6.
53
B. Nedelmann and K.G. Meier, op. cit.: 42.
54
R.M. Martin, ‘Pluralism and the New Corporatism,’ Political Studies, XXXI, 1983: 90.
55
The concept of structure and its use were never clearly defined by Althusser, and perhaps
for this reason it gave rise to considerable debate unrelated to its association with Marxism.
50 G. TEEPLE

interest in Marx’s work which had for long been stifled by the theoretical
dogmatism of the Communist Parties in the Soviet Union and the West.
With respect to the definition of the political, Althusser’s work was pre-
mised on an opposition to the then prevalent reductionism of doctrinal
Marxism—to an economism, which in effect made the state and its poli-
cies mere epiphenomena of a determining economic base, or to an instru-
mentalism, which construed the state as a tool in the hands of a ruling class.56
His counter to this reductionism rested mainly on two related ideas
derived from Marx, namely, relative autonomy and overdetermination. At
the risk of over-simplifying, the former can be defined as the quasi-­
independent existence of the component structures of the state, an exis-
tence which is determined by the economic only ‘in the last instance.’57
The state or the juridico-political structures, in this sense, are both prod-
ucts and in part determinants of the system at the same time. The notion
of overdetermination was coined to capture Marx’s use of the concept of
determination, perhaps to counter its mistranslation and misunderstand-
ing as determinism.58 It refers to the multi-dimensional and reciprocal
nature of the component elements and structures on one another within
the entire system.59 Determination denotes framing or conditioning or
delimiting, but not direct causation as implied in determinism, which would
exclude accidental or conscious interventions.
While Althusser had a significant rejuvenating effect on the study of
Marxism, Nicos Poulantzas was among the first and certainly the most
successful in employing many of Althusser’s concepts to frame his studies
of the political. While he made much of the term ‘relative autonomy,’
implying the conditional existence of the political sphere, his efforts to
delimit a concept of politics and his discussion of the role of the state did
not expressly address the nature of this relativity. In fact, he placed the
emphasis on the ‘autonomy’ and attempted to do for politics what he felt

In any event, the study of Marx since Althusser has been extensive and while he may bear
some responsibility for this wide interest, his own ideas have been largely forgotten.
56
Neither form of reductionism could address the multiplicity of state roles, both presup-
posed a monolithic capitalist class and little or no state autonomy, both more or less over-
looked the complex ideological role of the state, and neither could offer adequate explanations
of the modern welfare state.
57
L. Althusser and E. Balibar, Reading Capital, London 1970, 97.
58
The difference between determination and determinism is explored in Chap. 3. Although
the difference exists in English, few take the time to grasp it.
59
L. Althusser, For Marx, (London 1977) 112–114.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 51

Marx had done for economics, that is, to develop “a regional theory,” or
“to constitute the political into an autonomous and specific object of
science.”60 This attempt to define the political as a sphere in itself was
fraught with the same problems we have found in the mainstream theories.
Apart from this apparent misinterpretation of Marx and his
‘economics,’61 the stress on the autonomy diminishes attention to the
nature of the link between the state and the economy. If there is any nov-
elty in the notion of relative autonomy, it lies on the side of relativity not
autonomy; it is a qualified autonomy. If the political is relatively autono-
mous, the point is to explain why it is so and not simply autonomous, not
a sphere or region whole unto itself. To emphasize the autonomy and try
to construct a ‘theory of the regional’ is to miss the point of the concept,
to abandon its novelty, which leads Poulantzas to similar problems faced
by mainstream political science. As a consequence, his analysis was always
more descriptive than explanatory and tended to elaborate taxonomic
structures. Where an explanation of the political seems to appear, more-
over, it has the stamp of functionalism, another product of the attempt to
define something sui generis.62 Poulantzas also created an ahistorical the-
ory of the state, which among other things made accounting for political
change problematic. While he stimulated interest and research on the
nature of the political, his work came under severe criticism.63 It is difficult

60
N. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, (London 1968) 29, 57.
61
Marx does not have a theory of economics, pure and simple, but rather a critique of the
capitalist mode of production in which political, social, and economic factors are considered
as parts of a unity, albeit fragmented, but not treated in isolation. To simplify the oversight
of Poulantzas, we can say that the economic for Marx comprised the forces and relations of
production and possessed a dynamic in the forces of production that was the main driver of
development; the political comprised the structures of government and was largely a form
whose content lay outside itself in the dynamic of capital accumulation.
62
In Political Power and Social Classes, op. cit. Poulantzas asserts that the role of the state
is “as the cohesive factor in a formation’s unity” (47); it is also the maintainer of “equilib-
rium,” and it prevents “the social formation from bursting apart” (50). This is to explain the
state as a function of the assumed inherent instability of society.
63
There are many critiques of Poulantzas, dating from the early 1970s; all of them make
several of these criticisms. See: E. Laclau, ‘The Specificity of the Political,’ in his Politics and
Ideology in Marxist Theory, (London 1977); A.B. Bridges, ‘Nicos Poulantzas and the Marxist
Theory of the State.’ in Politics and Society, Vol. 4, no. 2, 1974; R. Miliband, ‘The Capitalist
State: Reply to Nicos Poulantzas,’ in R. Blackburn (ed) Ideology in Social Science, op. cit.;
R. Miliband, ‘Poulantzas and the Capitalist State,’ New Left Review, no. 82; and even
D. Easton, ‘The Political System Besieged by the State,’ Political Theory, Vol. 9, no. 3,
August 1981; among others. S. Clarke (ed.), The State Debate, Palgrave/Macmillan, 1991.
52 G. TEEPLE

to point to any lasting contributions in his writing on the state that were
not already found in the work of Althusser, Balibar, Gramsci, or Marx.
The other neo-Marxist debate, centred in Germany, had different
objectives than those in France. The numerous contributions to what
has become known as the state derivation debate began with a more or less
common problem: to explain why the political existed as a sphere separate
from the economic. The focus was on the relation between the state and
the capitalist mode of production, or more specifically, what it was about
this mode of production that gave rise to a separate existence of the state
and what were the conditions or limits it posed to political policy.64 In
these questions, the major omission and chief stumbling block in the
attempts by mainstream political science and Poulantzas to define politics
was addressed: the relations of the state to the larger system in which it
existed and from which it derived its nature.
The main contributions to the debate, to simplify a long, but insightful
exchange, pointed to various characteristics of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction as the cause of the separation. One suggested that the class strug-
gle between labour and capital required the existence of a state standing
over and above the conflict to ensure that neither side succeeded in
destroying the other so that capital could continue to accumulate with the
conflict attenuated. Another contended that the intense rivalry between
corporations constituted a threat to the system itself and therefore required
a state outside the marketplace in order to regulate the competitive con-
tract relations. One of the more suggestive contributions put forward an
analysis of the general conditions necessary to capitalist accumulation and
then derived the separation of the state as essential to the maintenance of
these conditions in the face of competition between capitals and the strug-
gle between labour and capital. The debate was much more elaborate than
can be examined here, and it can be said that it considerably advanced our
understanding of the meaning of politics.
Despite the common framework, the differences in the arguments in
this debate oblige overall criticisms to be very general or highly qualified.
It is, nevertheless, possible to point to three related shortcomings shared

64
The main reference for this debate in English is J. Holloway and S. Picciotto (eds), State
and Capital, (London 1978); and the journal: Working Papers on the Kapitalistate. Brief
reviews of this debate and associated work can be found in: B. Jessop, The Capitalist State
(New York and London, 1982) and M. Carnoy, The State and Political Theory
(Princeton 1984).
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 53

by most of the contributors. One is the ahistorical nature of the analysis;

the attempts at ‘derivation,’ in other words, are restricted to the capitalist
mode of production; and there are no broader terms of reference. The
problem here is that this restriction precludes a more comprehensive grasp
of why the state arises, and what is common to its nature across different
modes of production. In short, the state and civil society were, to a greater
or lesser degree, separate long before capitalism; what separates them,
then, cannot be factors peculiar to capitalism. The capitalist mode of pro-
duction produces the state in various modern forms, but there is nothing
exclusive to capitalism that produces the separation of the state from civil
society.
The second criticism is the tendency in many of the arguments to
employ functionalist modes of explanation. The separation of the state
from the economic arises because of its role in mitigating the conflicts
endemic to the economic. And the third criticism is that no theory of
movement of the capitalist mode of production and its political forms,
from its nascent stage to its completion and demise, is developed.
But these criticisms are minor in view of what these debates accom-
plished: to facilitate new Marxist thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, freeing
the study of Marx from doctrinal interment and accompanying cynicism,
and rejuvenating an interest in Marx’s ideas. In these European debates,
the right questions had been asked and the main variables isolated, but the
explanation of the political was still wanting.

The 1980s
Despite the advances in the definition of politics made in the 1970s, espe-
cially by the neo-Marxists, the end of that decade saw a remarkable shift in
the questions confronting humankind, changes that went a long way to
undermine the growth of Marxist studies and that spawned a number of
works then loosely called post-industrial or post-Marxist. These new ques-
tions were a consequence of culminating developments that overturned
old views and awakened new consciousness.
In the space of a very short time, the worldview and realities that
marked the post-1945 decades were transformed. Without attempting to
weigh their relative importance these are some of the changes that took
place. During the 1970s, in the face of the continuing ability of capitalism
to survive its crises and noticeably improve the well-being of working
classes, many of the communist parties of Western Europe began to view
54 G. TEEPLE

the principles of capitalism differently and to abandon ideas of revolution,

giving rise to the phenomenon of Eurocommunism.65 In 1979, following
this trend, China moved to adopt the capitalist road, as did the Eastern
European states by the late 1980s. Gorbachev introduced the policies of
perestroika and glasnost in the mid-1980s, accelerating an already spread-
ing marketization of the USSR.66 If socialism had not already lost its cred-
ibility as a goal for humankind, by the late 1970s it was quickly
losing ground.
The trade unions in the West, moreover, confronted by increasing legal
restrictions and by pervasive industrial re-structuring due to technological
change and run-away plants, which began to change the structure of the
working class, experienced declining membership and diminishing pow-
ers. As the voice of the organized working class, they began to appear
increasingly anachronistic beside the so-called new social movements.
The rapid rise and enthusiasm of these movements, embodying new
questions of environmental pollution, gender inequality, civil liberties, and
the rights of indigenous peoples, made the question of class struggle
seem—along with the trade unions—increasingly irrelevant to the times.
Even the future of resistance to neo-colonialism was placed in consider-
able doubt with the adoption of market principles in the former socialist
bloc by the late 1980s, and the fall of the USSR, and the defeat of Iraq in
the Gulf war in 1991.
It could hardly be considered odd, then, that the pursuit of Marxist
studies on the state or politics should fall into a certain disfavour, when the
dominant issues shifted from the national to the transnational level, from
class struggle to planetary survival, gender inequalities, aboriginal rights,
and when socialism was made responsible for all the mistakes and corrup-
tion of state bureaucrats and party functionaries in Eastern Europe, the

65
Its nature was defined as follows by Armen Antonian, Toward a Theory of Eurocommunism,
(Greenwood Press, New York, 1987): “Eurocommunism has disavowed any pretense at a
minority seizure of power both theoretically and practically. Bourgeois democracy is no lon-
ger seen as ‘bourgeois’ but merely as democracy. Eurocommunism implies the withering
away of Leninism and a transition, in theory, to a union of an economically, and socially radi-
cal, pluralistic parliamentary democracy” (p. 9). It also had a short life. “Little was left of
Eurocommunism … as a movement in Western Europe after 1982” (p. 8). Why after all keep
the word communism when Eurocommunism referred to its end? The concept of Euroleft
seemed to take its place for a short while before itself disappearing.
66
Bloomfield, J. (ed.), The Soviet Revolution: Perestroika and the remaking of socialism,
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 55

Soviet Union, and China. The persisting viability of capitalism, the seem-
ing legitimacy of liberal democracy, the material improvement of life for
the working classes, the rise of the new social movements, and the appar-
ent failure of what was called socialism, all led to the rejection or dismissal
of Marx and produced several attempts to develop a theoretical framework
to account for these changes.
The new work that appeared in this rapidly transformed world con-
sisted of diverse and unconnected tracts, sharing only an antipathy to
Marxism and a certain embrace of liberal pluralist principles in modern
guise. Inspired largely by the supposed failure of Marxism and the work-
ing classes to confront capitalism or make socialism a workable alternative,
the meaning of politics in these writings, although not often expressly
addressed, conformed in almost all aspects to mainstream pluralist views,
albeit with a critical tone.
The idea that the state was determined by or dependent on the mode
of production was abandoned in favour of positing the state and economy
as autonomous spheres of activity;67 and ideology and politics were not
seen as intrinsically related to class or production relations.68 The state
itself was not conceived as serving class interests but was seen as a process,
and there no longer appeared to be a notion that liberal democracy was
fundamentally flawed and could not outlive its contradictions, but rather
that it was an adequate avenue for the political expression of the diversity
of new social movements. The trade union movement was considered
irrelevant to contemporary questions, and the working class was portrayed
as a plurality of citizens or groups with no underlying integrity. Theories
of class-based politics were replaced with one theory or another of interest
groups or social movements. In general, the future was seen as a kind of
pluralistic democracy, not unlike that in mainstream theories of the repre-
sentative state but seemingly shorn of its corruption, bias towards capital,
and contradictory nature.

67
J. Cohen, Class and Civil Society: the limits of Marxian critical theory, Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1982:103; J. Cohen, Civil Society and Political Theory (co-authored
with Andrew Arato) (MIT Press, 1992).
68
E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Towards a Radical Democratic
Politics, London: Verso, 1990, 152–170.
56 G. TEEPLE

Civil Society and the State

If some of the new realities of the 1980s produced the disappointments
that led to these post-Marxists or New True Socialists,69 there was another
side to these ‘realities’ that led in another direction. Three main develop-
ments were at issue here: the re-structuring of the world economy, the
dismantling of the welfare state, and the breakdown of the so-called
worker states of Eastern Europe and the purported end of the Cold War.
What they produced was a renewed interest in the relation between civil
society and the state.70
The first issue was the culmination of the developments set in motion
at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference transformed the world economy
by the 1980s, marked by preeminence of transnational corporations and
their agencies. For them, the market was the global market, and competi-
tion between these corporations obliged the increasing harmonization of
national policies, particularly with respect to fiscal, monetary, tariff, and
subsidy policies, but affecting a range of other policies as well, including
those concerning wages, pensions, health and safety and pollution stan-
dards, and so on. With the adoption of neoliberal policies, the powers and
jurisdiction of the nation-state began to decline. Within trading blocs,
Europe in particular, a major political re-structuring followed with supra-­
national bodies gradually usurping the role of the nation-state. By ruptur-
ing the national link between the economy and the state, the relation
between civil society (the marketplace writ large) and the state became an
open question.
The second issue concerned the fact that everywhere in the industrial
world, the post-World War II welfare state began to be dismantled,
encouraged by the corporate-financed proselytizers of neoliberalism.
Undoubtedly related to growing competition in the international market
and the consequent need for lower production costs, this dismantling has
brought an end to the decades-long corporatist accommodation of the
working class. What before was obscured by the corporatism of welfarism
was now becoming exposed. In short, what previously appeared as con-
tiguous interests now appear increasingly with the destruction of the wel-
fare state as the discontiguous interests of the state and major parts of civil

69
E. Wood, The Retreat From Class: A New “True” Socialism, London: Verso, 1986.
70
John Keane (ed), Civil Society and the State (London 1988); and his Democracy and
Civil Society, London: Verso, 1988.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 57

society, namely, the working class, women, indigenous groups, and small
businesses, but not transnational corporate sector.
The third issue was the more or less rapid fall of the state capitalist
regimes of Eastern Europe that dramatically dispelled remaining illusions
about the monolithic union of the state and civil society, that the party and
state were genuine representatives of the people. The long attempts to
impose a unity in the Soviet bloc where little or none existed made the
separation of state and civil society a similarly long ‘underground’ issue.
With the demise of these regimes, that very separation became, there at
least, the question of the day.71
These transformed realities well illustrate that a high degree of legiti-
macy in liberal democracy, a well-established welfare state, and a dogma
that a ruling party is the voice of the people have been instrumental in
obscuring an awareness of the intrinsic separation between civil life and
the state in illusions about majority representation in various forms, sup-
ported by numerous institutions functioning to maintain the appearance
of societal equilibrium. The new realities also show that consciousness of
that separation arises when the established status quo can no longer satisfy
significant sections of the population in economic terms (recessions/
depressions) or in political terms (civil liberties, women’s rights, environ-
mental degradation, aboriginal rights, etc.); or when it can no longer
maintain the ruse of a workers’ state or majority rule, and the two sides
(state and civil society) become more or less monolithic antagonists; or
when the functions of the state are displaced from one level to another,
when the historic identity of the nation-state begins to lose its meaning
with the rise of modern trading blocs and a transnational enabling frame-
work serving the purposes of capital alone.
All these changes became evident in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s
and forced the question of the nature of the relation between the state and
civil society to the fore. With this dismantling and few attempts to recon-
stitute this relation at a supra-national level, this question has now become
a reality for more nations and people than ever before. Exposed and
unveiled in many ways, the relation became the ‘new interest’ of the early
twenty-first century. This uncoupling also brought us closer to an under-
standing of politics than ever before.72

71
B. Kagarlitsky, The Dialectic of Change, London: Verso, 1990 (331–333; 337).
72
The interest in civil society was indicative of this new awareness. J. A. Hall (ed.), Civil
Society: Theory, History, Comparisons, Cambridge: Polity Press 1995; V. A. Hodginson and
M. W. Foley (eds.), The Civil Society Reader, Hanover and London: University Press of New
England, 2003.
58 G. TEEPLE

The attempt to grasp the nature of politics is hardly new. The earliest
recorded debate came in the sixth century BCE when the market-based
city-states of the Greeks gave rise to philosophy, thinking about thinking,
which opened the door to questions about the nature of political struc-
tures. The question, what is politics, however, could not be answered
because the separation of the whole and the parts was assumed to be the
definition of a human being as ‘a political animal,’ a relation without a his-
tory, as found in Aristotle, and not a product of the market destruction of
the tribal communities of the past. To define the human as a political ani-
mal was to prevent understanding that political relations had once not
existed, and so obviating the need to explain why and how political rela-
tions arose.
The early social contract theories73 and The Republic of Plato were
among the earliest attempts to grasp what politics meant. But Aristotle’s
Politics was the first of what may be seen as a scientific appreciation of the
phenomenon. Still, it was largely descriptive because politics was taken as
human nature. What Aristotle was trying to answer was prevented by his
defining the human as political by nature.

Conclusions
This short survey highlights some key debates in political thought; that we
left out many debates does not affect our objective, which was simply to
point to some key attempts to address the dilemma of defining politics.
There are reasons for this oddity of no agreement on the definition.
Unable to develop a generally acceptable delimitation of its subject
matter, the discipline has over time divided into a number of ‘schools,’
tendencies, and approaches, and they have produced an array of eclectic,
overlapping, and conflicting conceptual schemes and arguments with
methods to suit and each with its own claim to the truth. The key reason
for this state of affairs lies in the fact that the majority of the efforts at defi-
nition have focused only on the sphere to be defined. In other words, the
attempts to delimit the field of inquiry generally do so only by reference
to the field itself, that is, without reference to the system in which it is a

73
J. W. Gough, The Social Contract, A Critical Study of its Development, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1963; F. W. Cornford, The Republic of Plato, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942,
52; E. Barker (ed. and trans.) The Politics of Aristotle, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1948, 4–5.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 59

part. Mainstream political science by and large neglects this broader rela-
tionship.74 If we accept, however, that the political is a definable sphere, it
is only one part of a larger system and as such can only be defined in rela-
tion to that system. The definition cannot ignore this fact for it is the sys-
tem as a whole that is the genesis of political relations and therefore also
the basis for their explanation. This is not, of course, to argue that the
political can be reduced to the system; rather, it is to argue that nothing
can be defined in reference only to itself. Whatever autonomy the political
sphere may have, its nature derives from its relation to the system as
a whole.
It follows that the attempts to define the political as a sphere in itself
frequently amount merely to descriptive abstractions of perceived salient
characteristics. These descriptions allow for no means to determine which
of the traits are essential or the sine qua non of the political and which are
secondary or merely contingent; the selection can appear to be quite arbi-
trary. As a result, every ‘school’ or approach or individual researcher is able
to assert different dimensions comprising a definition. Here lies one of the
principal sources for the quagmire of existing models, concepts, and para-
digms and the eclecticism of the discipline. And regardless of the traits
emphasized, there is no possibility of explaining the actual nature of the
political since this can only be done by reference to something external, to
the nature of the whole system in which it is found. All social phenomena
are intrinsically relational and cannot be understood outside of these

74
It might well be argued that ‘systems theory’ attempted to place the political in the
context of the social whole. However, not only is there no agreement about which of the
many versions is most acceptable, but also it is clear that the most notable effort in this
approach, that by Easton, has not stood up well. See Note 27 for criticisms of his notion of
politics; and for a list of other papers critical of Easton’s systems analysis and functionalism,
see: D. M. Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science, New Haven, Yale University Press,
1984: 217.
60 G. TEEPLE

relations. To define politics as a field of study sui generis,75 then, is to pre-

clude knowledge of the subject under consideration.76
If political science cannot define its subject matter, or at least not find a
consensus, it is no different from the other social sciences; they all face the
same dilemma of significant differences in focus within their disciplines.
All the social sciences have arisen in response to the fragmentation of soci-
ety into its constituent components reflecting the capitalist mode of pro-
duction. The resulting social fragments comprise relatively discrete yet
related spheres of activity, which engender the rise of the disciplines, but
whose meaning is dependent on their relation to the whole, albeit
divided, system.
The problem for the disciplines, it follows, is their very nature. As parts
of a whole, boundaries cannot be drawn with exactitude; the borders of
the fragments are fluid, allowing them to intersect and overlap.
Nevertheless, the disciplines are fragment specific, but fragmented phe-
nomena cannot be studied in and of themselves; things can only be
explained by reference to their interrelations in their sphere of existence;
and this is especially so for social fragments that owe their existence to the
nature of the whole. There is, however, as yet no discipline of the whole.
The disciplines as fragmented knowledge, moreover, develop their own
histories, theories, and explanatory claims and accompanying canons of
literature and authorities. They all try to grasp these fragments as if they
can be understood as fragments of existence. Understanding or explana-
tion in the social sciences, in general, is frustrated because the disciplines
cling to the fragments as fragments because that is their subject matter, as
relatively unconnected and ill-defined spheres of human activity that can-
not as such reveal their essential nature. The disciplines latch onto their
loosely bounded subject matters without searching beneath appearances
because to do so would mean the loss of their raison d’être. Fragmented

75
Fred Bloc has stated that “state power is sui generis,” but he makes this point as an asser-
tion; nowhere does he argue or defend this “formulation” as he calls it. It rests on the
assumption that “state managers collectively are self-interested maximizers, interested in
maximizing their power, prestige, and wealth.” While we would not deny the existence of
self-interest amongst bureaucrats, his point begs the question of the origin of the state as a
power sui generis. F. Bloc, ‘Beyond Relative Autonomy: State Managers as Historical
Subjects,’ in F. Bloc, Revising State Theory, Philadelphia, Temple University Press,
1987, p. 84.
76
The same point can be made about the subject matter of all academic disciplines; no
discipline can define the object of its interest in and of itself, although most try to do this.
 2 POLITICS: THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION 61

knowledge of a fractured society also cuts the disciplines off from one
another; each sees the other as a silo of disparate unrelated knowledge.
Another problem for the study of politics, and common to the other
social sciences, is that the subject matter is constantly changing, and so to
understand politics, and other social spheres, the dynamic that gives rise to
it and that drives its development must also be considered to be part of the
subject matter. The assumption that a political system is fixed, absolute,
unchanging, or ideal prevents an understanding of the system, but it is
essential for ideological reasons and to justify constitutional rule. Political
relations, however, are a product of a certain stage in social and economic
development; they did not always exist, they came into being, they change
over time, and they will eventually meet their demise. A definition of poli-
tics is incomplete without an account of why it arises and develops.
Without a theory of change, moreover, the disciplines gravitate towards
an assumption of homeostasis, that is, a certain equilibrium in relations
between the parts. But modern society is anything but a homeostatic
social system. It is marked by chronic crises, which usually begin in the
economy and have ramifications throughout the system. The periodic dec-
larations of ‘crises’ in the social sciences are not without genuine basis,
when at times of disequilibrium it is realized that the disciplines, unable to
step outside their approximate borders and narrowly defined methodolo-
gies, are unable to explain changes appearing in its fragmented sphere.
Nevertheless, the disciplines carry on as separate spheres of study with
their own histories, ill-defined borders, restricted methods, institutional
inertia, and professional careers that mirror a fragmented social formation.
There is another assumption in political science, and the other social
sciences, that characterizes their general contemporary practice and that is
the express adoption of empiricism as their basic methodological and the-
oretical perspective. This widely accepted premise means that the disci-
plines take for reality what exists on the level of appearances. Their subject
matter, in other words, is largely what appears on the surface of reality—
“what you see is what you get”—the level on which life seems to be lived.
But phenomena on this level may be merely the form of something that
lies beneath appearances, without an understanding of which there can be
no understanding of the appearances. If it is said, for instance, that politics
exists because we are “political animals,” political because it is human
nature, such an assertion is a mere tautology and explains nothing about
why we are political and what politics is. It takes what exists for the essence
of these relations. Similarly, if our political participation takes the form of
62 G. TEEPLE

‘one person one vote,’ which is declared a principle of liberal democratic

politics, this claim does not explain why political engagement takes this
form or how accepting it as a principle eclipses inquiry into the implica-
tions of such a belief. How to explain why only ‘persons’ are allowed to
vote and what can the ‘people’ refer to if each ‘person’ in liberal democ-
racy counts as but an isolated individual atom?
To understand just what politics is and why it arises at a certain point in
history, we need a reason from which we can deduce its existence and
development.

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 CHAPTER 3

The Meaning of Politics

If there is no consensus in political science on the meaning of politics, it

does not follow that the concept has no referent, that we should embrace
the relativity of multiple definitions, or that we should abandon the search
for a meaning. The lack of agreement may simply point to the difficulty in
defining the thing referred to or to philosophical and disciplinary premises
that prevent or obscure an understanding of the phenomenon.
That there is no widely accepted and coherent explanation regarding
the nature of politics leaves the door open to making an argument about
its nature. Because Marx’s writings about the meaning of politics contain
all the elements for an explanation it is worth examining this argument of
his not often drawn out. Here is an explanatory framework that addresses
the questions confounding the attempts to analyse the nature of the politi-
cal by all philosophical persuasions, including those considered Marxist.
This review of Marx will go over well-trod ground, but the approach is not
to pretend to outline ‘what Marx really said,’ rather it attempts to develop
a logically consistent argument, employing his premises and logic and
then evaluating many of the current debates in light of this reasoning.1

1
Those who dismiss the argument presented here because it is premised on Marx’s work
will have missed the point. Those who argue that this is not Marx will also have missed the
point. The point is that an argument must be assessed on its own merits, not from a perspec-
tive of political antipathy or orthodox purity; the strengths or weaknesses of the reasoning
alone are the focus and not its origin in Marx. It may or may not be a faithful rendering, but

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 65

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_3
66 G. TEEPLE

Politics, for Marx, evolves out of a contradiction that lies in the nature
of all social formations. Politics is a particular moment in the unfolding of
this contradiction in human development that develops through stages
and comes to a completion and then arguably to a resolution. Because the
existence and so the definition of politics rest on this contradiction having
arrived at a certain degree of development, the analysis begins with the
nature of the contradiction and its unfolding.

“The First Historical Act”

In large measure, the argument is found in the Grundrisse, notably in
Notebooks V and VII, and in The German Ideology in a passage that Marx
called “the first historical act.”2 He is referring to the act that distinguishes
humans from animals, the act that makes that distinction and at the same
time defines the dynamic that constitutes the essence of human existence.
The definition of this initial moment begins with a premise about life
and needs: all living things have needs, writes Marx, meaning simply that
all life is dependent on sustenance external to itself, which in turn means
that life must have the instruments to satisfy these needs. For humans, the
needs in question would comprise food, water, shelter, clothing, and so
on, but in this argument, they are left as elemental abstractions because
the empirical particular forms they may take and how they are satisfied are
always relative to a given era, environment, and mode of subsistence.3
Whatever the specific character of these needs, life demands that they
be satisfied; but what differentiates human life from other forms of life is
the way in which they are satisfied, and here lies the significance of the
‘first historical act.’ The act consists of three components that for analyti-
cal purposes can be separated, but each must be seen as implying the other,
as existing in and through the other and, therefore, Marx says, must be
appreciated as ‘simultaneously existing’ and reciprocally related.

this is unimportant because such a rendering would likely not find agreement, and agreement
however wide is no guarantee of accuracy. What is important is that the argument is inter-
nally consistent and sound and can be substantiated with empirical evidence.
2
K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works, Volume 5, London:
Lawrence and Wishart. 1976: 31–52; K. Marx, Grundrisse, Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1974: 471–479, 487–498, 704–712.
3
For extended valuable discussions of Marx’s notion of needs, see A. Heller, The Theory of
Need in Marx, London: Allison and Busby, 1974; and M. Lebowitz, ‘Capital and the
Production of Needs,’ Science and Society, Vol. 41. No. 4 (Winter, 1977/78) 430–447.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 67

The first aspect is the production of “the means to satisfy these needs.”4
This development of the means of production represents the first step in
the making of humans, which is to be distinguished from other animals by
the separation from a direct relationship to nature. The means of produc-
tion constitute the mediation of the relation between humans and nature,
which allows for degrees of control over the environment in the satisfac-
tion of needs. Implied in the production of these instruments, moreover,
is the process of making and using them, which further implies structured,
reciprocal relations. Taken together, they comprise a labour process con-
sisting of tools, raw materials, and patterned behaviour, the means and
relations by which nature is converted into products to satisfy human needs.5
The second aspect arises from the relationship between existing needs
and the labour process. In the satisfaction of a given set of needs—that is,
in the act of satisfying and in the production of the required instruments—
there arise new needs. These needs, at first an ‘extension and elaboration’
of the previous ones, in time become qualitatively different and so bring
pressure for the development of new instruments of production to satisfy
them, the existing instruments having been produced to satisfy previous
needs. In short, the satisfaction of needs through production generates
new needs, and new needs require new means of production.
These two elements form a dynamic between the satisfaction of existing
needs, ever-evolving new needs, and consequent successive demands for
new labour processes to satisfy them. The dynamic is continuous and com-
prises the rationale of historical movement: it is the basis of secular change.
As the source of historical movement, it lies at the heart of Marx’s concept
of the forces of production, but at any given moment in history it comprises
a narrow definition of the “mode of production.”6
Implicit in this dynamic is the third aspect. In reproducing themselves
on the material level, humans engage in certain social relations: “they

4
Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, op. cit. p. 42.
5
K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, New York: Vintage Books, 1977: 283–4.
6
There is a controversy over the meaning of “mode of production,” but without entering
the debate, we suggest that Marx used the concept in two ways: one referring simply to the
forces of production as outlined above, that is, as the dynamic between needs and means of
production, and the other meaning the combination of the forces and relations of produc-
tion. A. Foster-Carter, “The Mode of Production Controversy,” New Left Review, No. 107,
Jan/Feb 1978; J. Banaji, “Mode of Production,” in B. Fine, A. Saad-Filho, and M. Boffo
(eds.), The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing,
2012, (227–232).
68 G. TEEPLE

begin to propagate their kind,” says Marx.7 He is referring to the “mode

of cooperation,” or the relations of production, which arise out of or are
implicit in the mode of production. These social relations are at first ele-
mentary or ‘natural’ but become increasingly complex in keeping with the
dynamic that underlies the development of the forces of production.
These three elements of the “first historical act,” Marx argues, have
“existed simultaneously since the dawn of history…and…still assert them-
selves in history today.”8 How they assert themselves has already in part
been mentioned—as the dynamic that accounts for historical movement
through the secular development of the forces of production, or periodic
revolutionary transformations of an entire social system. It is through
these successive developments that social formations become political. This
latter point is what concerns us here.
The relations of production that arise from the process of satisfying
social and physical needs are characterized by a social division of labour
that in effect reflects, or is implicit in, the manner in which a particular
mode of production has divided the tasks necessary to satisfy the needs of
a community.9 At any given historical moment, then, this division of
labour embodies the fundamental social relations of a community; it refers
to the existing essential social character of human productive activity,
albeit socially divided throughout history due to the limited or incomplete
level of development of the forces of production.

Property and Social Power

Besides being the real, practical nucleus of existing social formations, the
social division of labour entails another factor central to the argument.
The division of labour, writes Marx, “implies the distribution and indeed
the unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labour and
its product, hence property.”10 In other words, distribution is the alloca-
tion of labour and products to its members according to the social division
of labour; it is the determination of who gets what, when, and why. That
distribution is always and necessarily unequal—that is, no two humans or
social positions have the same needs—in turn implies property. As Marx

7
Marx & Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works, Volume 5, op. cit., 42–3.
8
Marx & Engels, Ibid., 42–3.
9
K. Marx, ‘Introduction.’ Grundrisse, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974, 95.
10
Marx & Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works, op. cit., 1976, 46.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 69

put it: “The various stages of development in the division of labour are just
so many different forms of property, i.e., the existing stage in the division
of labour determines also the relations of individuals to one another with
reference to the material, instrument and product of labour.”11 These rela-
tions constitute property, and so, he argues, property and the division of
labour are the opposite sides of the same coin. Property comprises the
codes of conduct (the rights and entitlements) that embody the abstract
principles of the division of labour, and the division of labour is the practi-
cal side.
Property, as defined here by Marx, is not a reference to a thing, which
is its common use and understanding, but rather to a social relation
between humans with respect to the use of goods and services, the defini-
tion and use generally found in law courts. It is the social practice that
defines relations between the members or units of a community with
respect to the use and disposal of socially necessary objects. To put it
another way, property is a right, claim, or entitlement to the means of
production and products of labour,12 relations that reflect the social divi-
sion of labour. And because the division of labour embodies the funda-
mental relations of a community, property is the ethical or legal expression
of those relations. The prevailing property form comprises the ethical basis
of a given social formation. In pre-market social formations, property as
shared or common rights takes form informally as customs, traditions,
usages, norms, expectations, and values; with the rise of marketplace soci-
ety, property as exclusive or private relations takes the form of contracts,
objectified and formalized in the state and law and other social institu-
tions. Historically, the manifestations of forms of property move from the
informal and subjective to the formal and objective.13

11
Marx & Engels, ibid., 46; Marx elaborates on this point: “Division of labour and prop-
erty are, after all, identical expressions: in the one and the same thing is affirmed with refer-
ence to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity.” (See
also: Marx, ‘Introduction,’ Grundrisse, op. cit., 88–89.)
12
To paraphrase C.B. Macpherson in his “The Meaning of Property,” C.B. Macpherson
(ed.). Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1978.
13
See K. Marx, Grundrisse, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. See pages 471–491. The
concept of property is much more important to Marx’s arguments than is usually under-
stood. See: K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, New York: Vintage Books, in particular, Chapter
32. See also the Addendum for a short exposition on property.
70 G. TEEPLE

This is a definition of property in general and not to be confused with

one of its specific forms, private property, which as the prevailing form in
liberal democracies is often referred to simply as ‘property.’ But the generic
definition allows us to make the connection between property in general
and social power, whose source remains one of the persisting conundrums
in political and social thought. Power in general is defined as the ability or
capacity to act, but when qualified as social power, or the capacity to act
within the bounds of a social system—that is, legitimately, which is what
concerns most social science—it is action that is performed as traditional
or authorized rights, claims, or entitlements. In short, the main source of
social power is the prevailing property form: social power is the exercise of
socially sanctioned rights, claims, and entitlements. In a capitalist society,
these rights are exercised by means of private property objectified as
money or capital and through contract.
From this perspective, individuals, corporate entities, and the state have
power according to their respective possession or control of exclusive
rights to things. The overarching social power of the state derives from its
authorized command over the principles and institutions that reflect the
prevailing forms of property: rights over state property and revenue collec-
tion, and the use of the military, police, and other agents and assets. The
modern corporation derives its prevailing social powers from its collective
ownership or control of productive assets, the means of production, which
comprise the raison d’être of the system in the form of the process of capi-
tal accumulation, the most significant source of legitimate power. And the
power of the individual lies in the social rights over personal income and
assets usually limited to consumer goods.
The exchange or employment of these assets is facilitated by money,
which embodies the value of all the commodities being exchanged. Money,
then, becomes the concentrated preeminent source and form of power in
a marketplace society, ultimately stamping everything with a price, imply-
ing that everything is for sale, from a cup of coffee to members of liberal
democratic legislatures.14
The legitimate use of money or capital as social power refers to its use
within the bounds of the law, while its illegitimate use refers to its use
outside legal limits, its unauthorized use. This use is widespread, especially

14
G. Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, London: Pluto Press 2002; P. Geoghegan,
Democracy for Sale, Dark Money and Dirty Politics, Bloomsbury, 2021.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 71

on the part of corporations,15 and appears as criminal acts within a lawful

state. Might is right is another source of power that appears as arbitrary
acts by agents of dictatorial states, military personnel in theatres of war,
and criminals and can include individuals, corporations, police, and the
state. Although common enough and expanding as a source of power and
in need of explanation, might is right or any arbitrary use of power is not
the usual or legitimate form of the exercise of power in liberal democracies.

The Rise of Political Relations

The division of labour and its ethical or legal expression as property, in
Marx’s argument, embodies the fundamental social relations of a commu-
nity. All communities are comprised of their members as social relations,
who are by definition socialized by, or products of, the system into which
they are born. The community as a set of property relations and its mem-
bers as socialized individuals and various collective sub-units, then, are one
and the same but in different forms. They constitute the contradiction at
the heart of all social formations: the community and its members or,
more abstractly, the whole and its parts. One side cannot exist without the
other; no individual can become human outside of a community, and no
community can exist except as a set of relations between individuals and
other social units. One side demands the other for its existence, and each
is defined in terms of the other.
Marx’s analytical starting point is the socialized individual. There is no
such animal as the individual human as a solitary isolated being. And here
lies the contradiction: there is no social, that is, property relations, without
socialized members, and there are no members without the social. The
political, in Marx’s argument, arises from this contradiction. In pre-market
communities, the parts (members) do not distinguish themselves signifi-
cantly from the whole (shared property); there is an integral unity of the
whole and parts. Implicit, however, is the possibility of divisions amongst
the members as defined by their property relations and so a potential frac-
turing of the unity, a unity that is dependent on shared property.
In Marx’s argument, the forces of production (needs and means of
production) contain a dynamic that produces their secular growth, which

15
M. B. Clinard and P. C. Yeagar, Corporate Crime, New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishing, 2011; W. P. Mullin and C.M. Snyder, “Corporate Crime,” in G. De Geest (ed),
Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.
72 G. TEEPLE

in turn carries further implications. He writes: “Each new productive

force, insofar as it is not merely a quantitative extension of productive
forces already known…, causes a further development of the division of
labour.”16 New productive forces, it is argued, increase the social product
and create surpluses, enlarge the population, and expand the needs. The
result is a concomitant development of the division of labour, which pro-
duces more exclusive property forms and social segmentation. The units
of a social formation, then, are increasingly divided within a mode of
cooperation: more and more, the interests of social subsets, like clans,
families, classes, or individuals, correspond less with each other and so less
with a general or common interest. The rise of segmented interests is
reflected in the growth of increasingly exclusive claims and rights that are
different from the interests of the whole.
The decline of direct cooperation and the rise of indirect cooperation
within a mode of production means that the general interest as such, as
communal property, begins to fragment. Yet, the social formation persists,
albeit with segmented interests reflected in correspondingly structured
exclusive property forms. These forms still comprise the whole, but not as
an integral whole comprised of genuinely common interests, but rather as
a framework that binds together the now indirectly cooperating units that
are increasingly mutually antagonistic yet interdependent. When genu-
inely common interests prevail, property relations as the social framework
are informal, implicit, and held subjectively; where segmented interests
become dominant this property framework necessarily becomes increas-
ingly formalized and objectified. It becomes the ‘whole’ outside its mem-
bers, a set of sanctioned relations within which the parts indirectly work
together.17
The community as community, then, progressively disintegrates with
each new development in the division of labour. Communal interests dis-
sipate in the face of growing antithetical segmented interests because these
interests militate against the common interest as common interest is con-
stantly seeking a particular advantage. Ultimately, the ‘community’
becomes simply the prevailing but increasingly exclusive property relations

16
Marx & Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works, op. cit., 1976, 32.
17
As Marx puts it: “Just because individuals seek only their particular interest, the latter is
asserted as an interest ‘alien’ to them, and ‘independent’ of them, as in its turn a particular
and distinctive ‘general’ interest; or they themselves must remain within this discord, as in
democracy.” Marx and Engels, 1976: 47.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 73

within which its members exist more and more as independent or mutu-
ally antagonistic interests. There is an interdependence of the member
units, however, but it is an interdependence resting on an increasingly
complex division of labour: “reciprocity in estrangement,” as Marx put
it.18 The prevailing property relations become increasingly “an illusory
common interest” because, while they apply to all, they do not embody
socially inclusive property forms, but mutually exclusive ones, which pro-
vide advantages for certain individuals, strata, and classes. They become an
objective legal framework applying to all as sub-units or atoms, represent-
ing sets of their exclusive rights.
The more that the division of labour gives rise to segmented interests,
creating attendant conflicts, the greater the need for the ‘whole,’ the prop-
erty relations representing these divisions, to be expressed in an objective
form. The subjective embodiment of the whole in the parts, community as
community, is gradually transformed into the objective embodiment of
the whole separate from the parts.
This gradual separation of the ‘general interest,’ property relations,
from an integral link with the parts appears historically as a staged process
of the objectification of the ‘community’ outside its members, as the
growth of structures of formal authority incorporating the rules and regu-
lations associated with increasingly exclusive rights. It is the gradual shift
of property relations reflecting shared communal interests to those reflect-
ing a system comprised of ever-narrower exclusive interests that demand
objective embodiment. The greater the divisions, the more complete the
separation and the greater the need for more complete objective embodi-
ment: from ephemeral leadership to ‘headman,’ chief, council, king/
queen, and ultimately the development of the state. This is not to suggest
a linear development, but rather to point to some of the forms that embody
property relations outside the parts, necessitated by the increasing division
of labour. With a complex division of labour and accompanying conflict
amongst classes and strata, the social formation becomes bounded by
objective property relations in the shape of designated formal governing
institutions: the state, law codes, courts, police, prisons, the military, and
so on. In short, all the structures necessary to maintain a ‘coalition’ of
antagonistic parts.

18
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works. Volume 3. London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1975: 275.
74 G. TEEPLE

What Is Politics?
Politics, then, arises at a point in history when the division of labour has
evolved sufficiently due to exchange and production for exchange to make
the integral unity of the community and its members no longer a possibil-
ity, when individual or subgroup interests supersede those of the commu-
nity as such. As a consequence, the community becomes the abstracted,
estranged, set of property relations, taking objective forms that ultimately
evolve into a state that stands over and above the segmented conflictive
parts. The state codifies exclusive property forms as specific laws, as a for-
mal assertion, and sanctions their enforcement by means of subordinate
institutions. Political society is bound together by law: by objective and
authorized not subjective and informal bonds.
Politics, in other words, is the relation between the whole and the parts
in which the whole, the property relations, has an objective existence sepa-
rate from the parts because the parts, having become segmented interests,
have lost their interrelated integrity. It is the relation between the com-
munity as property relations in objective but abstracted forms—the state,
law, courts, police, prisons, the military—and the real active ‘community’
that now exists as divided but interdependent subordinate social units
defined by particular interests as individuals, trade unions, corporations,
religions, clubs, and so on. Politics refers to the relations between the
estranged community and its disparate member units, between institu-
tionalized abstracted exclusive property relations and existing antagonistic
interests.
Such interests are not to be seen, however, merely as so many conflict-
ing parts. The fault lines of property relations group them into categories
of rights, categories of sub-unit social membership, or hierarchies of rela-
tions to the social product and means of production. Ultimately, under a
system dominated by private property, these categories are resolved into
modern class relations defined and obscured by exclusive individual, cor-
porate, and state rights.
Political relations arise when the division of labour and the pursuit of
class interests fracture the unity of the community, necessitating the for-
mation of the state as the embodiment of property relations formalized as
law and enforced by the courts, police, and prisons. The ‘community’ is
transformed into a web of interdependent units, tied together not by
shared property but by formal rules and regulations.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 75

Stages in Political Development

The relation between the separated whole and parts that constitute poli-
tics does not arrive in history full-blown; it is a question of development
through stages marked by degrees and kinds of communal disintegration.
The conditions for these stages in political development are set by the level
of complexity of the division of labour or property relations, the condi-
tions for which in turn are set by the level of development of the forces of
production. Each major stage, moreover, has sub-stages within. What fol-
lows is a mere sketch of the three broad stages logically reflecting the rela-
tive emergence of the whole as an objective phenomenon. The abstract
lines dividing these three phases, let alone sub-stages within, however,
would rarely be so clear in reality.

The Pre-political
If the political is characterized by the separation of the whole and the
parts, the pre-political is characterized by the unity of the whole and the
parts as an undifferentiated single sphere. If there is a distinction to be
made in this integrated totality—referring roughly to non-stratified and
egalitarian, as opposed to rank-based social formations19—there is little if
any objective existence of the whole separate from the parts. These are
communities whose members have little if any sense of individual or par-
ticular interests different from the communal. The entire point of being
for community members is the community itself. Production is for the
community, and distribution is according to needs determined by the lim-
ited division of labour.
The level of development of productive forces is very restricted and,
consequently, the division of labour here is usually confined to sex, age,
and other natural differences, corresponding to the demands of the mode
of production. Egalitarian communities are usually hunters and gatherers,
but also nomadic herders;20 in both cases the size of the population is
small, kept that way by the relative bounty of nature and the limited pro-
ductivity of the means of production. Property is more or less communal:

19
M.H. Fried, The Evolution of Political Society, New York: Random House, 1967;
M. H. Fried, “On the Origin of Social Stratification and the State,” in R. O. Manners and
D. Kaplan (eds.), Theory in Anthropology, Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1968.
20
Khazanov, A. M., Nomads and the Outside World, Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press. 1983.
76 G. TEEPLE

the relationship to the materials, instruments, and products of labour

reflects the limited division of labour, as does the distribution of the social
product. These relations of production are expressed informally as cus-
toms, traditions, rights, claims, entitlements, or expectations. Although
there are many modern texts that refer to ‘aboriginal law,’ in this argu-
ment there is no law in the pre-political stage because the term is used in
reference to the formal expression of property relations. Law in our argu-
ment is a reference to the objective manifestation of the prevailing rights
of a social formation marked by exclusive property forms.
These social formations are largely acephalous: there is little or no lead-
ership other than as temporal assertions, which generally rest on the tacit
approval of the members. The exercise of social power is usually through
consensus, but when assumed by one or some members, customarily fall-
ing to those with status and prestige, it remains ephemeral because there
is little sustained need for it. Although periodically required in the face of
threats, it would have no institutional expression. In rank-based commu-
nities, however, there can be found the beginnings of institutionalized
leadership, but its powers are limited in the face of custom and tradition.21
Similarly, there is no religion at this stage. The unified whole and parts
are represented in symbolic forms, as totems—that is, animals or plants are
used to symbolize the totality of a social unit. Totems give emblematic
expression to a social totality, a reality of relative wholeness, that cannot be
grasped other than as a metaphor because the social realities of an inte-
grated whole and parts do not call for explanation, and analytical concepts
necessary to understand such social realities do not arise because they are
not necessary; unities do not call for explanation, while disunities do. For
the same reason, totems are not worshipped because they are the objecti-
fication of a unity that exists and can be felt but cannot otherwise be
expressed. Accompanying myths are but stories that have evolved to

21
M. Godelier, Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977; C. Meillassoux, “On the Mode of Production of the Hunting Band,” in French
Perspectives in African Studies, Routledge, 2018, (187–203); T. Earle, “The evolution of
chiefdoms,” in T. Earle (ed.), The evolution of chiefdoms, New York: Cambridge University
Press 1991 (1–15); S. Abrutyn and K. Lawrence, ‘From Chiefdom to State: Toward an
Integrative Theory of the Evolution of Polity.’ Sociological Perspectives, September 2010
(419–442).
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 77

explain what otherwise cannot be explained: for instance, the origin of life,
particular natural forces, and the community in question.22
These are to be seen as living totalities. There is no economy, as such;
no politics, no state, no religion, no art, no philosophy, as such, that is
they have no distinct, separate spheres of existence. They are all of a piece.
The members as a group are more or less at one with their relations of
production. They constitute a community as community, an integrated
social unit, a set of social relations that reflects their limited division of
labour and consequent shared ways of producing and reproducing. The
community here is shared property, and its members are integral
constituents.

The Proto-political
The category proto-political covers a wide range of social formations, from
those with an emerging need for a continuing and stable but limited ‘head’
to the nearly political: from still largely communally organized bands to
stratified social formations just short of possessing a state proper.
What distinguishes the proto-political from the pre-political is a change
in the forces and relations of production that usually comes with agricul-
ture and animal husbandry, and the need to oversee the growing complex-
ity of the division of labour, the exclusiveness of property relations, and
surplus wealth. Domestication of plants and animals creates, among other
things, surpluses and an expansion of needs and hence new means of pro-
duction, a more complex division of labour, and larger populations. These
productive forces imply increased human control over nature, and the
division of labour becomes less reflective of natural human differences
than social hierarchies of exclusive possession. Distribution of the social
product becomes divided between informal customary forms and certain
rights resting with a chief or council, not to mention limited forms of
exchange predicated on a surplus product. Production for the whole com-
munity, side by side with certain rights of distribution assigned to a ‘head’

22
E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, New York: Collier Books.
1961. The title is Durkheim’s projection of a modern institution onto the past. Religion and
totemism are, we argue, qualitatively different phenomena, as Durkheim acknowledges. One
is a symbolic representation of the real existing integrated whole and parts, while the other is
an institutional expression of the ‘lost souls’ of the members of marketplace societies.
Religion is a phenomenon of fractured societies; totems are the expressions of existing uni-
ties; the latter is not a predecessor of the former. See Chap. 12.
78 G. TEEPLE

or clan or class, and an incipient market, characterizes social reproduction

in these stages.
The proto-political is distinguished, then, by dualism, by the persis-
tence of aspects of an integrated totality on the one hand and a partially
separated whole and parts on the other. The community becomes divided
between some property relations that coincide with the community as an
integrated whole and some that differentiate these rights within the whole.
The latter become embodied in a person, group, or institution because
they no longer coincide with the general, the community as community.
At the same time, they exist as a partial framework of the community, as
estranged property relations that now, to some degree, stand apart from
its members. The degree of emergence of an objective whole reflects the
degree to which the parts have become stratified embracing particular
interests, commonly at first along kinship lines. The whole finds partial
expression in the embodiment of a chief or council, but the powers
invested in these positions remain incomplete. The duality appears as
coexisting but incompatible ties of kinship and membership, as custom
and formal rules, as ephemeral leadership and incipient institutions of
leadership, and as totemism (symbolic representation of the existing inte-
gral whole and parts) and incipient religion (embryonic recognition of the
whole in estrangement).
Given the growing stratification, the increasing number of exclusive
property relations must find objective representation separate from the
members because many rights and claims are no longer communal. Here
lies the rationale for the coming of chiefdoms, characterized by partially
institutionalized forms of rule. It follows that this change includes the rise
of the use of power as distinct from consensual rule, consensus being the
exercise of group rule where property is common. The increasingly exclu-
sive property forms require an objective existence because a communal
subjective existence is less and less possible. In proto-political social forma-
tions, the whole is partially separated from the parts; as a consequence, the
exercise of power as separate from the parts, as institutionalized, is still
incomplete, as it does not encompass all aspects of decision-making.
Power is the practical assertion of rights, claims, and entitlements.
When in the form of consensual rule, it is an integral part of the life of the
community and therefore by and large invisible as the exercise of
power according to custom and tradition. Outside of consensual rule,
however, the exercise of power is predicated on the need to represent
increasingly exclusive rights distinct from the whole, and as such it is
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 79

institutionalized. At a certain stage in the development of the division of

labour throughout the proto-political, property relations reflect degrees of
differential access to the means of production and the product of labour.
Those holding these rights will come to embody power as separate from
the whole, and those without these rights will by contrast have less power,
relying on communal consensus to represent their common rights. In the
proto-political stages, the separation is incomplete and so power as politi-
cal power, as separate from the parts, is also incomplete; it does not
embrace all aspects of decision-making.

The Political
With the further development of productive forces and increase in the
division of labour, there comes a time when there is little left of the inter-
nally integrated community, and in its place, there evolves a coherent sys-
tem of interdependent but exclusive interests. With every new development
in the division of labour, the community as community disintegrates, or,
put another way, the common interest dissipates in the face of an increas-
ingly competitive, differentiated set of interests. In the end, the commu-
nity becomes little other than the prevailing exclusive property relations
within which its members, as self-interested families, groups, classes, or
individuals, interact as mutually antagonistic or simply separate distinct
interests. The genuinely common interest no longer exists; it has been
transformed into the estranged property relations that frame the interrela-
tions of increasingly self-interested constituent parts. These relations—the
community outside the active parts—must, however, have an objective
embodiment because they are no longer implicit in the parts and yet they
define the structure of their interrelations. The embodiment of exclusive
property rights arises because property is no longer communal and requires
embodiment so it can act as external oversight over the conflicting parts.
This objectification ultimately becomes the state, law, and politics, i.e., the
relation between it and its subjects,—the relation between the alienated
whole and the isolated parts. Such is the political.
A political society, then, is one in which the general affairs—the prop-
erty forms that circumscribe the activities of the members—have become
institutionalized in the form of the state and law. It is a system in which
public affairs have a sphere of their own outside the component parts and
in which the members pursue individual and mutually antagonistic goals
in another sphere, namely, civil society. Common property as common no
80 G. TEEPLE

longer prevails; what is common becomes merely the increasingly exclu-

sive property forms that frame the system, and whose definition and
defence are the monopoly of the state.
Like the proto-political, the stage of the political covers a wide range of
social formations, but they are defined by an institutionalized embodi-
ment of the whole, which makes decisions in the name of the whole, which
means in defence of the prevailing exclusive property relations. The final
stage in the development of the political is the modern liberal democratic
state, in which all societal decisions are formally made by the state that
oversees and which progressively institutionalizes the complex division of
labour and prevailing private property relations. It is final because the
whole and the parts cannot be more completely separated.
The exercise of legitimate social power, as argued, rests on the structure
of rights or property. In modern capitalist society, the rights of private
property have three main forms, those of the individual, the corporation,
and the state. But it is the corporate form that constitutes the raison d’être
of the system because it determines the production and distribution of the
social product and therefore prevails and becomes the main purpose of the
state in the definition, defence, and maintenance of the nation.

Social Fragmentation
It is precisely the growing complexity of the division of labour that, in
producing more particular interests than common, separates the whole
from the parts, creating two distinct spheres of activity: the so-called pub-
lic (state) and the private (civil society). The duality of the proto-­political—
that is, the persistence of the genuinely common in the face of rising
private interests—is resolved in the political stage with the end of common
interests and the division of private interests into civil society as the sphere
of competing private interests, the realm of production and distribution,
and a state as the embodiment of the whole that defines and defends the
private property that frames most social activity.
With the coming of marketplace society, which defines most relations as
contractual, the production and exchange of the social product in com-
modity form establishes the economy as such.23 In other words, the market
sets in motion the processes of production and exchange in a sphere of

23
R. L. Heilbroner, The Making of Economic Society, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
1963; K. Polyani, The Great Transformation, New York: Rinehart, 1944.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 81

their own but framed by necessarily objective rules and regulations of pri-
vate property overseen by a state. The market or economy or the nucleus
of civil society provides the principles and becomes the arena for the pro-
duction and distribution of the social product, and the state assumes the
form of defender of the laws of private property that now defines essential
systemic relations.
If the separation of the state and economy into their own spheres is
characteristic of the stage of the political, it does not mean that they are
autonomous or unrelated to each other. On the one hand, the rationale
for the state is the divisive role played by private property in the realm of
production and distribution, and the very content of state policy is com-
prised of the contradictions of private property. On the other hand, the
economy requires rules and regulations, a legal framework, to oversee and
regulate its inherent divisions. It requires, moreover, the state to play a
role in distribution because the market never provides for all, all the time,
and some of the time not even for the majority, and because it cannot
profitably undertake certain tasks (such as the provision of infrastructure),
or the marshalling of capital (as in the national debt), or the defence of
nation. The inequalities, which accompany a system of private property
and produce differential class interests and conflicts, call for a state that can
mitigate and obscure inherent and chronic class antagonism. In short, the
economy and the state cannot do without each other: they are intrinsi-
cally linked.
In this political stage, leadership is no longer ephemeral or split between
tradition and institution but rather is completely institutionalized. The
state, its bureaucracy, and all the subordinate agencies become matters of
defined, formal, objectified relations rather than informal, customary, and
traditional relations. The state comes to assume or commandeer the exclu-
sive right to act in the name of all members because it embodies the gen-
eral interest, the prevailing property relations; and what comprises the
content of its actions is what constitutes the whole—the principles on
which the parts interact, formally expressed as law. In other words, the
whole is expressed politically as the fundamental legal code that stipulates
the parameters for the interrelations of the constituent parts. The role of
the state is to define and preserve these principles, to administer their
application, and to adjudicate their operation.
With the coming of marketplace societies, as Athens in the sixth cen-
tury BCE, the social formation divides not only between the state and the
rest (or civil society), but the relations of private property reach into every
82 G. TEEPLE

corner of life, and gradually fragment whatever remained of the once inte-
gral communal social order. In Athens in this period, the division of labour
defined by private property produces semi-autonomous spheres for poli-
tics, law, economics, art, religion, philosophy, education, family, and med-
icine, not to mention the ‘art’ of war. This progressive fragmentation of
the components of social life becomes manifest as the objectification of
what were previously informal and communal understandings and under-
takings. Given the growing division of labour and private property, they
could no longer remain as implicit parts of an integral totality but had to
become explicit parts of a composite of estranged parts, the marketplace
society: a circumscribed but internally fragmented social system. And the
mode of governance prescribed by Solon was the democracy that modern
capitalist society looks back upon as its predecessor.

Institutionalization
In practical terms, objectification has taken the form of the institutional-
ization of social life because society has become defined by private prop-
erty. And by institutionalization we refer to the formalization of the sets of
social activities tied to these semi-autonomous spheres. The millennia-­
long movement from the pre-political to the proto-political to the political
can be seen as the process of expanding institutionalization. It is the pro-
cess of making explicit what was previously implicit, or objective what was
previously subjective (held by all), or formal what was previously informal.
It is the process of development in which sets of informal practices or
modes of behaviour are transformed into sets of relations that are specific,
defined, explicit, and objective. Institutions are patterns of behaviour
framed in purpose and structure by the prevailing exclusive property
relations.
Institutionalization is always about the objectification of relations that
are no longer communal, or mutually beneficial, but rather relations that
are based on exclusive property forms, in the interests of particular indi-
viduals, groups, or classes. By their very nature, then, institutions are the
formalization of relations that are not equally or mutually advantageous to
all. We are pointing here to what must happen to social practices once the
social system has become market-based, or once exclusive property forms
prevail, and any unifying shared form of property has more or less disap-
peared. These objective manifestations of social relations are not mere
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 83

inventions or ‘contrivances’ created for the efficient operation of the sys-

tem, as functionalists would have it.24
Persons. Once a thorough-going marketplace society has arrived, com-
prehensively marked by private property, humans enter into a ‘world of
institutions,’ where all aspects of life become circumscribed by formalized
social patterns, whose character is defined by their role in the perpetuation
of a system of private property.25 And these social frameworks are defined
by expectations, rules, and regulations, which are cast as roles, that in
effect preclude personal, subjective, or informal forms of behaviour.
Underlying these institutionalized roles is the principle of ‘rationalization,’26
meaning that behaviour is organized according to a specified explicit logic
and purpose.
This so-called rationality ‘de-humanizes’27 behaviour because roles do
not permit direct human relations but only indirect relations via rules and
regulations. Personal discretion is not compatible with rules and regula-
tions, and because humans become personifications of their institutional
roles, they are defined by authoritative prescription. In a marketplace soci-
ety, almost all behaviour becomes defined ultimately by institutions and so
measurable or accountable in relation to the rules and regulations, not to
mention overseen by a hierarchy of command that marks the institution.
Here is another source of social power, bureaucratic hierarchies, which we
discuss in Chap. 8.
All members of market-based societies live their lives through a variety
of institutions, and in each they play a role, a defined pattern of behaviour.

24
See a functionalist view from the mainstream: T. Parsons, The Social System, The Free
Press of Glencoe, (1951) 1964. For a criticism of Parsons, see: W. Buxton, Talcott Parsons
and the Capitalist Nation-State, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985.
25
By the first century CE, the Roman Empire could no longer rest on the high degree of
informal and arbitrary forms of power that it had, hence the conscious institutionalization of
Roman rule. See: A. D. Winspear and L. K. Geweke, Augustus and the Reconstruction of
Roman Government and Society, University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and
History, number 24. 1935.
26
Weber’s use of the concept of ‘rationalization’ should not be confused with rationality.
All behaviour is rational, that is, socially meaningful, but the rationality is not necessarily
explicit or formal as it is in marketplace societies. In his use of rationalization, he is pointing
to the fact that formal institutions are consciously subjected to reason and calculation and
spelled out as objective rules and regulations. They can be, however, quite irrational. See:
H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford
University Press. 1958: 204ff, 240–1.
27
Ibid., 216.
84 G. TEEPLE

Roles, like institutions, are broadly defined by the prevailing property rela-
tions, and so, in one way or another, they serve to replicate, maintain, or
advance these relations. The individuals who play these roles, it must be
added, are not simply individuals but individuals in the form of legally
defined ‘persons.’
We participate in a marketplace society as ‘persons,’ which in effect
means that we act as embodiments of private property, at the very least as
proprietors of ourselves and our abilities.28 If private property is objectified
or expressed as law, as a set of formal rules and regulations, it needs an
objective ‘holder’ or ‘possessor’ defined by law as the legal possessor of
rights, claims, and entitlements: hence the person, a legal entity. Neither
law nor person, as we have argued, exists in the pre-political, and only
partially in the proto-political.
The contract. Our main relations with others, then, are defined as rela-
tions between proprietors of rights to exchange, and these are defined in
law as contractual relations. A series of contracts between sole owners
becomes the norm of social life and the essence of marketplace society.29 A
contract here is defined as the ‘right of relinquishment,’ a transfer of rights
between two persons. And broadly speaking, civil society is the sphere of
activity, outside the state, which is marked by contractual relations. In
short, the marketplace is social life as persons interacting through
contracts.30

28
Kurki, Visa A. J. A Theory of Legal Personhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019;
Kurki, Visa A. J. (ed.) Legal Personhood: Animals, Artificial Intelligence and the Unborn.
Springer 2017; Pietrzykowski T. (2018) What Is Legal Personhood? In: Personhood Beyond
Humanism. Springer Briefs in Law. Springer, Cham. [https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.
ca/10.1007/978-3-319-78881-4_2]; J. Ritter, ‘Person and Property: On Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right,’ in J. Ritter, Hegel and the French Revolution: Essays on the Philosophy of
Right. Cambridge: Mass. The MIT Press. 1982.
In law, an individual as a ‘person’ is sometimes referred to as a ‘natural person,’ and a col-
lective entity, such as a corporation among other institutions, may be called a ‘juridic’ or
‘artificial person.’
29
C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 264.
30
It is worth noting here that this fragmentation of society, which produces the semi-
autonomous spheres of activity, that is, the state, economy, family, art, religion, schooling,
medicine, persons/contract, etc., calls for explanation, a call which is answered in the form
of specific study of each sphere with little consideration of the others, that is, the disciplines
of knowledge. And the contents of these disciplines are the institutions pertaining to each and
the roles played out by the persons performing them via contractual relations. The important
points here are (1) that all of these objects of study, including the loose boundaries of the
disciplines themselves, are derivative, that is, they are the consequences of processes going on
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 85

Civil society, then, is taken to consist of a multiplicity of self-sufficient,

self-seeking persons, related externally through contract to each other as
so many independent atoms. In the pre-political, by comparison, individu-
als are related to each other, family, or community in a way in which the
communal unit is the point of being, the end and purpose of life. The
individual social being acts directly as a social being. In civil society, by
contrast, individuals are atomized; all persons stand as ends only for them-
selves and see no other goal other than self-advancement. Each treats all
others as an end for their own self. Here, the socialized being acts in con-
tradiction to itself, as if a solitary atom, and only indirectly as a social
being. The main ethic of the marketplace society is the guarantee of one’s
atomization, the preservation of private property.

Power
We have argued that social power in general in all social formations lies in
the exercise of rights, claims, and entitlements, as framed by the prevailing
property relations, which reflect the degree of the division of labour. This
holds in a marketplace society where rights are the rights associated with
private property, and so individual power is exercised according to the
value of one’s possessions, a process that carries the possibility of consider-
able differential power, with some powerless and others powerful. And
given the market with its intrinsic advantages for the rich over the poor,
the powerful can augment their rights at the expense of those with few or
no rights. The rights of private property also give rise to aggregated pri-
vate rights, the rights attached to amalgamated sums of private property,
ultimately taking the form of modern corporations, which enables an
enormous privilege in power over the rights of individuals and even over
the state given that they become the driving force of social production and
distribution.
The market as social power. Most significantly, social power finds a new
expression as the market itself—a source of social power based on the
vicissitudes of supply and demand that acts independently of producers
and consumers. The market is a system based on the exchange of prod-
ucts, not on direct human relations; and this exchange underlies the gen-
eral allocation of resources, namely, labour power and goods and services.

elsewhere, which are not included in the studies, and (2) that although all of these objects
are related to one another, derive their meaning from each other, and are not independent
variables, they are studied in isolation.
86 G. TEEPLE

Marketplace society is a social system that is subordinate to the ‘law of

value.’ The market, then, as private property become independent comes
to be a determining factor over all contractual relations found in market-
place societies.31
The exercise of all these forms of social power is carried out by means
of their institutionalization and their framing by objective rules and regu-
lations. The immediate source of this framing is the state, through its
exercise of political power, the power to act in the name of the whole. And
the source of political power, which political science has long debated, lies
in the fact that the state is the embodiment of the prevailing property rela-
tions that constitute the social formation over which it rules. It possesses
the monopoly over the definition, maintenance, and defence of the exclu-
sive property relations, and from these functions it exercises power as rep-
resentative of the whole, which is but these relations in abstraction. This
power extends by definition to all the agencies and institutions whose
functions derive from the state. This power, moreover, emanates from
private property relations that are inherently unequal and that benefit
some at the expense of others; and so, in defining and enforcing the rela-
tions of private property, the state cannot but help being a force in the
defence of interests that are stratified according to the principles of the
marketplace.

Conclusions
Following Marx, we have argued that through the early history of human
development, the forces and relations of production, and their practical
and ideational expressions, comprised an integrated whole: the parts were
more or less at one with the whole. With the increasing social division of
labour, chronic war, conquest, and the concomitant rise of exclusive forms
of property, the various elements of the whole began to find a quasi-­
independent existence in political, economic, religious, artistic, and philo-
sophical forms. With the ascendency of private property, they ultimately
separated into relatively autonomous spheres of activity with separate for-
mal embodiments: the economy as such as the sphere of production and
distribution defined by private property; the state as the sphere of public/

31
This is a reference to Marx’s notion of ‘commodity fetishism.’ See K. Marx, Capital,
Volume One. New York: Vintage Books, 1977:164–5.
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 87

social policy and embodiment of law, which is itself the formal expression
of the prevailing rules and regulations; religion as the sphere of spiritual
links with the absent or alienated whole; the arts as the pursuit of human
essence lost to the narrowness of the marketplace; philosophy as thought
reflecting on meaning in a meaningless world and ethics in an anti-social
society; psychology as the study of inherently social beings defined as
atoms, as persons, and behaving as the personification of social roles.
It is not so easy to appreciate that the societies we live in are composed
of fragmented spheres and institutionalized behaviour as roles, profes-
sions, bureaucracies, legal persons, and contract relations, because we see
it all as normal, as what it means to be human. And because these frag-
mented parts and institutionalized modes of being are now universal in
the nation-states of the world, we see little by way of contrasting alterna-
tives. Because, moreover, the components of this fractured social life are
also the isolated unrelated subject matters of the accepted disciplines of
knowledge since the nineteenth century, we do not think outside these
boundaries. And because our ‘actually existing’ life is affirmed by our liv-
ing as persons, within institutions, relating through contracts, as isolated
consumers, and as atomized voters, we find it difficult to imagine a differ-
ent world.
Given this argument, we can draw some conclusions about the nature
of politics. First, it is a relationship between the separated whole and parts:
politics expresses what is implicit in all social formations, an inherent rela-
tion between the parts and the whole, as an explicit separation between the
state and civil society members of a social formation and their embodied
abstracted property form as the institutionalized rules of interaction.
Second, it is a process that is not fixed in time; it is the product of social
evolution, and we can assume that the form it takes today is a product of
change and will continue to change. Third, politics as liberal democracy is
not the resolution of this contradiction but rather its most developed
expression to date, and so it can be assumed that this is the completion of
liberal democratic forms, but not the end of politics. The logical possibili-
ties of the continuing development of politics are dependent on changes
in the division of labour and the consequences of a system of private prop-
erty. Fourth, the logic of the argument for the rise of the political can also
be used to make the case for the coming of the post-political.
88 G. TEEPLE

Addendum: The Concept of Property

The concept of property has two principal meanings. The most common
in everyday use is as a reference to things, which are possessed in accord
with specific rights or claims or entitlements. The other is a reference to
the relation to things, that is, the rights, claims, or entitlements, the formal-
ized relation in which members of a social unit stand with regard to each
other in the use and disposal of things. The second definition is the one
most often employed in legal proceedings and in this text, that is, property
as a relation to some part of the social product.
To define property as rights to things, however, is to refer to its generic
or abstract meaning, but property as a relation exists only in specific, par-
ticular, forms, which range from the collective, common, or shared to the
exclusive, private, or individual. Because the world has evolved to become
largely capitalist, in which the prevailing form of property is individual and
corporate private property, the term property is generally assumed to be
synonymous with private property, as if it were the general, or the only
form of property. And because private property is the pervasive prevailing
form, we take it for granted that it is natural, and normal.
For this reason, human rights, conceived as generic rights as found in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are defined as exclusive rights
belonging to an atomized individual. And this isolated individual defined
by private rights is understood as the essential human, pure and simple.
The longest stretch of human history, however, is marked by collective,
communal, or shared property forms, not exclusive ones. Private property
characterizes only a very small period of human history. But it has become
the dominant relation that defines our most important activities in a capi-
talist mode of production, a universalization that obscures the fact that it
is only one amongst many property forms, even today, albeit the most
common one in this mode of production. A change in the mode of pro-
duction is considered revolutionary because it transforms the prevailing
property relations. Such was the impact of the bourgeois revolutions of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which abolished a large array of
formal and informal feudal rights and established in their place one single
form: private property.
The above definition reflects Marx’s use of the concept of property, and
it is worth noting that for Marx, the relations of production are
 3 THE MEANING OF POLITICS 89

synonymous with the social division of labour, the characteristics of which

are reflected in property relations, which are objectified as sets of rights,
claims, or entitlements.

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 CHAPTER 4

The Origin of the Modern State

or the Transition from Feudalism
to Capitalism

In Chap. 3, we laid out an argument, resting on Marx, to explain the

meaning of politics and the forces that gave rise to the separation of
the state and civil society. Here in Chap. 4, we make a more specific
or empirical case for the rise of the modern state as the result of the
necessity of the feudal state to access and promote the development
of the market. Ultimately, the absolutist state, the culmination of
feudalism, succumbed to the demands of the very market it fostered
and was replaced by a state reflecting the needs of capital.

The transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production

took place over the span of many hundreds of years. Each step in that
transition was marked by the expansion of trade and commerce, the exten-
sion of exclusive property relations, changes in ruling structures, the con-
centration of wealth and power, the freeing of labour from forms of
bondage, and the ever-greater institutionalization of social relations. The
coming of the modern state from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries
marked the formal end of feudal relations and the appearance of an incipi-
ent capitalist mode of production with its attendant political forms.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 91

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_4
92 G. TEEPLE

From scattered centres of power in the early feudal era (800–1000 CE),
the political expression of this transition saw the gradual emergence of
absolute monarchies (1000–1500), then the first bourgeois states in the
mercantilist era (1500–1700), and finally the modern state and industrial-
ization (1760 and on).1 This last form, then, was the culmination of a long
history that we briefly examine in order to provide insights into the nature
of the modern democratic state.
This transition has been the subject of long and valuable debates, both
Marxist and non-Marxist,2 which have provided the sort of discussion that
would enrich all writing of history. They have covered and illuminated
many of the key factors accounting for the decline of feudalism and the
rise of capitalism, yet there remain some significant elements that could
expand the discussion. A short survey of these issues and their implications
forms the content of this chapter.
The beginning of these debates is found in Capital where Marx
asserted, “[t]he economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of
the economic structure of feudal society.”3 He addressed the question of
the transition in the final section of Capital, Part 8, translated as: ‘Primitive
Accumulation.’ There he began by identifying two main factors necessary
for the transition: the accumulation of capital and the ‘freeing’ of labour
from the bondage of feudalism or slavery, accompanied by the disposses-
sion of the means of production from the producers. In other words, a
critical mass of wealth and a critical mass of ‘free’ labour were the prereq-
uisites to the capitalist mode of production.
Contemporary Marxist debates began with Maurice Dobb’s Studies in
the Development of Capitalism (1947), which broadly follows Marx’s argu-
ment in Capital. The exchanges that ensued tended to follow what was
narrowly considered Marx’s method, but they missed or ignored some of
the points raised by Marx in Part 8, which will be addressed here. The
non-Marxist discussion began in the late 1980s, through a set of
conferences resulting in several books under the rubric: “on the origin of
the modern state.”4

1
This periodization, while rather loose, does conform to certain key shifts in the political
and economic landscape of Europe, which we will identify below.
2
See the asterisk under References below.
3
Marx, K., Capital, Vol. 1, New York: Vintage, 1977: 875.
4
See page 52, “Some key texts in non-Marxist discussions.”
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 93

To illustrate the many ways in which the two factors highlighted by

Marx developed, we will touch briefly on some contributing elements not
mentioned by Marx and some he discussed but which have been ignored
in the debates: for example, the role of the Roman Catholic Church, the
crusades, chronic war, the growth of state absolutism along with trade and
commerce, the rise of banks and stock markets, mercantilism and related
colonialism, chartered companies and piracy, and lastly the national debt
and taxation.
But what did this transition entail? What was it that changed, and what
was the driving force? The first problem is the definition of feudalism and
capitalism, each of which has had their own debates. To use these con-
cepts, we must identify a referent, a set of commonalities that can be
defined and serve as our working definitions.
In the transition debates, these concepts have not always been as clear
as one might hope. Following Marx, we can begin with his argument that
“the specific economic form in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped
out of direct producers determines the relationship of domination and
servitude.” He expanded this point: “the hidden basis of the entire social
edifice, and hence also the political form of the relation of sovereignty and
dependence, in short, the specific form of the state,” is to be found in this
relation between producers and non-producers.5
The feudal mode of production was based mainly on the extraction of
surplus from the agricultural labour of serfs, slaves, and peasants, who
were obliged to relinquish a portion of their produce that was “surplus”
to their needs in kind or in labour (the corvée) or later in the Middle Ages
in money. The extraction was largely direct and visible, by means of sei-
gniorial rights, taxes, laws, customs, and coercion, in return for the pro-
ducers’ right to use the land, and perhaps to a blessing from the Church.
These were ‘non-economic’ means appropriate to an age when the ‘econ-
omy’ as such did not yet exist.6

5
K. Marx, Capital, Volume 3, Penguin 1981: 927; see also K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1,
New York: Vintage Books, 1977: 647. See also: K. Takahashi, ‘A Contribution to the
Discussion,’ in R. Hilton, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, London: NLB,
1976: 68–97.
6
The economy as such exists when all production, circulation, and distribution are carried
out by means of commodified goods and services via contractual relations in a sphere defined
by private property, whose principles frame the main social and political relations in a social
formation.
94 G. TEEPLE

By contrast, the extraction of surplus in the capitalist mode of produc-

tion is indirect, hidden in the structure of wage-labour, a form of payment
that appears to be remuneration for the value produced in the time
worked. The wage, however, is determined not by the time worked but by
the value of labour-power determined by the market. The difference
between the value of the wage and the value produced in the time worked
is the surplus-value appropriated by the employer. Although wage earners
can break the wage contract and move on, they remain separated from the
means of production, leaving few alternatives but wage-labour; they can
change employers but not avoid the exploitation of their labour. These
relations are not direct or visible, and they are strictly ‘economic’ in nature,
a matter of contract.
How a surplus is extracted is part of these definitions, but the answer
leads to the second problem, which has to do with ‘the driving force’ or
‘the prime mover’7 in feudalism that moved it in the direction of spawning
capitalism. The origins of feudalism are found in the decline of the Roman
Empire, in the resulting military conquests.8 Wealth was acquired by the
various invaders in the early Middle Ages in the same way as the Romans,
that is, as plunder and tribute and the appropriated product of agricultural
labour. At the top of the feudal social structure, simply put, was a milita-
rized aristocracy, with its own peasant labour, but whose power also rested
on strata of lesser nobility, vassals pledged through ceremonies of fealty
and homage to a ‘nobility,’ which distributed subordinate rights over a
fief. This structure was by and large parasitical, the whole of it resting
largely on unfree agricultural labour as its foundation.
It followed that there was constant strife over how much was surplus
and how much was necessary for peasant reproduction. The conflict took
place as resistance to the increasing number and harshness of methods of
appropriation by means of taxes, tithes, courts, arbitrary expansion of sei-
gniorial privileges, and sheer coercive and arbitrary acts. In the early cen-
turies of the feudal period, then, there was little or no incentive for serfs to

7
See: R. Hilton, ‘A Comment.’ In R. Hilton, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,
London: NLB, 1976: 114; and R. Hilton, ‘A Crisis of Feudalism,’ in T.H. Ashton and
C.H.E Philpin (eds.), The Brenner Debate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009
(1985): 120; P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: New Left Books, 1974;
and P. Anderson, Passages from antiquity to feudalism. London: New Left Books, 1974.
8
G. B. Adams, ‘The Origin of the Feudal System,’ The Andover Review, Vol. 7, No. 41,
May 1887 (505–517); E. Peters, ‘Feudalism,’ New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., Vol. 5,
2003 (701–706).
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 95

increase productivity because the resulting increased product would

largely benefit their lords and masters. And what extra one can extract in
the face of resistance from unfree producers in a mode of production with
relatively low productivity is quite limited.
Here lies the reason why in the transition debates the question of ‘the
prime mover’ arises: how do we explain the social and technological devel-
opment and resulting increased productivity, more freed labour, growth of
state absolutism, the accumulation of capital, and the movement towards
private property and the market that took place under feudalism? If we
accept that the dynamic lay in the conflict between the demand for more
surplus and peasant resistance,9 then, the main way to increase the surplus
was the expansion of the territory and number of serfs in a given domain.
And so, with the feudal era there began the age of chronic warfare amongst
the many contenders for power throughout the Middle Ages: peasants
against barons, barons against barons, barons against monarchs, and mon-
archs against monarchs. Chronic wars lasted well into the sixteenth cen-
tury, resting on the need for an ever-larger command of territory,
agricultural labour, and increasingly new forms of revenue. In the Marxist
transition debates, class conflict between peasants and lords may be the
favoured ‘prime mover,’ but little attention has been paid to the conse-
quent chronic war itself as a related and perhaps more significant ‘driving
force’ of change.10 There is, moreover, a great deal to this transition that
neither war nor agricultural conflict can explain.
If capitalism finds its origins in feudalism, its independent history comes
after the so-called bourgeois revolutions. It is true that capital existed
throughout the ancient world, and after the fall of the Roman Empire, it
persisted and even grew extensively outside of continental Europe in trade
circuits in north Africa and west and central Asia controlled by Muslims,
but the existence of capital does not make capitalism. Marx is very specific
about the nature of capital in this period: this was merchant capital, money

9
R. Hilton, ‘A Comment,’ in The Transition…, op. cit. 115–6; and P. Anderson, Passages
from Antiquity to Feudalism, op. cit., 187–8.
10
J. U. Nef, ‘War and Economic Progress, 1540–1640,’ The Economic History Review,
1942, Vol. 12, No. 1&2; J. U. Nef, War and Progress, an essay on the rise of industrial civili-
zation, New York: Norton, 1963 (1950).
96 G. TEEPLE

augmented primarily through commerce11 or lending (usury); only a lim-

ited but growing amount of money was invested in production, i.e., in the
creation of wealth.12 The growth of capital in feudal Western Europe arose
out of the contradictions of feudalism and initially took the form of com-
mercial systems dominated by merchant capital. The decline of feudalism
and the rise of merchant capital is a shared history; the coming of the capi-
talist mode of production signals the end of feudalism and mercantilism—
or the transformation of feudal absolutism into the absolutism of private
property and the subordination of merchant to industrial capital.13
If the ‘prime mover’ of merchant capital is the drive to augment money,
the surplus that provides this ‘growth’ is not produced by merchant capital
but comes from exploiting differential demands across different countries
or through an organized ‘system of plunder’ to extract by coercive means
a share of the surplus already existing.14 And if the ‘driving force’ of feudal
powers is the expansion of rent, along with plunder and tribute, then, in
both cases, revenue is being extracted from existing value. Given their
parasitical positions, the growth of both feudal wealth and merchant capi-
tal depends on exogenous factors, but one of the exogenous factors for
each is the other, and the second for both is the plunder, tribute, and
resource exploitation from their military and commercial ventures.
There are three main characteristics of feudalism, drawn from above,
about which there is considerable agreement and on which the argument
of the rest of the chapter will stand. First, its mode of surplus extraction
can be defined as forms of rent-seeking: the appropriation of wealth

11
The concept of commerce here is used in the usual sense as a reference to all the pro-
cesses included in the realm of circulation; namely, banking, transportation, retail, warehous-
ing, and so on. Trade would be a subset of commerce referring more narrowly to the buying
and selling of commodities.
12
See: K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, London: Penguin Books, 1981: see especially Chapters 16,
19, and 20.
13
The accumulation of capital, centralization of power, development of colonies and mar-
kets and ‘manufacturing’ unfold under feudalism, and on the foundation of these, the
‘machine’ and industrialism or the investment of capital in the sphere of production in the
late eighteenth century began. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, New York: Vintage Books, 1977:
490–1. When all the spheres of production and circulation are subordinated to capital, we
then have the capitalist mode of production.
14
K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, London: Penguin Books, 1981: 448.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 97

without any corresponding payment or contribution to its production.15

Or more specifically, we could see it as the expropriation of wealth pro-
duced by customary or traditional means, from peasant ‘land-leases,’ or
from plunder and theft, rather than through directly engaged production
to generate a surplus. To this we can add that such rent was consumed by
feudal rulers and the Church hierarchy in indulgence in luxuries, building
palaces and churches, and war, but not significantly as investment in pro-
duction. Given this, in a system of low productivity, the need to increase
wealth on account of competition could be met only through intensified
expropriation and expansion of the control of land and numbers of pro-
ducers, the pursuit of which generated continuous resistance from the
producing classes.
And as consequence of competition to augment the amount of exploit-
able land and labour for rent-seeking, there arose another key characteris-
tic, namely, chronic war. Since the costs of war often exceeded the benefits
of conquest, this inherent condition in turn created a continual need to
seek rents and to access to accumulated wealth for financing. But more: it
concentrated landed wealth, gradually centralized power into ever fewer
claims to monarchical status, and continuously increased the demand for
military service, moveable capital, and increased debt.16 The growth of
these demands ultimately became one of the main reasons for the accumu-
lation of wealth in the form of money and the heart of the contradiction
that was to be the undoing of feudalism.
This state of affairs points to the third main characteristic, that feudal-
ism as a mode of production lacked integrity; in other words, this was not
a coherent system.17 This is unlike capitalism that has a single dominant
property form, private property, and one main dynamic, the ‘law of accu-
mulation.’ Under feudalism, the extraction of surplus took many forms

15
Ekelund, R. B. and R. D. Tollison, Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society, College
Station TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1981. The concept of rent-seeking is useful for
analyzing the nature of feudalism, even though the focus of this article is mercantilism.
16
J. U. Nef, op cit.; B. Downing, The military revolution and political change. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992.
17
See the cautionary argument by E.A.R. Brown, ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism
and Historians of Medieval Europe,’ The American Historical Review, Vo. 79, No. 4, 1974.
See also the critical review of the concept by S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval
Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. One historian goes as far as
to say that “the variations [in feudal society] are so infinite as to rob the term of meaning.”
J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West 400–1000. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993 (1952).
98 G. TEEPLE

varying over time and place, including sheer coercive extortion and theft,
unlike extraction under capitalism through the production of surplus-­
value by wage-labour. The administration under the feudal state was gen-
erally inadequate for the demands of the period; tax policies and feudal
dues produced insufficient revenue for the expanding role of ruling mon-
archs under constant challenge from their vassals; and the economy as
such began to emerge with the growth of merchant capital that barely
existed in earlier periods.
Moreover, feudal property forms were complex, layered, considerably
varied across time and place, and mixed with frequent arbitrary actions.
But they also co-existed, and in the Mediterranean basin interacted, with
vibrant and extensive commercial markets under Muslim rule from the
eighth century that covered and even expanded the limits of the Roman
Empire outside of Western Europe, promoting trade and money lending.
While the Muslims never developed a single coherent state to rule over
this vast commercial empire, the result of their ‘military victories’ pro-
duced ‘an unprecedented accumulation of wealth,’18 which from at least
the time of the first crusade played a role in the transformation of feudal-
ism and in the end contributed to its demise.19
These three characteristics—surplus as rent, chronic war, and lack of
systemic coherence—were the broad reasons underlying the transition,
although their significance varies over different eras and through different
institutions across the hundreds of years of feudalism. The factors briefly
considered below constitute the active agents of these three characteristics

18
M. Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism, University of Texas Press, 1978 (1966): 56–7.
Unfortunately, most treatises on feudalism, including the debates on the transition, do not
examine the role of Islamic developments in science, mathematics, technology, philosophy,
and above all commerce from at least the eleventh century in the recasting and demise of
feudalism. Even the Marxist debates to their detriment by and large ignore the work by
Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism. More recent writing by J. M. Hobson has returned
to this question with deserved criticism of what he calls the “ethnocentrism” of the “Western
mind.” See his: The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004; and “What Have the Muslims Ever Done for Us? Islamic Origins of
Western Civilization,” in R. K. Kanth (ed.), The Challenge of Eurocentrism: Global Perspectives,
Policy, and Prospects, New York: Palgrave, 2009.
19
See: R. Latouche, The Birth of the Western Economy, Economic Aspects of the Dark Ages,
New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1961. Parts II and III cover the Merovingian and Carolingian
eras to make the case for the persistence of trade and commerce throughout the Dark Ages.
See also: P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750. London: Thames and
Hudson. 1971.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 99

in the increasing concentration of wealth and power: the growing signifi-

cance of private property and indebtedness, and the freeing of bonded
forms of labour in the demise of feudalism. The question of the national
debt was the ultimate factor in this dissolution; it was the signal that pri-
vate property had achieved an independent status and become the heart of
the power underlying the political system and spelling the end of rent-­
seeking as the chief source of surplus, of ruinous dynastic, territorial, and
religious wars, and the arbitrariness of feudal nobility, monarchs, and
the Church.

The Role of Religion in the Transition

from Feudalism to Capitalism

The Roman Catholic Church. The role of the Roman Catholic Church in
the rise and demise of feudalism is not given its due in these debates. This
is odd because by the eighth century it is estimated that it possessed about
one-third of the arable land of Christendom,20 the largest number of serfs,
its own armies, and the power of excommunication. It dominated most
aspects of life and was likely the most concentrated centre of power and
wealth from very early in the Middle Ages to the time of the Reformation
and then the bourgeois revolutions.21 Already by the time of its legitima-
tion by Constantine in the Edict of Milan in 313 CE, it was a powerful
institution for the concentration of wealth and power. The Council of

20
R. Latouche, The Birth…: 56. This percentage can only be an estimate and varies from
author to author, as it also must have varied across the centuries; regardless, the amount of
land possessed by the church was extensive and provided much of the church revenue and
power. See also: Ian Wood, ‘Entrusting Western Europe to the Church, 400–750,’
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 23, 2013 (37–73).
21
Figgis writes: “In the Middle Ages the Church was not a State, it was the State; the State
or rather the civil authority (for a separate society was not recognized) was merely the police
department of the Church.” Later he points out that in medieval times, baptism was essential
to membership in society and the power of excommunication was tantamount to banish-
ment. J. N. Figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414–1625, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1956: 4, 15. Dawson also stresses the centrality of the Church:
“…medieval culture…was as completely dominated by religious beliefs and embodied in
religious institutions as any of the great religious cultures of the Eastern world.” C. Dawson,
Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, New York: Doubleday 1991 (1957): 18. By the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the two feudal claims to wealth and power—the princes and
the church, the secular and sacred—came into the open with such conflicts as the ‘Investiture
Controversy.’
100 G. TEEPLE

Nicaea in 325 CE was also testimony to its wealth and organizational

strength;22 afterwards, it grew alongside the Roman state; and by 380 CE
when made the official state religion, it had already spread throughout the
entire Roman Empire.
But how to explain the rise of a small Christian sect in the first century
CE, which advocated communal work, mutual aid, and charity, to become
a wealthy, powerful, and bureaucratic church by the early fourth century,
and the exclusive state authorized religion a few decades later, by then, an
entity that seemed to have abandoned the early practices and the beliefs of
the original sect? In the context of the end of the Roman Republic, the
chaos of the civil wars, and institutionalized slavery at its height, the
Christian sect was born as the product of a marketplace society and its
attendant violence, and extremes of poverty and wealth in the ascendant
Roman Empire. It represented a new consciousness that saw the ‘divine’
within each individual, expressed as a community of communal wealth.
For the wealthy, it promoted the idea of abandoning one’s worldly goods
and donating them to be shared among their members; for the poor, it
was the modest distribution of wealth that largely amounted to a common
meal and philanthropic activities. It was similar to a charitable enterprise,23
it depended on the contempt and disgust that many wealthy felt for the
consumption extremes that their own riches encouraged and allowed. The
Christian sects depended on the wealthy being convinced that an eternal
afterlife of bliss waited for them in return for the renunciation of their
assets in this world. Given the social and political upheaval of the era and
its consequent misery for the urban poor and vast number of slaves, these
sects played a mitigating role that no doubt helped to allay the fears of
the rich.24
It is probably fair to say that in the first century of Christianity, in the
face of the extremes of Roman society, a belief in serving fellow human

22
E. Honigmann, ‘The Original Lists of the Members of the Council of Nicaea, the
Robber-synod and the Council of Chalcedon,’ Byzantion, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1942–1943: 21
(20–80).
23
K. Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity, A Study in Christian Origins, New York:
Monthly Review Press. 1972 (1925). 416–418.
24
Ibid., 418. Charity reduces the need for theft. Spiritual solace deflects attention from the
real source of misery. And ‘good’ (i.e., legal) behaviour in this world in exchange for a blissful
afterlife undermines anger and protest against an unjust present.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 101

beings and to a degree living the spirit25 of humanity was genuine and the
basis of much of the attraction to the sect. By the second century, how-
ever, the accumulating bequests of the wealthy and associated distribution
functions began to require an administration. The spirituality of the first
Christian communities, in which the faith was in part directly lived, now
began to become institutionalized, that is, objectified. Directly living the
faith gradually became the worship of things, ideas, and practices that were
external to actual living and given an ascribed spirituality. Worship is the
expression of reverence or veneration for spiritualized objects representing
relations and ideas not realizable in marketplace society, and it is a general
feature of some religions. But worship is not present when community
means the actual direct living in the interests of one another. To live in an
immediate and directly communal manner requires no objectification or
veneration of spirit; it is actual spirit, needing no worshiping, just the liv-
ing. A spiritual sect, however, that is dependent on the wealth of a decid-
edly non-spiritual marketplace society and an empire based on military
conquest, tribute, and slave labour, and whose task is to distribute grow-
ing bequests of wealth from that world to the human casualties of that
world, is not likely to maintain for long whatever genuine spirituality it had.
In the second century, Christian communal sects had developed all the
attributes of a religion, an institutionalized set of beliefs and practices. In
other words, Christianity had developed an administration and a ‘spiritual
aristocracy’: the congregation was divided into clergy and laity, a develop-
ment that gave rise to the Church as an institution and control over it to a
few and made for the passive reception of doctrines and rules by the rest.
From this moment, the possibility arose for the use of the Church for
purposes not associated with spirit but as a means to rather secular ends,
hidden by the formalities of spiritual pretense.26 Spirit was objectified, that
is, given the form of external rites, rituals, symbols, blessings, in short,
authorized ascriptions of spirit were applied to an array of goods and ser-
vices, whose ultimate purpose was to extract a price, a fee, a donation, a
tax. Church doctrines in the hands of this ecclesiastical hierarchy now

25
We are using “spirit” here as the religious concept referring to human social nature, to
our quintessential social being, and not to some imagined metaphysical phenomenon.
26
The instrumental use of pre-Christian religions was well-known even in the ancient world.
See: M. Grant, The World of Rome, London: Square Books, 1960, especially Chapter 6.
Such use of Christian sects would not be out of the ordinary.
102 G. TEEPLE

became designed to maintain this structure and to increase revenue

streams.
By the third century, it was a church with a sufficiently strong presence
to attract significant persecution partly because it refused to recognize the
emperor as supreme, and it undermined the official non-Christian reli-
gions, which performed similar roles in accumulating wealth, controlling
social unrest, and providing spiritual solace and charitable handouts. By
the early fourth century, the continued growth of the Church and the
decline of myth-based religions, increasingly out of keeping with the
times, produced a degree of religious tolerance. Christianity provided a
new avenue to wealth and power, and the Edict of Milan in 313 CE ended
the persecution.
By this time, the Church had become an instrument of bureaucratic
power, controlled by priestly hierarchy with the power of excommunica-
tion and administrative authority over the doctrines preached and the rev-
enue that flowed in. The property of the Church, which previously was a
matter for the whole congregation, soon became the preserve of the
priesthood. In 321 CE, the Church gained the rights of legal personhood,27
allowing the hierarchy to possess and inherit the increasing assets of the
Church in the name of the collective. And so, by the fourth century, the
Church had become an institutionalized set of ideas appropriate to the
temper of the times, at the centre of which was a universal abstract human
component, offering salvation from a corrupted world in a blissful after-
life, and material assistance in this world. After 380 CE as the official state
religion, its power grew quickly eclipsing the pre-Christian religions,
monopolizing religious need, and joining the power of the state with that
of a large religious bureaucracy possessing the power to excommunicate,
formulate doctrinal beliefs, and employ rapidly increasing material wealth,
which had unintended secular ends.
From this point on, the Church became a significant force throughout
the Middle Ages for the concentration of wealth in land, labour, buildings,
precious metals, jewels and coin, and human ‘souls’ largely predicated on
a strongly defended monopoly and instrumental use of religious beliefs,
and consequent revenue stream. No longer a strictly spiritual community,
it had become an ecclesiastical power, and the laity a source of revenue,
kept in place by Church admonitions and regulations and the

27
Kautsky, op. cit. 448. See also: M. Grant, The World of Rome, op.cit.; and F. Engels, ‘The
Class Struggles in France 1848–1850,’ Marx Engels Collected Works, 1895.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 103

institutionalized and ritualized abstract universal humanism of the pur-

ported teachings of a messiah. As a powerful and wealthy institution, the
Church had become a deceit, which all religions are by definition, if one
accepts that the human spirit can only be realized by living it, and not
through its worship as something objective and external, and controlled
by a priesthood.
But how to understand this accumulation of such wealth and power?
The answer can be found in a short sentence: “the church can be treated
as a firm.” And the author follows with a quotation from Adam Smith:
“The clergy of every established church constitute a great incorporation.”28
Another analysis put it more directly: “The Church was able to use
Christianity and particular doctrinal innovations as weapons to receive
benefits in its dealings with both Church members and in the secular polit-
ical world.”29 To this it should be added that once the clergy were sepa-
rated from the laity, and the Church had become wealthy, membership in
the unaccountable hierarchy became a source of conflict amongst the
wealthy who, by the fourth and fifth centuries, vied for positions of
authority.30 Once the Church had become the official religion in the West,
the buying and selling of offices provided avenues for noble family enrich-
ment and personal power. The first attempt to put a stop to “simony,” as
it was called, came in the mid-fifth century, but it continued to grow until
more efforts in the eleventh century were made to stop it.31 By that time
the term was also used to refer to a large array of spiritualized objects and
favours that were exchanged for money. The following summary of the
various means by which the Church extracted a rent from its members and
from secular world will suffice to make the point.
The Many Sources of Rent. As the official state religion, with monopoly
control over doctrine and practice enforced in its own courts, and the

28
B. B. Hull, ‘Towards an Economic Theory of the Church.’ International Journal of
Social Economics, 16,7, 2007: 5.
29
R. B. Ekeland, Jr., R. F Hebert, R. D. Tollison, ‘The Political Economy of the Medieval
Church.’ In R. M McCleary (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion. 2011.
30
J. Hillner, ‘Families, patronage, and the titular churches of Rome, c. 300–600,’ in
K. Cooper and J. Hillner (eds.). Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome,
300–900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007.
31
M. Snell, ‘The History of the Great Crime of Simony,’ [https://www.learnreligions.
com/definition-of-simony-1789420]. This was not merely church corruption and hypocrisy,
but its abject use by the wealthy and powerful to augment their positions in the feudal system
via an institution that was the richest and most powerful after the fall of the Roman Empire.
104 G. TEEPLE

power of excommunication, the Church was in a position to exact from

rulers changes in policy and law from which it benefited. Most of its rent-­
seeking activities were framed by this privileged position, that is, by politi-
cal manipulation, which although often challenged has persisted to this
day in many countries.32 This was also a privilege not without contest and
over which the lives of many notables were lost and numerous battles
fought.33
Sacraments. An early set of mechanisms for rent collecting was the defi-
nition of the widely recognized stages in life, which most social formations
acknowledge by some sort of celebration, as in need of a ‘sacrament,’ a
blessing or other recognition, ostensibly from God, but given by the
Church. Birth, death, puberty, marriage/divorce, Church membership,
and so on (there are several ‘sacraments’ in the Catholic and Orthodox
churches) became events documenting and confirming one’s adherence to
the faith and, as it happened, also subject to a payment. Offering these
sacraments to the ruling circles for some of these events, in particular,
marriage and death, proved extremely lucrative for the Church.34
Indulgences. Already by the third century, the Church was making
exemptions or exonerating its members from certain sins in exchange for
accompanying actions or signs of repentance, a practice that developed
into what became known as ‘indulgences.’ By the sixth century, some of
the penances, often in the form of prayer or charitable acts, demanded by
the Church for certain offences were allowed to be substituted by specified
amounts of money.35 This practice grew over the following centuries, but

32
Even where the state is secular and officially separated from religion, religion can still be
an important lobbyist for particular favours. See: K. Phillips, American Theocracy, New York:
Viking, 2006. For an incisive contemporary indictment of the Catholic Church, see:
D. Gawthrop, The Trial of Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on
Reason, Compassion, and Human Dignity, Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013. Aside from
the continuing charges against the Vatican for crimes against children, its financial crimes also
remain in the news; see, for instance: P. Pullela, ‘Former head of Vatican bank guilty of
embezzlement, money laundering,’ Reuters, January 21, 2021.
33
C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western church from 1050 to 1250. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 1989: 387. See also: Hillner above.
34
A. B. Davidson, R. B. Ekeland, ‘The medieval church and rents from marriage market
regulations,’ in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 32, 1997: 238–9
(215–245).
35
Even in the planning of the first crusade in 1096, crusaders were committed by the
church to complete the journey to Jerusalem with vows, which if broken proved a valuable
source of revenue for the church. See: F. Duncalf, ‘The Pope’s Plans for the Crusade.’ In
J. A. Brundage (ed.). The Crusades, Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1966.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 105

expanded enormously in the twelfth century, after the Church had

invented the idea of ‘purgatory,’ a sort way-station between earth and
heaven for those whose sins were not worthy of hell but which required
cleansing before admission to heaven. This new idea opened the door to
many abuses by the Church in search of revenue. Although some of the
great cathedrals of the late Middle Ages owe their construction in part to
the use of these indulgences, paid in money,36 the extreme corruption in
their use formed the content of one of the clauses in Luther’s famous
‘Theses’ in 1517.
‘Saints marching in.’37 Even before the Church had become the official
religion of the Roman Empire, it had begun to associate the days of the
year with celebrations of a saint, or other religious observances, creating
the basis of a ‘liturgical calendar.’ This had the effect of providing the
membership with a constant reminder of the presence of the Church and
the continual provision of a revenue stream for the Church. Not only did
the Church have its own symbolic figures assigned to notable human emo-
tions and activities, but it was also quick to usurp the subjects of popular
cults associated with a miracle. “By the ninth century, the transportation
of bodies and relics for financial profit became so common” that these
activities had to be regulated by the Church.38 Saints continued to be cre-
ated, and saints’ days, feast days, name days, pilgrimages, the sale of relics,
tourism to the sites of miracles, and other celebrations of people, places,
and events decreed by the Church to be sanctified provided ongoing
sources of revenue.39
Both Borrower and Lender Be. Throughout the Middle Ages expendi-
tures frequently outstripped revenues for both secular and Church powers
and purposes, creating steady pressure for additional sources of revenue to
supplement the rent from the land, taxes and tithes, and other feudal

36
A. Cassone and C. Marchese, ‘The Economics of Religious Indulgences,’ in Journal of
Institutional and Theoretical Economics. Vol. 155. No. 3, September 1999. (429–442);
R. B. Ekeland, R. F. Hebert, and R. D. Tollison, ‘The Economics of Sin and Redemption:
Purgatory as a Market Pull Innovation?’ in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,
19 (1), 1–15.
37
R.J. Barro and R. M McCleary, ‘Saints Marching In, 1590–2012,’ Economica, 83. 2016:
(385–415).
38
R.J. Barro, R. M McCleary, and A. McQuoid, ‘The Economics of Sainthood,’ in R. M
McCleary (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion. 2011: 3 (1–34).
39
R. B. Ekeland, R. F. Hebert, and R. D Tollison, ‘The Political Economy of the Medieval
Church,’ op. cit.: 7.
106 G. TEEPLE

rights to revenue. Hence, the perennial need for borrowing and for lend-
ing. Despite the Church’s warnings and counsel against charging interest
on money lending as unethical, it made this prohibition into an instru-
ment for advancing its own interests by restricting those in a position to
lend money and by lowering the interest on money it borrowed and rais-
ing it on money it lent.40
Heresies. The Church was not born with an established set of doctrines;
its fundamental tenets took many hundreds of years to work out in the
midst of many variations,41 and many of its articles of faith have remained
the subject of Church debate to this day. But an institutionalized religion
must have a creed, a formal set of beliefs understood as orthodoxy, as
approved, officially accepted. And the moment there is an orthodoxy there
is the possibility of heresy: doubt, denial, or departure from the canon.
While heresy was an on-going question in the early Church, when an
established creed became the official religion of the state in 380 CE, her-
esy became a matter of greater significance.
The Church by this time was already wealthy, the recipient of continual
bequests, donations, tithes, and so on. It was run by large bureaucracy, led
by a clerical elite, with a membership that extended across the Roman
Empire. Doctrinal disputes, then, had an import that went well beyond
mere doctrinal coherence; they were a threat to the established Church, its
legal monopoly over the belief system of the Empire and, it followed, its
sources of revenue.
Some of the earliest heresies addressed by the Church were the beliefs
of the pagan religions that still attracted a declining but substantial num-
ber of followers. The Church had the state on its side by the late fourth
century, but it also had a set of doctrines that were relatively internally
consistent, grounded in fundamental human emotions and desires, that
made the Church a more compelling belief system than the

40
R. B. Ekeland, R. F. Hebert, and R. D Tollison, “An Economic Model of the Medieval
Church: Usury as a Form of Rent Seeking,” in Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization,
Vol. 5, No. 2, 1989. (307–331). Insofar as the church banned interest on loans, it allowed
“selling property to extricate oneself from need.” By ‘lending’ money in exchange for ‘bor-
rowed’ land, the church and its monasteries brought “a very great part of the national wealth
into mortmain,” i.e., land and tenements held by religious organizations. In this way, “the
ban on interest” made the church very rich. See: K. Marx, Capital, Volume 3, London:
Penguin, 1991, p. 748.
41
M. Edwards, Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church, London: Taylor and Francis,
2009: 1–7.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 107

superstition-­bound pre-Christian religions. But there was opposition to

the emerging orthodoxy within the Church, which presented challenges.
There were two main kinds of opposition, which were generally inter-
twined: there were those who contradicted the official doctrines—for
example, on the nature of Christ, on the sacraments, the meaning of
prayers, and so on; and those who rejected the Church’s temporal powers,
accumulated wealth, and accompanying corruption, and sought a life
withdrawn from worldly temptations, extolling the sanctity of poverty,
and rejecting wealth and labour as sinful. The Church pursued all the
many heresies as challenges to its religious monopoly and associated rev-
enue sources.42
The Inquisition (1498–1834) and the confiscation of Jewish wealth
was another example of the use of heresy to augment the Church and
crown treasuries. The Jews in Spain during the time of the so-called
Reconquista had come to be considered a wealthy and powerful ‘state
within a state,’ but were also widely integrated with the Christians, mostly
as ‘conversos.’ Their wealth, however, was seen as a threat, or perhaps an
object of desire, to the incipient Spanish monarchy. In the fifteenth cen-
tury, Jews represented the future, a commercial economy, while the
Christians represented the fading present, feudalism. But the Christians
held the power and the source of wealth as rent-seeking and saw the ‘solu-
tion’ to the perceived threat of Jewish wealth as its confiscation. The
excuse was the imagined heresies of the ‘conversos,’ and the results were
the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, confiscation of their property, and
the sought-after Christian ‘purity’ of Spain.43
Protestantism: The Greatest Heresy. By the sixteenth century, when the
most serious ‘heresy’ of all, the Protestant Reformation, brought an end
to the Catholic monopoly of religion in Europe; the Church had pro-
duced a considered set of beliefs (largely retained by its reformist off-
spring, Lutheranism and Calvinism) that came as close as possible to

42
R. I. Moore, The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe, Harvard University
Press, 2012.
43
H. Kamen, ‘Confiscations in the Economics of the Spanish Inquisition,’ The Economic
History Review, Vol. 18, N. 3, 1965 (511–525) The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in
1492 was followed by the plundering of the Aztecs and the Incas, but that also proved to be
the undermining of a future for Spain.
108 G. TEEPLE

grasping the essence of what it means to be human, albeit as a religious

expression,44 that is, in an institutionalized or estranged form.
This near completion of the religious apprehension of our humanity
played a significant role in undermining and eradicating much of the
superstition that accompanied the pre-Christian religions and inhabited
the popular imagination in the Middle Ages. It did this by substituting an
understanding of the world with a more rational and coherent view at the
centre of which was the human spirit ascribed to Christ and the saints. The
admonitions against superstition also inadvertently provided Christians
with a more amenable attitude to technological change than beliefs in
magic or the supernatural allowed.45 While not a measurable achievement,
the Church did produce a genuine theology, that is, a rational consider-
ation of what God is, and by implication, what humans are,46 which
opened the door to criticism of religion itself and its wider implications.47
It would be a mistake to imply that such a theological grasp of spirit
would be reflected in the actions of the Church and its priesthood. Instead,
the power of attraction of these ideas was crassly instrumentalized to serve
temporal purposes, namely to provide rent-seeking opportunities of every
sort. They were, moreover, the product of an unaccountable priesthood
that employed these doctrines and rituals to control a powerless congrega-
tion and enforce the faith through fear, threats, and demands, and so from
at least the fourth century CE the Church was a powerful mechanism for
social control and capital accumulation.
This contradiction in the Church between the theological advance in
understanding the human spirit and the institutionalization of that

44
For the classic materialist analysis or interpretation of Christianity, see: L. Feuerbach, The
Essence of Christianity, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957.
45
Ekelund, R.B., R. D. Tollison, G. M. Anderson, R. F. Hébert, and A. B. Davidson.
Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1996: 178–180.
46
Ludwig Feuerbach: ‘Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is
self-knowledge. By his God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the two are
identical.’ The Essence…:12.
47
If we accept that Feuerbach’s argument in The Essence of Christianity that Christianity
captured the essence of human social nature, albeit in religious guise, then, Marx’s comment
that the “criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism” suggests that the criticism of
religion exposes religion as a human invention, which in turn raises the question of the
nature of the society that produces the necessity to worship this vision of human essence as
an object separate from life itself. K. Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Law, Introduction,” MECW, 3, 175–6.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 109

understanding came early in its development, and it allowed the Church

to instrumentalize the most significant events in human life and to extract
a sort of rent or to monetize the celebration of these moments. On the
one hand, it represented a qualitative break with the world of custom,
tradition, magic, superstition, and directly personal relations, and instead
put a rational set of ideas and metaphors before humans in place of the
irrationality of magic, spiritualized nature, superstition, and fate. On the
other hand, this formalizing and monetizing of the key stages in the life of
spirit also degraded them by introducing the principles of the marketplace
where everything can be bought and sold. If all aspects of life could be
sources of revenue, it was easier to accept the definition of the individual
in marketplace society as a ‘person,’ a legal embodiment of private prop-
erty, and nothing more.
Catholicism played a significant role in the dissolution of feudalism, a
great irony given that its structure was the very model of feudal absolut-
ism. Across its entire history it helped to transform feudal wealth into
money by monetizing key aspects of life. By centralizing land holding and
wealth and by promoting the Crusades, it provided an enormous spur to
the increased use of money, the demand for credit, the development of
towns as centres of Church administration, expanded manufacturing and
ship-building, and so on.48 Aside from these temporal developments, it
went far to place the meaning of life into a framework that was coherent
and rational albeit as a faith and not lived, and thereby removed its believ-
ers from the narrowness of custom, tradition, and superstition. It has
been, however, the longest reigning embodiment of feudal absolutism.49

48
Beginning in the eleventh century, the ‘Investiture Controversy’ can be understood as
the conflict between two spheres of accumulating wealth and power, the sacred and the secu-
lar. If the right of investiture and accompanying ‘simony’ were important sources of wealth
accumulation and if wealth was the source of political power, the church’s control over this
rent-seeking practice led it to face centuries-long destructive wars and challenges to its eccle-
siastical powers from the increasing demands and wealth of secular rulers. See: B. Tierney,
The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964: 53–57.
49
We must thank church for its chronic and grotesque hypocrisy that had become so obvi-
ous and abject by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that it provided the subject matter
for some of history’s finest satirists, namely Erasmus and Rabelais, and in the eighteenth-
century Voltaire.
110 G. TEEPLE

The role of Protestantism in the decline of feudalism and rise of capital-

ism is worthy of its continuing analysis.50 Among the more obvious
changes it brought, it promoted free thinking and provided a religion of
individual freedom, and so undermined the ideological cage that helped
keep feudalism alive by freeing Christians from the control of the Catholic
Church and its intermediary role between god and the faithful. In other
words, it allowed individuals to be free in relation to, and responsible
before, their god. It was “an individualist revolt”51 that challenged the
demands of the priests and “de-throned” the Pope, and represented a faith
that vindicated and sanctified the hard work and ascetic life that the early
stages of capital accumulation demanded.
Islam also played an important role in this transition, but its impact has
been left largely ignored in these debates. The work of Maxime Rodinson
and, latterly, J. M. Hobson stand out, among others, and point to devel-
opments in science, technology, medicine, and mathematics, not to men-
tion commercial principles and practices, all of which were influential in
transforming the intellectually narrow religiously dominated world of
feudalism.52
50
Ekelund, R. B., R. F. Hébert, R. D. Tollison, ‘An Economic Analysis of the Protestant
Reformation,’ Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 110, No. 3, 2002. O. Becker and
L. Woessmann, ‘The Effects of the Protestant Reformation on Human Capital,’
R. M. McCleary (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion. 2011. When
church property was confiscated, for e.g., under Henry VIII in the 1530s and in the French
Revolution in 1790, its enormous assets were released into secular use for war or commerce,
providing another significant but not easily measurable addition to the accumulation of pri-
vate capital.
Weber’s well-known treatise on Protestantism and its relation to the rise of capitalism
provides a detailed argument on the role of ideas in economic development, a relation that
remains ambiguous and perhaps not measurable but not to be dismissed. M. Weber, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Dover Publications 2003; see also:
R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London: Penguin Books, 1948 (1926),
especially pp. 101–103.
51
C. Hill, ‘Protestantism and the Rise of Capitalism,’ in F. J. Fisher (ed.), Essays in the
Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England in Honour of R. H. Tawney,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961: 18–19, 24–25, 26.
52
M. Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism, University of Texas Press, 1978 (1966);
J. M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004; J. M. Hobson, ‘What Have the Muslims Ever Done for Us? Islamic
Origins of Western Civilization,’ in R. K. Kanth (ed.), The Challenge of Eurocentrism: Global
Perspectives, Policy, and Prospects, New York: Palgrave, 2009 (217–235); J. M. Hobson,
‘Islamic Commerce and Finance in the Rise of the West,’ in N.R.F. Al-Rodham (ed.), The
Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West, Palgrave, 2012 (84–115).
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 111

Chronic War: The Crusades and Wars of Succession,

Expansion, and Religion
Like the role of the Church in the transition from feudalism to capitalism,
chronic war also played a much more significant part than is usually appre-
ciated. Continual wars have characterized the entire history of the emerg-
ing modern state. Although there are cautions about making too much of
the role of the Crusades in the transition from feudalism to capitalism,53 it
is also probably fair to say that too little may have been made of them. This
point has been made by several writers.54 A recent article asserts: “The
Holy Land Crusades were, perhaps, the largest-scale military mobiliza-
tions of the medieval period and a defining feature of a critical period for
the establishment of European states.”55 It would not be an exaggeration
to say, as will be argued, that these recurrent wars and mobilizations for
the Crusades—and also for the ‘Hundred Years War’ (1337–1453 CE)
among other European wars, which spanned almost 400 years of the late
Middle Ages—challenged the entire social structure and other aspects of
feudal relations and in effect hastened the gradual breakdown of feudal-
ism, the coming of absolute monarchy, and the beginning of mercantilism
in the sixteenth century.
The Crusades comprised a series of wars, launched mainly from Europe
to the Middle East from the late eleventh to the late thirteenth centuries.
Eight of the largest Crusades took place in fewer than 200 years, but there
were many lesser Crusades and many pilgrimages, which had similar impli-
cations. The Eighth and last Crusade to the ‘Holy Land’ ended in 1272,
and like many of the others it ended in defeat, and by 1291 the Crusader
States across the Levant were effectively incorporated into the Mamluke

53
T. Ashbridge, The Crusades, New York: Simon and Schuster. 2012: 664.
54
The financing of the Crusades showed “the importance of the monasteries as institutions
of credit and the importance of the crusades in contributing to the breakup of the old social
and economic order by promoting the exchange of property, the transfer of treasure into
liquid assets, the increase of circulation, and, through royal levies and feudal aids, the devel-
opment of centralized financial administration.” G. Constable, Crusades and Crusading in
the Twelfth Century, London: Routledge, 2016: 141.
See also: J.M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1215–1221. University of Pennsylvania, 1990.
55
L. Blaydes and C. Paik, ‘The Impact of Holy Land Crusades on State Formation: War
Mobilization, Trade Integration, and Political Development in Medieval Europe,’
International Organization, Vol. 70, No. 3, Summer 2016: 551 (551–586).
112 G. TEEPLE

Sultanate.56 This, however, did not end the crusading wars, which carried
on into the fifteenth century, affecting southern France and Spain, north-
ern Europe, and North Africa.
It is during the period of the Crusades that the centralization of monar-
chial power began in earnest, marking the transition from feudalism to
absolute monarchy. Feudal power was akin to a form of suzerainty, or a
ranked polyarchy; its subjects were vassals of varied order or position; and
its internal relations were predicated on fealty but enforced by patronage,
charisma, and coercion.57 The estates—the nobility, clergy, burghers, and
free peasantry—possessed their own rights and could use the powers asso-
ciated with their estate in opposition to the ‘overlord.’ Absolute monar-
chy, by contrast, which began to emerge in the thirteenth century, was
characterized by claims to sovereignty, which implied a supreme authority
with few if any independent subordinate sources of power, which in turn
implied an emerging common interest and the beginnings of a legal frame-
work.58 The main motive for this centralization of power into organiza-
tional and administrative structures was the necessity to mobilize the
human, material, and financial resources to mount these recurring wars,
which only a centralized power could manage.
While this centralizing process had begun much earlier due to chronic
conflict within feudalism, the Crusades hastened the change because so
many in the ranks of nobility sold or mortgaged their estates to the Church
or monarch and left to fight the ‘infidels.’ Many did not return, in which
case their estates were often forfeited, and those who did return had spent
a large part of their assets in financing their long journeys and accompany-
ing retinues.59 In both cases, the reduction in the numbers of feudal vassals
and the concentration of their assets proved to be advantageous to the

56
M. Cartwright, ‘The Crusades: Consequences and Effects,’ World History Encyclopedia,
[https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1273/the-crusades-consequences—effects/].
57
J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327, Oxford Scholarship
Online, September 2010.
58
H. M Cam (ed.), Selected Historical Essays of F. W. Maitland, Cambridge University
Press, 1957. ‘History of English Law,’ 97.
59
J. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1215–1221, University of Pennsylvania Press. 1990.
(See Chapter V: ‘Financing the Crusade.’)
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 113

rising monarchs (and the Church) by quickening the concentration of

wealth and power.60
As absolutism began to grow in the thirteenth century, the internal
conflicts in feudalism began to shift from armed subordinates challenging
monarchical claims to organized demands for rights over the sources and
disposition of the royal revenues. In short, incipient parliaments began to
appear as a form of resistance by the increasingly subordinate nobility to
curb the growing revenues demanded by monarchs for war from their vas-
sals, the Church, and the serfs.61 The growth of parliaments followed the
increase in monarchical demands especially in the form of taxation
in money.62
But if growing absolutism was one of the political impacts, there were
also economic impacts of these continuing large sales of land by the nobil-
ity over several hundred years to finance these crusading expeditions. The
sales turned feudal property into private property so that the traveling
knights and nobles had portable value or money to finance the journey;
they meant that vast assets in landed wealth were monetized or trans-
formed into commodified forms of value. One of the foundations of feu-
dalism, landed non-alienable wealth, was being transfigured into a form of
wealth that eventually would not tolerate feudal relations and would come
to require enforceable legal contracts. While much of this ‘new’ wealth
became concentrated in the hands of monarchs and the Church, much of
it was also spread across Europe and the Levant as money to pay for the
food, clothes, arms, transport, lodging, and so on, required by the
Crusaders.63

60
There is a tendency to romanticize the crusades, but here is a small antidote. About two
hundred years ago, Hegel wrote: “The first and immediate commencement of the Crusades
was made in the West itself. Many thousands of Jews were massacred, and their property
seized… [this] immense troop of rabble…passed in the greatest disorder through Hungary,
and robbed and plundered as they went.” G. W. F Hegel, The Philosophy of History, New York:
Dover Publications, 1956: 391–2.
61
J. R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1970; J. Lutten Van Zanden, E. Buringh, and M. Bosker, ‘The rise and fall
of European parliaments, 1188–1789,’ The Economic History Review, 65, 3 (2012)
(835–861); J. C. Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government, London: Hambleton
Press, 1985.
62
See: A. R. Meyers, Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789, London: Thames and
Hudson, 1975; and Blaydes and Piak, op. cit.: 558–9.
63
Blaydes and Paik, op cit., 563.
114 G. TEEPLE

In this way, each of the Crusades was a stimulus to the growth of trade
and commerce, and other forms of economic activities, across Europe fol-
lowing the numerous paths of the armies as they made their way to the
East. Included in this stimulus was the growth of towns and cities through-
out Europe along these routes, especially the Italian and other port cities
serving as points of departure for the Levant. And in these towns and cit-
ies, moreover, there arose large numbers of petty bourgeois: moneylend-
ers, merchants, hostelers, and all the sellers of goods and services in the
marketplace, not to mention the artisans and other petty commodity pro-
ducers, all intent on the money carried by these pious adventurers in
arms,64 and pilgrims intent on salvation.
Taxation. While the first few Crusades were largely self-financed by the
participating monarchs and their vassals, it was soon realized that feudal
surpluses from dues and sales, and mortgages on landed assets were “far
from sufficient to support extraordinary military activity,”65 and the plun-
der from the wars did not make up the deficit. And so arose the search for
means to secure revenue streams in money, which was portable and readily
useable. Loans, of course, were made, but they had to be paid back with
the same limited revenues that made them necessary, and they were often
not sufficient to field the armies for the Crusades and for ongoing wars
within Europe. It was for the purposes of financing the Crusades that we
find the early attempts at taxation to be paid in money. Taxation in itself,
but also the money form it took, had many implications.66
The growth in demand for taxes and feudal dues in the form of money
had the effect of forcing the peasantry and freed serfs to sell their produce,
which in turn implied entering the marketplace. The Crusades, then, not
to mention many other wars, were effecting a transformation of feudal
relations, obliging property forms to become more contractual than feu-
dal. They also played a significant role in the freeing of serfs for the wars
due to the sale of feudal lands, and in forcing them to become market-­
oriented to raise money for taxes. The economic impact of the Crusades
began the breakdown of feudalism: the need for mobile wealth, the
growth of manufacturing for weapons, the need for logistics to mobilize
armies and navies. In short, the Crusades gave rise to the need for

64
R. Latouche, The Birth of the Western Economy, Economic Aspects of the Dark Ages,
New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961.
65
Powell, op. cit. 89. See also: R. Bean, ‘War and the Birth of the Nation State,’ Journal of
Economic History. Vol. 33. No. 1. 1973: 211. (203–221)
66
Bladys and Paik, op. cit.: 558–9.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 115

commerce and industry and taxes as money in the midst of feudalism—for

the purpose of war.
This incipient ‘tax state’ of the thirteenth century aided the process of
undermining taxation and state debt as the personal fief of the monarch.
The emergence of the state as the administrator of increasingly centralized
private property, resting on taxation of the whole population, was the
beginning of the shift that Schumpeter argued took place during the
Middle Ages from the medieval ‘domain state’ to the ‘tax state,’67 or the
gradual replacement of revenue from feudal dues and crown estates as
taxes in kind to taxes in the form of money.
Underlying all these changes were the demands that arose from con-
tinual war. The financing, supplying, ship-building, and transporting these
armies to the Levant, and simultaneously engaging in wars of succession
and against peasant revolts over several hundreds of years,68 in Europe
were major transformative factors in the transition of feudalism to absolute
monarchism and mercantilism. Perhaps more than any other issue, the
Crusades and other wars produced the need for an ever-larger administra-
tion to manage the financial affairs and organizational aspects of mobiliz-
ing capital, recruiting of soldiers, and administering supplies for these
wars: a new form of state was being constructed.
To finance the growing armies, a revenue stream beyond the means of
the Church and feudal dues became essential, and so the growth of banks
and their credit services in the thirteenth century became significant con-
sequence of the Crusades.69 The financially powerful quasi-religious mili-
tary order of the Knights Templar was also a product of this demand to
finance the wars. In the Levant they offered in effect a ‘full banking ser-
vice,’ and they returned to spread across Europe with their knowledge of
financial management, which saw many innovations in accountancy,

67
J. A. Schumpeter, ‘The Crisis of the Tax State,’ International Economic Papers, 1954:
8–10. (5–38).
68
R. Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism, London: Verso, 1990; R. Hilton,
Bond Men Made Free, London: Methuen, 1973; R. S. Dunn, The Age of Religious Wars,
1559–1689, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1970; R. Bean, ‘War and the Birth of
the Nation State,’ Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, no. 1, 1973 (203–221): 216–7.
69
The rise of banking in several Italian city-states owed much to the financial needs of the
crusaders, but their origins almost certainly lie in the earlier commercial contacts with
Muslim traders from the seventh century in the Mediterranean basin. See: A. P. Usher, The
Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1943.
116 G. TEEPLE

deposit banking, tax collection, and credit facilities.70 They became the
bankers to the English monarchs for about 100 years, managing to survive
extortion, expropriations, defaults, and monarchical arbitrariness.
Powerful and wealthy, the Knights Templar made a significant contri-
bution to the growth of trade and commerce, but they succumbed to
excommunication by the Pope, and the persecution and execution by
Philip IV of France in 1314. As the debt holder to Philip, the order was
seen as a problem by the indebted king and their fate was an example of
feudal arbitrariness, providing the king with a ‘forgiven debt’ and the con-
fiscation of their considerable assets, but their legacy was the marked
advance of the use of capital and the principles of the marketplace, the
nemesis of feudalism.71
The idea of taxing the whole of the population was likely a product of
the need for credit because taxation provided the state a regular income
that constituted a sort of collateral for the debt, even though it did not put
an end to the arbitrary monarchical debt repudiations. These refusals to
repay loans, or frequent alteration of the terms, continued until monarchs
were deprived of such power or were deposed in revolutions, but the prin-
ciple of tying taxation to the ability of a state to borrow large sums of capital
gradually became central to the so-called fiscal-military state72 that would
come to mark the era of mercantilism and the growth of the state thereafter.

70
Almost certainly most of the knowledge about money-lending, contracts, banking,
accountancy and related commercial principles and practices was adopted from Muslim mer-
chant capitalists who since the eighth century had conquered the territories of the Roman
Empire and extended them in forging their vast commercial market system. See: M. Rodinson,
Islam and Capitalism, op. cit.: 56–58; and J. M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western
Civilization, op. cit.; J. M. Hobson, ‘What Have the Muslims Even Done for Us?’ in Kanth,
op. cit. (217–235); and J. M. Hobson, ‘Islamic Commerce and Finance in the Rise of the
West,’ in N.R.F. Al-Rodham (ed.), The Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West,
Palgrave, 2012 (84–115).
71
E. Farris, ‘The Financial Relations of the Knights Templars to the English Crown,’ The
American Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1902 (1–17). See also: M. Cartwright, ‘The
Crusades: Consequences and Effects,’ World History Encyclopedia, [https://www.worldhis-
tory.org/article/1273/the-crusades-consequences%2D%2Deffects/].
72
P. Harling and P. Mandler, ‘From “Fiscal-Military” State to Laissez-Faire State,
1760–1850,’ Journal of British Studies, Vol. 32. No. 1, 1993 (44–70). The categorization of
state development according to the source of revenue—as the feudal or ‘domain’ state, or as
the absolute or ‘tax’ or ‘debt’ or ‘fiscal’ or ‘fiscal-military’ or ‘laissez-faire’ state—is not with-
out some merit, but the definitions are not consistent or very clear. ‘Fiscal policy’ we take as
a reference to state policies regarding revenues and expenditures. The problem in the feudal
era was the divide between who provided the revenues and who decided the spending, a
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 117

The Rise of the ‘Fiscal-Military’ State73 (Sixteenth

to Late Eighteenth Centuries)

By the end of the fifteenth century, all the contradictions of feudalism

were coming to the fore. The process of mobilization for continual wars,
including numerous baronial and dynastic struggles for ascendancy over
several hundred years, but particularly the Crusades, had exhausted feudal
resources and laid the foundation of the age of mercantilism that was to
follow. Serfdom was in decline, albeit unevenly across Europe, due to
recruitment for recurrent wars, the increasing effects of enclosures,74 and
the growth of towns and cities and their markets. Political power was grad-
ually being centralized, largely on account of the wars,75 taking the form
of absolute monarchies. And wealth in the form of merchant capital was
growing in trading and manufacturing cities, and usury and demand for
credit were increasing everywhere across Europe, chafing against feudal
property and political relations.
These centuries of conflict prior to the sixteenth century, endemic to
feudalism, produced several consequences, chief among them: ‘the final
failure of the feudal armies’76 at the end of the Hundred Years’ War (1453),
chronic fiscal deficits,77 the growth of merchant capital, and the beginning
of monarchical absolutism. With the increase in trade during this period,
towns and cities began to grow expanding commerce, money lending, and
small-scale manufacturing in the midst of feudal relations. Many of these
cities obtained ‘charters’ from ruling authorities allowing these activities,

problem only ‘solved’ when capital finally captured the state and made it over in its own
interests (the ‘bourgeois revolution’) and learned how to disguise its political control as not
simply democracy for capital but for the citizenry at large.
73
J. Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money, and the English state, 1688–1783, London:
Routledge, 1989.
74
J. R. Wordie, ‘The Chronology of English Enclosure, 1500–1914,’ The Economic History
Review, Vol. 36, No. 4, 1983. (483–505).
75
The beginning of the institution of the standing army can be traced to this period; it
contributed greatly to absolutism because it gave monarchies a force independent from vas-
sals and provided security against challenges from these subordinates and foreigners alike.
See: B. M. Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy
and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
76
M. M. Postan, ‘Some Social Consequences of the Hundred Years’ War,’ The Economic
History Review, Vol. XII, 1942: 1.
77
R. Ashton, ‘Deficit Finance in the Reign of James I,’ The Economic History Review, Vol.
10 No. 1, 1957: 19 (15–29).
118 G. TEEPLE

and some became independent city-states, and others formed trading

associations, like the Hanseatic League,78 which promoted trade and com-
merce throughout the Baltic region from the early thirteenth into the
sixteenth century, providing a source of some revenue to feudal overlords
from a non-feudal set of property relations.
Reciprocity of absolutism and mercantilism. Already in the late Middle
Ages, then, a certain reciprocal relation of mutual benefit had begun to
appear between this growth of merchant capital and the consolidation of
political power by increasingly absolute rulers. On the one hand, mon-
archs required tax revenue and loans to build and maintain armed forces
and a bureaucracy, not to mention a court life of indulgence and luxury.
For all this, a growing and wealthy merchant class was necessary. On the
other hand, for the merchants—bankers, traders, and the guilds—the
growing absolute state was the means to consolidate political and eco-
nomic power of numerous claims, to better insure their loans, and to
begin the transformation or eradication of the impediments to commerce
and manufacturing represented by a feudal society. In principle, the Peace
of Westphalia in 1648, which followed the ruinous Thirty Years War
(1618–48), reflected this need to end continual warring and to establish
legitimate borders separating the jurisdictions of feuding barons, princes,
monarchs, and ecclesiastic powers; in practice, however, the struggle for
absolutism continued, assisted by merchant capital, as the necessary politi-
cal basis for the viable commercial economy that was emerging.
In order to expand the market, laws pertaining to private property were
required to regulate the exchange of goods and services without feudal
impediments or taxation for unproductive court extravagances and non-­
commercial dynastic wars. The small political units, poor transportation
infrastructure, numerous legal jurisdictions and tax regimes, lack of com-
mon currency or standards for weights and measures that characterized
feudalism all thwarted the development of commerce. The feudal system
was local and rural, and its production was largely for local consumption,
while merchant capital in all its forms had to expand continuously, which
it did in part by progressively destroying the local and self-subsistent.79
78
F. H. Cramer, “The Hanseatic League,” in Current History, Vol. 17, No. 96, August
1949 (84–89); The Hanseatic League, Encyclopedia.com-Germany History.
79
Early trade and commerce in Europe “by the end of 11th century” was evident from the
development of “the Law Merchant,” which “came to govern most commercial transac-
tions…, providing a uniform set of standards across large numbers of locations.” The Law
was self-generated by the merchants and their markets in the absence of state regulation. By
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 119

By the close of the Middle Ages at the end of the 1400s and the coming
of mercantilism in the 1500s, the marketplace economy had begun to
appear and so too absolute monarchy, albeit both still in emergent forms.
This new form of political rule differed from the feudal state, which was
largely funded from the lord’s own domains and those of his vassals who
could be coerced or convinced to supply additional support for the wars of
the monarch. After the first Crusades, this form of funding proved inade-
quate and so taxation was increased, producing what has been labelled the
shift from the ‘domain state’ to the ‘tax state.’80 It is not at all clear, how-
ever, that taxes alone were able to meet the increasing deficits produced by
the wars of European rulers. It is more likely that the increased taxes were
the rationale for a much bigger source of funds, namely crown borrowing.
The connection between war and its ever-rising costs, taxes, and state debt
has given rise to many studies of this period on what has come to be called
the ‘fiscal-military state.’81
During this period, there is evidence to the effect that “[w]ar, prepara-
tion for war, and the payments to debts from previous wars were more
important than the sum of all other types of expenditures combined.”82
From the mid-fourteenth century to the early seventeenth century, the
expenditures on the standing army and navy, debt servicing, and other
costs related to war varied between two-thirds and three-quarters of the
total budgets of England.83

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the ‘Champagne Fairs,’ annual trade events that criss-
crossed much of France, expanded the use of Law Merchant, which gradually became
absorbed into local or national legal or common law codes. See: P. R. Milgram, D. C. North,
and B. R. Weingast, “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant,
Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs,” Economics and Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1990
(1–23); and J. H. Baker, “The Law Merchant and the Common Law Before 1700,” The
Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2, 1979 (295–322).
80
Schumpeter, ‘The crisis…’ op.cit.,
81
R. Bonny, ‘The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200–1815.’ (1999) Oxford
Scholarship Online, October 2011. See this article for a short description and bibliography of
research in late twentieth century on the ‘Origins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th–18th
Centuries.’ See also: J. G. Backhaus, Navies and State Formation: The Schumpeter Hypothesis
Revisited and Reflected, Zurich: Lit Verlag, 2012.
82
R. Bean, ‘War and the Birth of the Nation State,’ Journal of Economic History, Vol. 73.
No. 1. 1973: 216 (203–221).
83
Ibid. 216. See also: P. K. O’Brien and P. A. Hunt, ‘The Rise of a Fiscal State in England,
1485–1815,’ Historical Research 66. (1993) (129–176).
120 G. TEEPLE

The need to field ever-larger armies and for longer periods of time, and
even more costly navies, created an increased need for the credit system.
By the credit system we refer to the rise of banks in Europe as early as the
thirteenth century and widespread by the next century.84 What is signifi-
cant about this development is that these were institutions that were spe-
cifically the embodiment of capital. They stood outside feudal institutions
and yet maintained a strong link to the feudal state. They hastened the
embrace of money for all purposes and were instrumental in the expansion
of trade and commerce. Although tied to feudal institutions, helping to
finance the chronic wars, not to mention the consumption expenditures,
of the feudal princes, they were also the very antithesis of feudalism. The
credit system was a great spur to more war, more commerce, more use of
money, more taxation, all powerful accelerators of capital accumulation,
and more demand for oversight in ‘public affairs.’85
This reciprocity of absolutism and mercantilism did not obviate the
contradiction between these two rising powers, which culminated in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The contradiction was first revealed
throughout Europe in the demand for political representation by the new
classes, that is, to the increased acceptance of parliaments by monarchs as
testament to the increased powers of the merchant capital and capitalist
farmers, but also often to offset baronial resistance to monarchical spend-
ing. While parliaments institutionalized the voice of merchant capital, they
also provided a venue for protests against the squandering of their money
by the crown. The same demands also resulted in republican systems in
city-states or regions, such as the Hanseatic League and the Swiss
Confederation, as institutions where bourgeois interests could be repre-
sented as preeminent. New economic powers were demanding political
expression.

84
A. P. Usher, The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943: 31–33.
85
Marx on credit: ‘Credit therefore is the means by which the capital of the whole capitalist
class is placed at the disposal of each sphere of production, not in proportion to the capital
belonging to the capitalists in a given sphere but in proportion to their production require-
ments – whereas in competition the individual capitals appear to be independent of each
other. Credit is both the result and the convenient transition from the competition between
capitals to capital as credit.’ K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part II, London: Lawrence
and Wishart, 1969: 211.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 121

Mercantilism, the Colonial System,

and the Dissolution of Feudalism86

One of the reasons given for the coming of mercantilist policies was the
conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans, which brought an
end to the Byzantine Empire and the associated lucrative trade for
European merchants in the Levant and links with India and China. This,
it has been argued, was the rationale for the attempts by Europeans at the
end of the fifteenth century to find a route to India, which they did by
sailing east around the southern tip of Africa and west to the ‘discovery’ of
the Americas. It should be noted that by the fourteenth century, numer-
ous overseas trading organizations organized as joint-stock companies had
been formed to take advantage of the commercial relations of the Hanseatic
League in the Baltic region, including Russia.87
The period in which mercantilist policies can be identified ranges from
the early sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and these dates frame such
policies for most of western Europe.88 Portugal, Spain, France, England,
Belgium, the Netherlands had all become during this time economies
more or less defined by new state policies in aid of the development of
merchant capital. Despite the ample literature on mercantilism, there is
very little discussion of its origins, but then, the origins might well have
been simply the pursuit of policies that the times demanded. Given our
discussion so far, by the sixteenth century, if not earlier, it was clear that
the growth of the market economy and the absolute monarchy were
interdependent.
At this point in history, neither could proceed without the other: abso-
lutism came in the form of the fiscal-military state that needed tax reve-
nues and loans, and the emerging market economy required a defined
domestic territory and new territories for expansion, protection, new laws,

86
If mercantilism begins in the early sixteenth century, the time of Luther, here is Marx’s
view on the era: ‘the period of the dissolution of medieval civil society into the elements
of modern society – a process which was accelerated by world trade and the discovery of new
gold deposits…’ K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. IV, Part III, Moscow: Progress
Publishers. 1971: 527.
87
C. E. Walker, ‘The History of the Joint Stock Company,’ The Accounting Review, Vol.
6, No. 2, 1931: 98. (97–105).
88
Researchers on mercantilism employ different dates, sixteenth to seventeenth or seven-
teenth to eighteenth centuries, but the policies we refer to here can be found by and large
across the three centuries and so we will take the three as roughly demarking the period of
mercantilism.
122 G. TEEPLE

and so on. The concept of the fiscal-military state only makes sense in the
context of mercantilism, with the conscious use of the state by monarchs
to support merchant capital as a source of additional revenue. Although
the state remained a feudal state in that it was a power unto itself, in reality
it had come to depend on the growing market economy of the sixteenth
century. The locus of power lay with one side and the locus of wealth on
the other.
The new doctrine and policies of mercantilism grew out of the recogni-
tion by monarchs of the necessity of debt and revenue from commercial
interests, and the consequent necessary relation between war, debt, and
merchant capital expansion. Monarchies were enhancing their powers
through revenues drawn from the taxes on and investments in domestic
and overseas expansion of their merchant classes, and merchants sought
from the state its political and military cooperation to advance the inter-
ests of private property at home and abroad. The dynamic of this penulti-
mate stage in the transition of feudalism to capitalism lay in the link
between the growing monied economy or marketplace society, magnified
by chartered monopoly companies and the increasingly absolutist state.
Mercantilism marked the next to last step in the waning of feudalism.
In this period, we find that the form of power continued to shift from the
direct and personal to institutionalized forms, at the centre of which were
parliaments and growing bureaucracies, and the form of wealth continued
to change from relatively fixed landed assets producing rents to moveable
assets as money and capital for investment, credit, and manufacturing.
More specifically, there was a large increase in capitalist farming and ‘freed’
labour,89 the establishment of the absolutist state as a military machine
with an increasing dependency on taxes and debt, the constant growth of
banking or the credit system, and expanding markets transforming many
of the remaining feudal relations. All of these changes rested on the devel-
opment of relations of private property, which were integral to the grow-
ing market relations and increasingly formalized in law.90

89
R.A. Bryer, ‘The genesis of the capitalist farmer: towards a Marxist accounting history of
the origins of the English agricultural revolution,’ Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 17
(2006) (367–397).
90
“The creation of incorporate persons” in law follows closely the rise of incorporated
capital. See: W. S. Holdsworth, “English Corporation Law in the 16th and 17th centuries,”
The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4, Feb. 1922 (382–407); J. Dewey, “The Historical
Background of Corporate Legal Personality,” The Yale Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 6, April
1926 (655–673).
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 123

While these policies varied across time and states, there was enough
consistency to map their defining characteristics, which are briefly consid-
ered here. Finding sea routes to India and beyond and to the Americas
resulted in arbitrary claims to European state ownership of these distant
lands. The consequent colonial trade and conquests were soon the source
of unprecedented wealth in Europe, in the form of gold and silver and a
wide variety of staple goods, most of it predicated on Indigenous, inden-
tured, and slave labour, and the slave trade.
From the outset, this colonial trade was opened, defined, and defended
largely by armies and navies of European merchant companies. By the
early seventeenth century, joint-stock companies were “chartered” (an
early form of incorporation) by the state as monopoly companies and were
employed as the main instrument for the expansion of commercial exploi-
tation of overseas territories. Most of the nations of Europe with a grow-
ing central state encouraged these companies with “charters,” authorizing
them to take ‘national’ advantage of the colonial trade. This authority
allowed these companies as embodiments of private property to become
“colonial proprietors,” that is, “governors of cities, districts or regions, tax
collectors, legislators and judges, and diplomats with the power to make
treaties and wage war.”91 Their powers were the near equivalent of the
state that granted the charter.92
Moreover, these “early modern European overseas empires” were
“more often than not…pioneered and governed not by states alone, but
in cooperation and competition with a medley of companies and … con-
quistadores, explorers, privateers, proprietors, and itinerant merchant,
family and religious networks.”93 In other words, the colonial empires
were in effect run by chartered companies with enormous self-governing
powers—private property with political power—which were controlled via
patronage of all sorts and by their performance in the stock markets, and

91
These wars were commercial wars, not the wars of succession of the feudal state. See:
J. U. Nef, ‘War and Economic Progress, 1540–1640,’ The Economic History Review, 1942,
Vol. 12, No. 1&2 (13–38).
92
P. J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations
of the British Empire in India, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011: 4; G. Cawton and
A. H. Keane, The Early Chartered Companies (A.D. 1296–1858), Union, New Jersey: The
Lawbook Exchange Ltd., 2002; M. N. Pearson, ‘Merchants and States,’ in J. D. Tracy (ed.),
The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State and Power and World Trade, 1350–1750,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991: (41–116).
93
Stern, Ibid., 10.
124 G. TEEPLE

accompanied by all the institutional and individual hangers-on, opportun-

ists, and sycophants that the system could produce. Using the English East
India Company as an example, it was chartered in 1612, raised and paid
for its own armed forces, controlled most of India for over 150 years, and
only gradually had its powers transferred to the Crown after 1757, com-
pleting that transfer in 1857.94
The corporate ‘raj’ was anything but idyllic, yet even less idyllic, though
more romanticized, was the commissioned pirate, or ‘privateer.’ While it
appears that European monarchs and princes of coastal states authorized
these raids at sea as early as the thirteenth century, the more widespread
use of privateering, or officially sanctioned piracy, came in the first half of
the sixteenth century, coincident with the growth of European navies and
overseas trade. Queen Elizabeth’s authorization of privateering for Spanish
gold in the Caribbean is well known, and it is estimated that privateers in
the Anglo-Spanish war (1625–1630) and the Anglo-Dutch war
(1652–1654) comprised a sizeable part of the English fleet. Privateering
lasted for several hundred years, but because it was easily ‘confused’ with
piracy, the size of the ‘returns’ to European royalty will probably never be
known. We can assume they were sizeable given the number of commis-
sioned ships but, more to the point, we see here an important component
of the accumulation of capital and the role of the consummate representa-
tive of feudal relations, the emerging absolute monarchy, growing through
the encouragement of theft on the high seas.95
Mercantilism represented the expansion of a new form of wealth
encouraged from within the feudal system: the feudal state was the pro-
moting agent for merchant capital, which was its opponent in principle
and would soon be its undoing. Here also was the origin of the link
between national interests and private corporate interests, a relation that

94
The so-called British raj in India ended in 1947, but until 1857, it was the East India
Company ‘raj.’
95
B. Mabee, ‘Pirates, privateers and the political economy of private violence,’ Global
Change, Peace & Security, 21:2 2009: (139–152); J. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and
Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe, Princeton:
University of Princeton Press, 1994; C. R. Pennell (ed.), Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader,
New York: New York University Press, 2001.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 125

would change in form over the centuries but not in content.96 And here
too was the beginning of the combination of capital and state power, a
conscious, mutually beneficial relation, that by the end of the nineteenth
century would have asserted the hegemony of European states over more
or less the entire world.97
In effect, mercantilism, and the colonial system that was part of it, was
the expansion of capital in national dress that came to embrace the world.
The colonialism of the European powers from the sixteenth to the eigh-
teenth century amounted to the increasing subjection of the whole world
to capital. It was a growing global marketplace fought over by the repre-
sentatives of emergent national forms of merchant capital.98 But the his-
torical significance of the colonial system lay in the spread of capital, albeit
initially as merchant capital, not its time-bound national character.
While this overseas extension of commerce and trade was part of mer-
cantilism, there were also policies to protect the development of domestic
economies. To this end, feudal states provided subsidies for manufactured
exports and erected tariff walls to minimize manufactured imports. Such
policies remained typical for economies coming into their own, even in the
nineteenth century, as in Germany, for instance. But once a nation had
industrialized, these policies were abandoned in favour of laissez-faire pol-
icies that reflected the relative strength of its manufacturing and banking
sectors, making economic protection less necessary.
This era is often referred to as the period of ‘state-building,’99 pointing
to the necessity of defined borders and legal jurisdiction for the purposes
of military recruitment, taxation, and the basic elements of an economy:
standardized currency, laws, weights and measures, official languages, and
a unifying infrastructure. In short, the concept implies the complementary
building of both the state and the economy. It might be more accurate if

96
Colonies ruled by chartered corporate monopolies combined political rule with eco-
nomic exploitation. The coming of the modern state separated the political from the eco-
nomic in appearance but retained the combination in practice. The essence of the modern
‘nation’ is private property in the form the dominant corporations; this is the raison d’etre of
the state and its manufacture of unifying national bonds.
97
J. H. Parry, The Establishment of the European Hegemony: 1415–1715. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1961.
98
W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Washington: Howard University
Press, 1974.
99
J. Viner, ‘Power versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries,’ World Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1948: 4.
126 G. TEEPLE

the label were ‘nation-building’ because it is a reference to the develop-

ment of the absolutist state as a fiscal-military state as the necessary admin-
istrator, promoter, and guardian of the emerging economy. The separate
but interdependent development of the state and economy was central to
the transition from feudalism to capitalism; under feudalism they were by
and large intertwined, except in the mercantile city-states; at the begin-
ning of the mercantilist era, the economy remained a mix of feudal and
market principles and practices, and the state assumed overarching rights
within its domain but lacked the increasing revenue needed to define,
administer, and defend a wider jurisdiction. To become spheres in their
own right both required consolidation and definition, and for this they
needed their mutual assistance. In other words, the state as presumptive
sovereign required an economy that provided constantly growing revenue.
This reciprocal relation between the growth of absolute monarchy and
the merchant classes was the heart of mercantilism. The state as ‘war
machine’ needed tax revenues and loans to maintain and expand its hege-
mony and its bureaucracy, and for these it needed the merchants. The
merchants needed a militarized state to expand and defend the colonies
and domestic borders, to legislate laws of private property for commerce,
to build national infrastructure, and to put an end to the privileges of the
aristocracy and the Church.
This reciprocity, however, contained a contradiction: the growing mer-
chant classes, or the emerging economy, could not continue to tolerate a
political system that reflected the autocratic nature of a culminating but
decaying feudalism. The monarchs claimed to hold power by divine
right—they were above the law and unaccountable—and they were blind
to their own parasitism. The merchants required a state that was account-
able to their interests, defined by private property. Wealth in the form of
capital, which was moveable, alienable, and driving expansion, was con-
fronting wealth that was in principle fixed, inalienable, with consumption
as its realization. So, while the reciprocal relation allowed both sides to
grow, their principles were fundamentally different, and continued growth
could not but bring their differences into open conflict. Accumulated
merchant capital required a state subordinate to its interests so that it
could advance beyond the limits of an arbitrary ruler whose expenditures
were often arbitrary, extravagant, and unproductive as capital. As both the
absolutist states and emerging markets grew, the former became increas-
ingly a barrier to the growth of the latter.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 127

The Bourgeois Revolutions: The National Debt

and Taxation

Throughout the mercantilist era, the absolutist state continued to expand

the navy, develop standing armies, pursue on-going wars, conquer new
colonies, and build more infrastructure. All of these nation-building
efforts, however, increased the demand for more taxes and borrowing,
which in turn increased the crown’s reliance on its parliaments for approval
of both.100 Here was the contradiction between two modes of produc-
tion—feudalism at its endpoint and in decay, and capitalism at its begin-
ning with a world to conquer. In this transition era, the former defined the
political and the latter the economic, but the reciprocal relation no longer
worked: capital had outgrown the compatibility. The resolution came in
the form of the bourgeois transformations,101 which subordinated the
political to the principles of capital.
The new governments were the political expression of capital and its
necessity to accumulate. As the ‘prime mover’ of the revolutions, capital
proved to be the force that overwhelmed the rent-seeking of unaccount-
able, arbitrary, and unproductive absolute monarchs. In other words, the
attempts to derive a revenue or increase the share of existing assets by
coercion, persuasion, deception, and obligation, without generating new
wealth and without accountability, was ultimately no match for the singu-
lar and ruthless drive of capital that demanded accountability and was

100
J. Lutten Van Zanden, E. Buringh, and M. Bosker, ‘The rise and decline of European
parliaments, 1188–1789,’ The Economic History Review, 65, 3, (2012) (835–861).
101
The concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’ has given rise to some debate. Just what eco-
nomic strata and roles should be included in the concept of the ‘bourgeoisie’ has not always
been so clear given the state of the development of capital as merchant capital at that time,
and so we will take it as a reference to the use of capital in the reproduction of a class whether
its members be farmers, stockbrokers, bankers, or aristocrats. The concept of revolution is
also in question, especially in the nineteenth century, because these bourgeois revolutions were
often closer to negotiated settlements than the result of armed conflict (for e.g., Italy 1861,
Canada 1867, Germany 1871, Meiji Restoration 1868–91). The exact character of the pre-
cipitating social forces was not as important as was the nature of the result, which we outline
on pages 36–41 and contend that it holds by and large for all examples of these transforma-
tions. We use the concept of bourgeois revolution, then, as a loose reference to the culminat-
ing event in the transition from feudal absolutism, as a frame for mercantilist accumulation,
to the incipient modern state, as the political form fully dedicated to facilitating capital accu-
mulation. B. Nygaard, ‘The Meanings of “Bourgeois Revolution”, Conceptualizing the
French Revolution,’ Science and Society, Vol. 71, No. 2. 2007 (146–172); R. Duchesne, ‘The
French Revolution…’ op. cit.
128 G. TEEPLE

ultimately resistant to arbitrary debt repudiation and sharing the rent with
the unaccountable.
If mercantilism were the penultimate step in the dissolution of feudal-
ism, the bourgeois revolutions were the last step, and at the centre of each
of these transformations was the question of public debt, which had grown
in size and use throughout the mercantilist era. In most cases, the debts
incurred by the absolutist states in unproductive ventures such as wars of
succession, palaces and other royal extravagances, and colossal outlays for
navies and armies to conquer and protect colonies had become too large
to pay down from their existing revenues. The reneging on repayment or
the arbitrary restructuring of its debt by absolutist states became increas-
ingly common.102
Taxes were raised but they were generally already repressive and unpop-
ular, and increases were not usually sufficient to meet royal demands. The
debasement of currency was often employed but held negative implica-
tions for creditors and so for future borrowing, not to mention for the
productive classes and trade relations. Cutting expenditures was not a
practical option because expenditures went mainly to the demands of war
and court indulgences and so reductions carried risks for rulers, and while
defaults and repudiations were frequent enough, they endangered the
credit worthiness of the crown. Debt and more debt became a common
solution. Debt, however, is always limited by the ability to repay the credi-
tors and is even more restricted when the debtors hold powers not ame-
nable to the creditors. However important the use of the state was to the
rising bourgeoisie at this juncture in history as an instrument to marshal
capital to spur economic development,103 the state remained controlled by
a monarch, dependent on taxes and debt but unaccountable to taxpayers
and creditors.
Before the bourgeois revolutions, public debt was already playing an
important role in advancing the interests of the merchants and financiers
through the concentration of wealth and by turning idle money into pro-
ductive loans.104 The idea of tying the taxation system to the repayment of
loans had also come to be understood and put into practice. And it was
this link established in the mercantilist era that revealed how powerful the

102
J. M. Veitch, ‘Repudiations and Confiscations by the Medieval State,’ The Journal of
Economic History, Vol. 46, No, 1, 1986 (31–36).
103
K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, 918–922.
104
Marx, Capital, ibid., p. 776.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 129

use of the state could be for the marshalling of national resources. In this
period, the state was already becoming the financial intermediary in a
three-part relationship between creditors, mainly financial institutions that
provided the funds; the debtors, directly the state, but indirectly the large
corporations that received state funding and tax exemptions; and taxpay-
ers, all those not in a position to pass on taxes and so obliged to pay them,
which in those days were largely in the form of tariffs, duties, excise taxes,
and feudal obligations, and which fell disproportionately on the peasantry,
yeomen, artisans, and wage earners. In this way, the state had become an
intermediary between classes and strata, redistributing wage, agricultural,
and colonial surpluses to the creditors and the corporate sector that ben-
efited from state largesse. The state was expropriating value from domestic
and colonial productive classes via taxes, expropriations for expenditures,
and debt servicing in the interests of itself and the corporate sector.
At the centre of most of these bourgeois transformations was the con-
trol of public debt. The change amounted to the transfer of power from
unaccountable feudal rulers to accountable forms of ‘representative gov-
ernment.’ The crown debt became the national debt: the recasting of the
debt from unproductive to productive use, from arbitrary to democratic
oversight, from the possibility of repudiation to the assurance that the
debt and the state were in the same hands, that is, the creditors. And the
system of taxation, the foundation of this use of the state, was broadened
to increase the socializing of the costs of the debt. The capture of the state
and control over the debt was seen as the establishment of ‘responsible
government.’105
These revolutions, then, were the means by which state creditors put an
end to the state as unaccountable, to its use of revenues and debt for less
than productive expenditures, and to its arbitrary powers of confiscation,
repudiation, and debt restructuring. In each case, the transformations
amounted to the three key issues that defined modern responsible govern-
ment. First, they created parliamentary control of the state by representa-
tives with a material stake in the system, that is, those who profited from
the exploitation of the productive classes. Second, they established parlia-
mentary control over all fiscal matters or, more specifically, the disposition
of tax revenues, the public debt, and the guarantee of its repayment. And

105
Not until late in the nineteenth century do the concepts of representative or responsible
government include the reality of the universal franchise; initially, these are governments
representative of and responsible to the wealth holders in these countries.
130 G. TEEPLE

third, they abolished feudal property and asserted the constitutional pri-
macy of private property.
Although the question of state indebtedness has received very little
attention in the Marxist debates on the transition from feudalism to capi-
talism, it has a prominent place in recent non-Marxist literature. And
there, the discussion of its importance corresponds well with the few pas-
sages that Marx dedicated to the issue. It was during the mercantilist era,
he wrote, that “the system of public credit, i.e., of national debt took pos-
session of Europe as a whole,” coming to prominence first in Holland by
at least by the early seventeenth century, and then as “one of the most
powerful levers of primitive accumulation,” it “marked the capitalist era
with its stamp.”106 It opened new avenues for capital accumulation, it
spurred the development of the stock market,107 it promoted the growth
of joint-stock companies,108 and it advanced the growth of the power of
banking capital, which in turn necessitated the creation of central banks,109
including the idea if not the practice of being the ‘lender of last resort.’
In the same passages, Marx also wrote, “Public credit becomes the
credo of capital.” To explain, he provided a religious analogy, to para-
phrase: just as a sin against the Holy Ghost is unforgiveable, so too the
lack of credit worthiness spells perdition for the state. The chronic need
for debt gives capital control over the state: credit worthiness determines
how much, if any, credit will be extended to the state. By implication,
there is more to this simple statement. Public credit as a ‘lever of capital
accumulation’ means that capital can, through loans, use the state to
expand state expenditures beyond its revenues for infrastructure and cor-
porate use, as if in the public interest. State debt also provides capital with
a secure and profitable holding station for idle capital, and it allows for the
repayment of the principal and interest on public debt, which mainly ben-
efits the corporate sector but is socialized by means of the tax

106
Ibid., 919.
107
E. P. Stringham and N. A Curott, ‘On the Origins of Stock Markets,’ C. J. Coyne and
P. Boettke (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Austrian Economics; L. Neal, ‘The Integration of
the London and Amsterdam Stock Markets in the Eighteenth Century,’ The Journal of
Economic History, Vol. 47, Issue 1, March 1987.
108
C. E. Walker, ‘The History of the Joint Stock company,’ The Accounting Review, Vol.
6, No. 2 (June 1931) (97–105).
109
U. Bindsell, Central Banking before 1800: A Rehabilitation. Oxford Scholarship Online,
2019; J. L. Broz, ‘The Origins of Central Banking: Solutions to the Free-Rider Problem,’
International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 2 Spring 1998: 235, 261 (231–268).
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 131

expropriation of the productive classes to pay down the public debt. This
arrangement can also be seen as the reappearance of hidden tax privileges,
previously only for nobility and clergy, for the corporate sector by means
of policies that advantage the beneficiaries and democratize the costs.
The national debt was also the key reason for the formation of coali-
tions of banks, shortly after the bourgeois transformations, that acted like
central banks in that they were given a monopoly over state credit and
currency issue, ultimately becoming central banks. A set of private sector
bankers were given control over monetary policy, which gave them con-
trol over the framework for fiscal policy and ultimately public policy in
general.110 In short, the creditors were given control over the use of their
credit, and by implication, made the state into the ‘lender of last resort,’111
and with this they achieved an overarching influence over state activities.
These are some of the wonders of the national debt.

Debt and the Bourgeois Transformations

A few synopses of the main bourgeois transformations will help to make
our point. Here we will briefly examine the Netherlands and England in
the seventeenth century, the USA and France in the eighteenth century,
and Italy and Canada in the nineteenth century.
The Dutch Wars of Independence: 1568–1648. The Dutch Republic, or
the Republic of the United Provinces, was one of the earliest ‘national’
territories, albeit a confederation or league of city-states, established as a
quasi-republican state in 1588. It was the product of Dutch resistance to
the rule of the Spanish Hapsburgs over the Netherlands and the Spanish
need for more loans to finance dynastic wars of succession. Dutch opposi-
tion to Spanish plans to centralize the public finances of the low countries
resulted in decades of sporadic indecisive wars. The Dutch, however,
achieved parliamentary control in 1588 over the disposition of their taxes,
which increased the security against state defaults on loans, which in turn

110
J. L Broz, ‘The Origins of Central Banking: Solutions to the Free-Rider Problem,’
International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 2 Spring 1998: 235, 261 (231–268). Monetary
and fiscal policies are related: the former provides the framework for the latter.
111
This is not a reference simply to ‘deposit insurance,’ which is a recent phenomenon, but
to the expectation that a state will support bailouts of large corporations to prevent their
bankruptcy. The function of ‘lender of last resort’ shifted to central banks where and when
they were established. See: T. M. Humphrey, ‘Lender of Last Resort: the concept in history,’
Economic Review, March/April 1989 (8–16).
132 G. TEEPLE

attracted a marked increase in the willingness to lend to the state in the

northern provinces, and moreover, created a new capital market for state
loans. The resultant ability to borrow more enabled the Dutch to build a
military, particularly a navy, and ultimately, after 40 years of fighting, to
defeat in 1609 the attempts by Spain to assert its sovereignty over the
northern provinces.112
By this first decade of the seventeenth century, moreover, the conse-
quences of parliamentary supremacy saw the Dutch Republic become the
centre of international money markets, the establishment of the first stock
exchange,113 the chartering of the Dutch East India Company, the begin-
nings of a central bank, and the building of the world’s largest navy allow-
ing Dutch merchants to dominate trade on the high seas and begin to
establish a colonial empire. Without the merchant political control over
state borrowing and its relation to taxation, the Dutch struggle against
Spanish armies would not likely have succeeded, and such economic devel-
opments would have taken decades longer or possibly not have happened
at all.114
The English Civil Wars: 1640–1688. Like the ‘Dutch Revolt,’ the
English ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688115 can be summarized as the

112
J. D. Tracy, ‘Keeping the Wheels of War Turning,’ in G. Darby (ed.), The Origins and
Development of the Dutch Revolt, London: Routledge, 2001. Fighting with Spain was
renewed in 1621 and only ended in 1648 when Spain finally recognized Dutch
independence.
113
N. Kyriazis and T. Metaxas, ‘Path Dependence, change and the emergence of the first
joint-stock companies,’ Business History, Vol. 53, No. 3, June 2011 (363–374).
114
M. Van Der Linden, ‘Marx and Engels, Dutch Marxism and the “Model Capitalist
Nation of the Seventeenth Century”,’ Science and Society, Vol. 61, No. 2 Summer 1997
(161–192); See also: P. Brandon, ‘Marxism and the “Dutch Miracle”: The Dutch Republic
and the Transition-Debates,’ Historical Materialism, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2011 (106–146);
It is important to note that the label ‘Republic’ did not imply a popular or democratic
government; in fact, ‘[l]ike other republics of the sixteenth century…the new Dutch state
was run by a tightly knit oligarchy.’ And these oligarchies remained in control of the Republic
and the member provinces right through to the late eighteenth century, constantly opposing
the ‘threat of democracy.’ G. Parker, The Dutch Revolt, London: Penguin Books 1977:
243, 245.
115
When the Dutch declared independence in 1581, they also declared their ‘Crown’ to be
‘vacant.’ After several attempts to find a sovereign, even asking Elizabeth I, who declined, the
Dutch proclaimed a ‘republic’ in 1588. They would rule ‘themselves’—the wealthy mer-
chants, that is. In 1688 in England the situation was somewhat similar; the English Parliament
was suspicious of James II loyalty to Protestantism, and so several prominent members of the
House of Lords invited Mary, James’ daughter and a Protestant, with her husband, William
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 133

achievement of parliamentary supremacy over arbitrary monarchical rule,

but in neither case can this success be confused with the winning of popu-
lar democracy. What was won in 1688 was a set of parliamentary powers
that effectively curbed the rights of the Crown and safely placed the fiscal
and monetary policies of the state into the direct or indirect control of the
institutions of capital,116 namely, parliament, the stock market, banks, and
by 1694 the Bank of England.
To put it another way, the changes of 1688 represented a shift from the
personal and arbitrary actions and powers of the Crown over revenues and
expenditures to an institutional framework for all fiscal matters and policy
decisions overseen by parliament. Or yet another way, they represented
the consolidation of power and wealth in one set of hands, capital, instead
of separate and contradictory sources for power in feudal monarchs, nobil-
ity, and capital.
The achievement of parliamentary supremacy and its associated reforms
were followed by a rapid growth of capital markets and the increased pos-
sibility of loans to the state, just as in the Netherlands after 1588. Capital
accumulation was accelerated, leading to the establishment of the Bank of
England, the increasing use of the national debt, the building of a navy to
protect merchant shipping, a renewed war with France (1688–1697), and
later a challenge to the military strength of the Netherlands, which had
ruled the seas from about 1600 to the late 1700s, and the expansion of the
colonial system.117 Within a few decades, the result of this accumulation,
the Industrial Revolution, began, subordinating production to capital and
completing the components of the capitalist mode of production.
The American War of Independence: 1776–1781. By the mid-eighteenth
century, the results of mercantilist policies and the new use of debt adopted
by Britain became manifest in the defeat of the French in 1760, and the

III, to leave the Netherlands and assume the throne in England to secure it for Protestantism,
deposing James II. The ‘Glorious Revolution’ amounted to William and Mary, following a
Dutch army that invaded England and occupied London, being offered the throne by
Parliament, which they accepted and finalized by signing the Bill of Rights. See:
R. D. Congleton, “America’s neglected debt to the Dutch: an institutional perspective,”
Constitutional Political Economy, Vol. 19, 2008, 43–45 (35–59).
116
D. C. North and B. R. Weingast, ‘Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of
Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England,’ The Journal of
Economic History, Vol. 49. No. 4, 1989: 815–6. (803–832).
117
D. Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State, France and Great
Britain, 1688–1789, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, Chapters 4 and 5.
134 G. TEEPLE

consequent British possession of New France and the territories west of

the proclamation line in 1763. Even as the era of industrialization opened,
British mercantilism remained and presented continuing barriers to the
growth of American capital overseas by means of the Navigation Acts, and
on the continent with a set of new tax laws and restrictions to Western
expansion.118
In response to these restrictions and associated new taxes, the Thirteen
Colonies organized boycotts of English imports, demanded the repeal of
the taxes, and presented lists of grievances to the British. In 1774 in the
face of British intransigence and attempts to centralize colonial rule, the
colonies called for a Congress of their representatives at which they
endorsed an extension of their earlier tactics. In 1775, the British opted to
intimidate the colonists with a military occupation of Boston and some
short battles with American armed resistance. In reaction, the Second
Continental Congress was called, and it authorized the creation of an
army, which was financed by the Congress printing of money and the pur-
suit of the war with loans from the Netherlands and particularly from
France.119
When the hostilities ended in 1781, the new ‘nation’ was in effect
bankrupt. Among other efforts it sent representatives to European centres
of finance to seek loans, especially from the Dutch and the French. Given
that the new state had no taxation powers, however, the attempts failed
until the Dutch and French states pledged degrees of assurances at which
point the money markets opened to the Americans.
Even at the formal end of the war in 1783, the Thirteen Colonies were
still not a nation in a conventional or formal sense: the constitution was
not ratified by the majority until 1788, and the first new federal govern-
ment was inaugurated only in 1789. One of its first acts, however, was to

118
L. A. Harper, ‘Mercantilism and the American Revolution,’ The Canadian Historical
Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, March 1942. 2–3 (1–15); B. Baack. “Economics of the American
Revolutionary War”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. November 13, 2001
(updated August 5, 2010). URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-amer-
ican-revolutionary-war/. Both Harper and Baack make the case that new taxes were not so
significant an issue in precipitating the War of Independence; the restrictions to the expan-
sion of American trade abroad and the exploitation of the ‘West’ were central.
119
G. S, Wood, ‘The Birth of American Finance,’ The New Republic, December 6, 2012.
[https://newrepublic.com/article/110824/the-birth-american-finance].
B. Baack, ‘Forging a Nation State: The Continental Congress and the Financing of the
War of American Independence,’ The Economic History Review, Vol. 54, No. 4, 2001:
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 135

commission Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary “to

make recommendations to reorganize the national debt and to establish
the public credit” for this new state. His “First Report on the Public
Credit”120 (1790) must stand as one of the clearest and most complete
statements about the significance of public credit and funding of the
national debt for the definition and operation of the modern nation-state.
The “Second Report on Public Credit” dealt with the imperative of estab-
lishing a central bank,121 and here again, it would be difficult to improve
on the analysis of the role of a national bank, as a consortium of privately
owned banks, in managing the financial affairs of the modern state—taxes,
debt, currency, credit, and so on. Hamilton proposed the institutionalized
control by private capital of the state and public affairs by private capital.
His third report, “Report on Manufactures,” (1791) laid out a classic
mercantilist set of policies, borrowed from the British and French, for the
promotion and protection of American commerce and industry through
tariffs and state subsidies.122 In these three reports by Hamilton, which
were not entirely accepted by the varied and conflicting interests repre-
sented in these debates, we see the voice of merchant capital outlining the
role expected of the state in promoting a national economy.123 There is no
mention of democracy in these documents.
Hamilton’s negative attitude to democracy was well known,124 and the
structure of American political participation was initially tied to “property
qualifications of varying degrees for voting, and proportionately higher

120
First Report on the Public Credit, Communicated to the House of Representatives,
January 14, 1790. [https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/economy/2015/hamilton-first_
report_on_the_public_credit.pdf].
121
Final Version of the Second Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing
Public Credit (Report on a National Bank), 13 December 1790. [https://founders.archives.
gov/documents/Hamilton/01-07-02-0229-0003].
122
D. A. Irwin, ‘The Aftermath of Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures”,’ The Journal of
Economic History, Vol. 64, No. 3, 2004.
123
For a clear outline of these nation-building policies, see C. A. Beard, The American
Party Battle, Macmillan, 1928, especially Chapter II. Central to these policies were the hon-
oring of the war bonds at face value, and the assumption of all state debts by the new federal
government and paid for by the new and heavy taxes on the small farmers. Not quite a
100 years later, the nation called Canada was formed in the same manner, that is by assuming
the existing state debts in a new federal level of government to guarantee the existing and
enable more public debts.
124
H. Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, New York: HarperPerennial, 1995: 95.
136 G. TEEPLE

ones for office.” It was a system for “those with a stake in the society,”125
those who benefited from the exploitation of labour. And the constitu-
tional distribution of powers was largely modelled on principles of British
political institutions, with the residual powers of the monarch given to the
president,126 making those powers now accountable to capital.
There was nothing particularly revolutionary about the American
Revolution, except that it put an end to certain restrictions on trade and
territorial expansion and taxes imposed by the British. The rich remained
in power and the constitutions of the Thirteen Colonies were for the most
part retained, having been initially designed for control by merchant capi-
tal. There was no revolution against an absolute monarch; King George
III had little real power because that had been mostly stripped from British
monarchs by 1688. The revolution was between two configurations of
merchant capital; it was the uniting of colonies dominated by colonial
merchant capital freeing itself from control of the merchant capital of its
‘mother’ country.127
The French Revolution: 1789–1799. The bourgeois revolutions in the
Netherlands, England, and the United States all preceded the French
Revolution of 1789. But their achievements were either incomplete
(resulting in constitutional monarchies and ‘established’ or official
churches) or limited to the removal of parasitical merchant capital in colo-
nies where private property already prevailed. The French Revolution was
different in that it embraced a radical transformation in all arenas—social,
political, economic, and religious—and in this sense, it stood as the classic
bourgeois revolution overturning a decaying feudalism. Nevertheless, it
shared with the others the problem of the public debt, which was at the
centre of the decade-long revolutionary period.
“There is general agreement that the Crown’s fiscal crisis ignited the
Revolution, enabling bourgeois, townspeople, and peasants to seek redress
for their grievances. Yet, few French historians see the problem of the defi-
cit as a long-term driving factor.”128 The author of this sentence goes on

125
E. Robson, The American Revolution in its Political and Military Aspects: 1763–1783,
New York: Norton and Company, 1966: 220.
126
J. S. Maine, Popular Government, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976 (1885): 209, 212.
127
The formation of the Bank of England in 1694 firmly placed the British government via
the public debt under the control of the consortium of private banks that constituted
the Bank.
128
E. N. White, ‘The French Revolution and the Politics of Government Finance,
1770–1815,’ in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 2, June 1995: 227 (227–255).
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 137

to analyse how the fiscal crisis proved to be intractable and allowed for
many stratified and contradictory interests to come to the fore until 1799
and the 18th Brumaire of Napoleon. Most of the political struggles and
revolutionary wars, he argues, were over who would ultimately bear the
brunt of the cost of the continuing deficit and debt and provide an increase
in tax revenue. And while this problem arose initially from the divided
authority between the monarch and parliament over revenues and expen-
ditures, after the establishment of the Republic in 1792, the problem con-
tinued due to many antagonistic interests each striving to minimize their
responsibility and so preventing a solution.
The two main options for the state were to increase taxes and/or repu-
diate the debt, but both had strong opponents. In this light, the only
feasible choice to secure backing for the currency and to pay down the
debt was expropriation and sale of church property, along with some
Crown lands. The value of these lands, as it turned out, proved to be
insufficient to make up the deficits, retire the debt, and support the new
currency. In meantime, with the declaration of the Republic in 1792, con-
cerns about counter-revolution from the monarchs of Europe arose, and
their possible mobilization threatened the value of the confiscated lands
(in the event of a restoration, confiscated property could be reclaimed).
With this as rationale, there arose the argument to take the revolution to
the European monarchs; success in war, it was thought, would provide the
funds necessary to retire the debt and secure long-term payments and also
pay for the war itself.
The invasion of Belgium in 1792 was the first expression of this idea,
and from the defeated Belgians the French demanded “requisitions, forced
loans, and indemnities,”129 and their church property was confiscated.
Within the next year, more adjoining territory in Belgium was added to
the Convention’s jurisdiction.130 Still, the additional extractions were

See also: G. Bossenga, ‘Financial Origins of the French Revolution,’ in Kaiser, T. E and
D. K Van Kley (eds.) From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution.
Redwood City: Stanford University Press 2010. Her first sentence: “Few would dispute that
the immediate cause of the French Revolution was the impending financial bankruptcy of the
royal government” (p. 37).
129
E. N. White, op. cit., 242; Doyle, W., Origins of the French Revolution (3rd ed.). Oxford
University Press, 1999.
130
The National Convention combined legislative and executive functions and its rule
dominated the early years of the French Revolution.
138 G. TEEPLE

insufficient to have the revenues match the expenditures of the French

Republic.
By 1793, in order to produce sufficient revenue, the new government
introduced coercive measures (the so-called Terror) to extract more taxes
from the wealthy who widely practiced tax evasion and were very reluctant
to share in the burden of state finances. In this short-lived period, the
government used political means, including the guillotine, to intimidate,
but the sanctity of private property declared in the new constitutions was
never challenged,131 and so recalcitrant class and stratified material inter-
ests tied to political power remained largely in place.
Under the Directory (1795–1799), with the revenue increases not real-
ized, the government again took the revolution to war in Europe antici-
pating the extraction of war tribute. The French armies first marched on
the Netherlands in 1795, then northern Italy in 1796, Austria by extor-
tion and Venice and papal states in 1797, and Switzerland and Malta and
Egypt in 1798. All together they produced many millions of livres, but still
not enough to offset the expenditures of war and the French state.
A partial default of the state debt was proposed in 1797 and later
adopted in order to do what almost ten years of war and internal conflict
had failed to do, namely, to solve the fiscal deficit. New direct and indirect
taxes and a reorganization of tax collection were also instituted and gradu-
ally tax revenues began to improve—as Napoleon organized his coup in
1799 (the 18th Brumaire).
The Kingdom of Italy: 1861. In the 1861 Constitution of the Kingdom
of Italy there is a clause that reads: “The Public Debt is guaranteed. Any
engagement of the State towards its creditors is inviolable.”132 Here was
the heart of the creation of the Italian state: the guarantee that it will repay
its newly restructured national debt. The formation of the nation rested
on the amalgamation of the debts of several small political units into the
national debt; war debts from past conflicts were also assumed by the new
central government; and new debts were made possible with new central
taxation powers and the constitutional guarantee of the debt for railway

131
A. Mathiez, ‘A Realistic Necessity,’ in F. A. Kafker and J. M. Laux (eds.), The French
Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations, New York: Random House, 1968: 232. (229–234).
132
M. Ferraris, ‘The Public Debt of Italy,’ The North American Review, Vol. 175. No. 550,
September 1902: 423. (423–432). Part of the story of Italian unity and public debt is sum-
marized in R.E. Cameron, “French Finance and Italian Unity: The Cavourian Decade,”
American Historical Review, Vol. 62, No. 3, April 1957 (552–569).
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 139

and other infrastructure developments.133 Ostensibly, they were to be

employed to develop the much-needed infrastructure of an undeveloped
nation, especially in the south, but such development had to wait for a few
decades more.
The Dominion of Canada: 1867. The formation of this almost nation in
1867 (its ‘dominion’ status did not confer complete independence from
Britain) stands as a stark example of our argument. It was a product of the
near bankruptcy of the three semi-self-governing colonies of New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (Quebec and
Ontario) in 1867. All three had gone deeply into debt to finance the pri-
vate construction and operation of canals in the 1830s and 1840s, and
railways in the 1850s, but by the 1860s all these projects had largely failed
due to corporate corruption, poor management, and recurring economic
recessions. The governments, however, were left with sizeable debts that
were difficult to service, a fact that concerned the bankers in London who
had advanced the capital, making further borrowing difficult and very
expensive. The ‘solution’ lay in creating another level of government,
which could assume all the debts of the three provinces along with their
tax bases, and so assure the London bankers of the security of their loans.
This negotiated arrangement allowed for more borrowing by the new fed-
eral government to take place given this centralized and larger tax base.134
The provinces were left with reduced taxation powers and negotiable
transfer payments from the federal government. And so, the quasi-­nation
called Canada was born, a product of the negotiated consolidation of
state debts.135

133
R. E. Cameron, ‘French Finance and Italian Unity: The Cavourian Decade,’ The
American Historical Review, Vol. 62, No. 3, Apr. 1957 (552–569). Cameron provides a
summary of the struggle for Italian unity and the public debt.
134
D. Smiley (ed.), The Rowell/Sirois Report/Book1, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,
1963 (1940): 43–47.
135
As signs of its incomplete statehood, it did not have its own national flag until 1965, its
national anthem until 1980, or its own constitution until 1982, which came as a law passed
by the British Parliament agreeing to the request from Canada. The head of state and com-
mander-in-chief of its armed forces remain the British Monarch, the sovereign of a foreign
nation. Canada exists as a standing exposé of the meaning of the ‘nation,’ as a historical
moment in the development of capital, a development also revealed more recently by the
formation of the European Union.
140 G. TEEPLE

What Did These ‘Bourgeois Revolutions’ Mean?

The bourgeois revolutions marked the beginning of ‘nation-building’ in
the modern sense. That is, the whole of the system was more or less
restructured to make it over in the image of marketplace society as the
foundation for the growth of capital. And for this, new institutions had to
be created that embraced, confirmed, and facilitated the many changes
briefly described below.136
On a practical level, these transformations were political acts intended
to eliminate monarchical absolutism and to subordinate the state to the
demands and interests of capital. It was the capture or creation of the state
by capital in order to turn tax revenue and state loans for use in the growth
of private national corporate interests, for the building and maintaining of
national infrastructure, and for the pursuit of wars that were productive
for national corporations, with the prospect of increasing markets and
profits from state financed war production.
This newly asserted accountability of the state took the form of the
supremacy of representative legislative and executive branches of govern-
ment, meaning representative of embodiments of private property, rather
than arbitrary monarchs. Initially, those eligible to vote and be elected
were defined by the size of their assets in private property: in order to
participate politically there was always a property qualification, often scaled
for political offices. These were democracies of the propertied, which
meant that they were mechanisms that allowed for alternations in power
and debates over the disposition of revenue and borrowed funds amongst
the different sectors of competitive capital. Fundamental to state account-
ability, then, was the principle of parliamentary supremacy, not democracy
of the people; there was to be no more borrowing on a monarch’s ‘own
account,’ but now only as approved by the creditors as ‘responsible
government.’
A less evident but most significant change encompassing all the other
changes was the abolition of feudal forms of property and the affirmation
of the primacy of private property. This was the essence of all bourgeois
revolutions. The rights of private property were made preeminent in

136
All of these points apply to the French Revolution, some not in other cases, and the
fewest apply to the United States because the main achievement of the American Revolution
was to remove the restrictions to economic growth arising from its colonial status and the
creation of another level of government. The Thirteen Colonies were born as marketplace
societies and so from the beginning they had political systems reflecting merchant capital;
after the Revolution their constitutions remained by and large as they were before.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 141

constitutions in the form of the rights of ‘man and citizen.’ They declared
an equality of the right of ownership: all possess equal rights attached to
private property. These were the privileges of ownership declared as
rights137 (see Chap. 5). They were the principles that guided the nature of
legislation and the legal order, and that provided the goals for the devel-
opment of state institutions in advancing the conditions for capital
accumulation.
In order to promote the interests of national capital, the new state had
to determine the geographic limits over which the new political power
extended. The territorial boundaries of the domestic and foreign markets
under its jurisdiction had to be determined and defended. The domestic
market, in particular, had to be consolidated with uniform laws, means of
enforcement, judicial procedure, and criminal punishment, and to have an
administrative or bureaucratic existence. Remaining feudal institutions
were abolished; the extensive internal tariffs and tolls were eliminated; a
single system for weights and measures was devised; an official language
was declared; a common currency based on a value reserve was estab-
lished; and the hodge-podge of legal codes was standardized, with patents
developed to protect inventions as private property, contract law to facili-
tate commercial transactions, and laws of incorporation introduced.138 A
stock market was created for trading in stocks and bonds. The rule of law
and the sanctity of the contract, both of which rested on private property,
were made the principles of the system. All the fundamentals of a market
economy that are now taken as givens had to be established. The sway of
capital was consolidated over the whole of society.
Although the colonial system had begun in the mercantilist era, the new
state now began to play a much larger role in assisting the corporate sector
to expand abroad. To defend and extend its sources of raw materials and
markets, the state increased the size of its navy and army, and this became
greatly aided by the employment of the national debt. The significance of
the colonial system was that the bourgeois revolutions and growth of capi-
tal were as much a question of the reach of capital outside of the new
states as they were a question of nation-building within the ‘homeland.’
By the nineteenth century, every major bourgeois state was engaged in

137
Initially, property rights were extended only to “persons,” and only to those possessing
defined amounts of capital.
138
B. Supple, ‘The State and the Industrial Revolution 1700–1914.’ In C. M. Cipolla (ed.)
The Industrial Revolution. London: Collins. 1973: 316–7.
142 G. TEEPLE

conquering new colonial territories for the expansion of their surplus capi-
tal in national dress.
Making private property preeminent put an end to the estates, the
medieval social strata marked by inherited political privilege. The clergy,
nobility, and incipient bourgeoisie (the ‘third estate’) held legal and politi-
cal standing by virtue of their position in feudal society that other classes
and strata did not have. With the revolution their inherited rights and
privileges were abolished, and they were transformed into modern social
classes defined by social and economic differences that possessed no for-
mal political significance. For modern social strata and classes, differences
are based on wealth, education, and ownership of the means of produc-
tion, not on inherited rights.
The dominance of private property also resolved society into two sepa-
rate spheres: civil society and the state, or the private and the public, or the
economic and the political.139 By civil society,140 we mean the realm of
economic activity, which is dominated by the corporate sector, but all
other social institutions not part of the state would also be included here,
such as the trade unions, family, church, clubs, and so on. The concept can
be understood as society as marketplace, defined by private property, in
which there are no inherited or formal privileges except those attached to
wealth, no bonds except those stemming from the cash nexus (contract),
and in which the rights of private property are the principle of social inter-
course. The state, by contrast, becomes the sole embodiment of the whole,
the institutional incorporation of the rules of private property relations as
a coherent set, unlike in feudal society in which the church and nobility,
and even some chartered companies, could claim to embody aspects of the
whole, or alternate embodiments of it, subordinate to or in conflict with
the absolute monarch. This separation, then, meant that these revolutions
ushered in the first modern nations to become completely political: the
whole (the state) and the parts (civil society) were dissociated into spheres
of their own, albeit mutually interdependent.
With this separation, religion, or institutionalized spirit, which in the
form of the Roman Catholic Church had long laid claim to embody the
139
The reason lies in the character of civil society: as an amalgam of humans as isolated
atoms of private property, it cannot provide the integrity necessary for a communal system,
and so the necessity for the state, which embodies the rules and regulations of private prop-
erty and enforces them to maintain a functioning marketplace as a social unit.
140
As noted in Chap. 3, the meaning of ‘civil society’ throughout this essay is the original
one as used above.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 143

whole,141 was unceremoniously relegated to the sphere of civil society. In

a marketplace society, in which private property has dethroned the mon-
arch, there can be only one such formal embodiment of the whole. Instead
of the Church’s claim to be the temporal voice of god over all, now the
institutions of private property, as the essence of the rule of law to which
all were subordinate, became the sole embodiment of the whole. Because
the bourgeois state declared the freedom of religion, thought, and con-
science, all of which were anathema to the Church, and abolished its privi-
leges, the Church hierarchy opposed the coming of democracy, just as it
was later to oppose socialism because it too claimed to represent the whole
as a genuine unity of the people. Its hierarchy was particularly opposed to
the assertion in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen that law
was the expression of the ‘general will,’ without divine or consecrated
origins, and that citizens could debate and vote on laws undermining
Church authority.142 The Church became merely one of several religions,
other sub-units, and special interests in civil society, a condition now con-
sidered characteristic of modern liberal democracy.
The separation of the state and civil society produced the abiding politi-
cal point of view that is characteristic of modern liberal democracy. It is a
perspective that assumes the normalcy of a political society, a society
divided between the public and the private, or the whole and the parts,
and life lived as an atomized embodiment of private property. The conse-
quent perception of success and failure in civil society, then, is understood
as the product of individual qualities and not social, political, or economic
structures. The dichotomies of wealth and poverty, high salaries and low
wages, health and sickness, high and low status, and so on, are seen as
questions of private and individual relations in civil society and not as out-
comes of the very organization of the system itself, with their source lying
in the reduction of human relations to those of private property and in

141
And still does, although less convincingly since the Reformation and even less so since
the late nineteenth century. According to Gierke, the church saw itself as the one true repre-
sentative of God on earth: “If Mankind be only one, and if there can be but one State that
comprises all Mankind, that State can be no other than the Church that God Himself has
founded, and all temporal lordship can be valid only in so far as it is part and parcel of the
Church.” O. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958
(1906): 10–11.
142
A. Aulard, The French Revolution: A Political History, 1789–1804, Vol. IV, New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910: 29–30, 54.
144 G. TEEPLE

privileges belonging to those owning the means of production. The role

of the state is understood to be limited more or less to the everyday regu-
lation of contractual relations and, when necessary, to crises stemming
from the inequalities of marketplace society. As long as the separation of
civil society and the state is assumed to be normal and natural, it is very
difficult to see the impact of structural social and economic problems as
anything but a question of individual qualities and relations. Social prob-
lems are perceived as personal and individual.143
The bourgeois revolutions also changed the nature of state debt. Always
one of most important means for raising capital and for transferring wealth
from one class to another, under absolute monarchy it was used largely to
fight feudal wars of territorial consolidation or succession, among other
non-productive expenditures. Given the arbitrariness of absolutism, these
loans were not always honoured: the principles of feudal absolutism and of
commercial rule of law were not compatible. Under the government of
capital, the state debt as feudal fief controlled by a monarch became the
national debt, which would be used productively to finance the building
of infrastructure, for subsidies to national corporations, and for war, but
war for the expansion of commercial interests, not dynastic rivalries.
Above all, the debt would be guaranteed by governments representa-
tive of the corporations from which they borrowed the capital, on the
basis of a tax base of citizenry from which the debt would be repaid via
taxes. With absolutism abolished, the rule of law established, and the sanc-
tity of private property assured, the new national debt became a significant
lever of control over the state by sectors of capital, resting on the principles
of commerce. Public debt and responsible government provided a much
more reliable way to finance war, not to mention that it also signalled the
beginning of the modern system of taxation as source of debt manage-
ment and revenue extraction, which in turn also advanced the rationale for
an extension of the right to vote and be elected.
The bourgeois revolutions as nation-building also necessitated the con-
scious making of a national identity. These transformations produced a
separation of state and civil society, and the latter has been but a market-
place society that had destroyed previously existing communities that

143
This notion of the ‘political point of view,’ i.e., that our ‘personal’ problems are really a
product of the reduction of the social to the contractual, was a revelation in the discipline of
sociology. See: C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, New York: Grove Press Inc., 1959.
For Marx’s analysis of the political point of view, see: K. Marx, ‘Critical Marginal Notes on
the Article “The King of Prussia and Social Reform”,’ MECW 3, London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1975:197–201.
 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN STATE OR THE TRANSITION… 145

retained a degree of unity of the whole and parts. The marketplace, how-
ever, has been a social unit without bonds other than commercial or eco-
nomic contracts. Similarly, Catholic doctrines and practices had long
fostered the disintegration of the bonds of family, tribe, region, and lan-
guage in favour of a belief in and link with the ‘One True God in spirit and
truth’144 and membership in the Church that represented this god. Later
Protestant beliefs confirmed the isolation of the individual in the market-
place as one’s natural normal state of being.145
For the new capitalist state, however, there was a need for a tax base, for
military service, for the legitimacy of a government that acted in the name
of the people, and for a sense of belonging to this social unit that had no
intrinsic unifying elements. What is more, a national identity was needed
to engage the national working classes as part of colonial expansion of the
‘mother’ country, and to counter the naturally evolving identity of
working-­class interests (the majority) that could not be realized within the
system146 and so stood as the interests belonging to the ‘dangerous’ class.
Hence, the significance of the creation of a nationality, a people, with a
unifying narrative was self-evident. The conscious invention of a national
flags and anthems, official languages or dialects objectified in a formal
grammar, and manufactured national myths were necessities of the bour-
geois revolutions.147
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the relative success of
these bourgeois revolutions promoted the rapid growth of capital across
Europe and North America, albeit not at the same time. But by the late
eighteenth century, another class was growing along with the merchant
classes: the incipient working class. As a product of the decay of feudal
relations and growing capital, it was demanding a voice in this state that
had made its promises in the language of universalism—all humans are
born equal, etc., etc.—yet denied a political voice to the working class that
produced the wealth. To give it a political voice, however, was to give
legislative power to the class that was and was not part of the system: it was
born to the system, but the point of the system was not to benefit but to

144
L. Sturzo, Church and State, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962: 21.
145
M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958: see especially Chapter V.
146
Except in limited ways, i.e., as begrudging reforms, always subject to retrenchment.
147
Anderson, B., Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 2006; See also: I. Wallerstein,
‘The Construction of Peoplehood,’ (71–85), and E. Balibar, ‘The Nation Form,’ (86–106),
and in E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, London: Verso, 1991.
146 G. TEEPLE

exploit it. Caught between an understanding of how wealth was produced

and working class demands for political participation, the representatives
of capital had to begin to make political concessions. This contradiction
between a political system structured to benefit capital and demands for
participation in it by productive classes that did not benefit became an
abiding political dilemma to the present day. To put it another way, the
problem for capital has been to maintain control over the state and yet
convince labour by means of minimal concessions and universal suffrage
that it is a full participant, without giving the game away. This is the politi-
cal dilemma that arose with the bourgeois revolutions. This is the compro-
mise or the contradiction that defines liberal democracy.

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* Some of the Key Texts in the Marxist Debates

Dobb, M., Studies in the Development of Capitalism, New York: International
Publishers, (1947b)1968; Hilton, R., The Transition. From Feudalism to
Capitalism, London: NLB, 1976; Hilton, R., Class Conflict and the Crisis of
Feudalism, London: Verso, 1985; Hilton, R. Bondmen Made Free, London:
Methuen, 1977. Brenner, R., ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: a
Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,’ New Left Review, No. 104, London: July–
August 1977; Brenner R., ‘Dobbs on the Transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism,’ Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1978; T.H. Ashton and
C.H.E. Philpin (eds.), The Brenner Debate, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 2009 (1985); Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State. London:
New Left Books, 1974: and Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London:
New Left Books, 1974. Not to mention many continuing critiques, for e.g.,
R. Duchesne, ‘The French Revolution as a Bourgeois Revolution: A Critique
of the Revisionists,’ Science and Society, Vol. 54, No. 3, 1990 (288–320);
Lachmann, R., ‘Feudal Elite Conflict and the Origins of English Capitalism,’ in
Politics and Society, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1985; Lachmann, R. ‘Review of Lineages of
the Absolutist State by Perry Anderson,’ in Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 25. No.
1 Spring 2002; H. Heller, The Birth of Capitalism, London: Pluto Press, 2011.

Some of the Key Texts in the Non-Marxist Discussions

These discussions might be said to have begun in the early twentieth century in
Austria and Germany, but their modern iteration begins in the late 1980s.

Contemporary Non-Marxist Discussions

A seminal article at the outset of the current non-Marxist research: North,
D. C. and B. R. Weingast, ‘Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of
Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,’ The
Journal of Economic History, Vol. 49. No. 4 December 1989b (803–832).
154 G. TEEPLE

A set of conferences between 1989 and 1992 on ‘the origin of the modern state’
resulted in seven edited books under the rubric ‘The Origin of the Modern
State in Europe, 13th to 18th Centuries,’ and published by Oxford University
Press. The editors and titles can be found in Oxford Bibliographies Online: see:
www.oxfordbibliograhies.com: “Fiscal-Military State”, “Warfare and Military
Organizations”, and “War and Trade”. For our purposes, the most valuable of
these texts is: Bonny, R. (ed.) Economic Systems and State Finance, New York:
Clarendon Press, 1995. See also: Bonny, R. (ed.) The Rise of the Fiscal State in
Europe, c. 1200–1815. 1999. Oxford Scholarship Online, October 2011, for a
short description and bibliography of research in late twentieth century on the
‘Origins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th–18th Centuries.’
Similar work has continued into the twenty-first century, see for example: B. Yun-­
Casalilla, P. K. O’Brien, with F. C. Comin (eds.), The Rise of Fiscal States: A
Global History, 1580–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

German Debates, in Translation, on the Liberal Democratic State

in Early 20th Century

Arato, A. and E. Gebhardt (eds.), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, New York:
Continuum, 1982.
Bottomore, T. and P. Goode (eds.), Austro-Marxism, Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1978.
Kirchheimer, O., and F. Neumann, Social Democracy and Rule of Law, London:
Allen and Unwin, 1987. (K. Tribe, editor).
Kirchheimer, O., ‘The “Rechtsstaat” as Magic Wall,’ in K. H. Wolff and B. Moore
Jr. (eds.), The Critical Spirit: Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse, Boston:
Beacon Press 1968.
Neumann, F., The Democratic and Authoritarian State, London: The Free
Press, 1957
Neumann, F., The Rule of Law: Political Theory and the Legal System in Modern
Society.
Schmitt, C., The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
Schmitt, C. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT
Press, 1988
Sturmthal, A., The Tragedy of European Labour 1918–1939. London: Victor
Gollancz, 1944.
Fraenkel, E., The Dual State: a contribution to the theory of dictatorship. Oxford
University Press, 2018.
 CHAPTER 5

Human Rights and Private Property

The bourgeois revolutions, from the late sixteenth to the nineteenth cen-
tury, were the political expressions of commercial interests coming to pre-
vail over feudal forms of rule. They represented the triumph of the market
over the absolutist state, or the market that outgrew its symbiotic relation
with this culminating institution of feudalism whose revenues increasingly
depended on commerce. At the heart of these revolutions, then, was the
abolition of the large array of feudal property forms—written and unwrit-
ten rights and privileges of all sorts attached to estates and official appoint-
ments—and in their place a single prevailing form of property, private
property, was established.1
Private property,2 as opposed to feudal property, professed no political
privileges and came to define the main relations of, and participants in,
civil society. The early marketplace of the feudal era comprised a world of
individual contracts3 initially regulated by spontaneous self-oversight, as in

1
Except where this had already happened, as in the American Thirteen Colonies.
2
See the addendum at the end of the Chapter Three for a short definition of property. For
an extended critical analysis of human rights, see G. Teeple, The Riddle of Human Rights,
Toronto: Garamond Press, 2005. For a review of Marx’s position on human rights, see:
G. Teeple, ‘Marx on Human Rights,’ in D.P. Forsythe (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of
Human Rights, Volume 3, Oxford University Press, 2009 (466–476).
3
Contractual relations are transfers of rights to an object or service in exchange for the
rights to another.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 155

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_5
156 G. TEEPLE

the “Law Merchant” with its associated “courts” and penalties.4 As the
market came to be the chief source of state revenues and its principles to
define the main productive activities, its regulation needed to be formal-
ized. Because the market is an arena of competition, however, it is unable
to regulate itself in a neutral manner, and so the regulation and defence of
private property became in effect the rationale of the modern state. While
this process had begun under the rising absolutist states by the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, it was always encumbered with persisting feudal
privilege and arbitrariness. The revolutions abolished these hindrances,
and the principal function of the modern state became the institutionaliza-
tion of the principles and practices of the marketplace as ‘public affairs.’

The Bourgeois Revolutions and Private Property

The coming of the modern state, or the bourgeois revolutions, repre-
sented the institutionalization of private property as the preeminent char-
acteristic of the market that defined the entire social system. Among its
first acts, then, was the formal acknowledgement of this foundation.5
Private property was the premise of the state that was recognized in the
declarations of individual rights as elemental, proclamations consecrating
the basis of the state as the solitary, self-seeking person of the marketplace.
These ‘bills of rights’ were nothing more than the modern state sanction-
ing the principles of private property as its presupposition. The ‘rights of
man and citizen’ or ‘human rights’ were but the rights of the individual as
the personification of private property.
Given the semi-feudal context of these revolutions, belief in the divine
right of kings and loyalty to monarchs as the incarnation of national sov-
ereignty remained widespread. The emerging new world, however, rested
on the primacy of private property or the rights of the sovereign individ-
ual, and so it required theoretical justification well beyond mere assertions
and institutionalization.6 Private property had to be sanctified in a way to
make all the laws, legal decisions, punishments, and structural inequalities

4
See: J. H. Baker, ‘The Law Merchant and the Common Law before 1700,’ The Cambridge
Law Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2, 1979 (295–322); P. R. Milgram, D. C. North, and
B. R. Weingast, ‘The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private
Judges, and the Champagne Fairs,’ Economics and Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1990 (1–23).
5
K. Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question,’ MECW Vol. 3, London: Lawrence and Wishart,
1975: 167.
6
C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, op. cit., p. 269.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 157

that followed as its consequences appear justified, grounded in absolutes.

The rights, claims, and entitlements associated with private property had
to be rationalized as inviolate, irrevocable, unalterable, and unquestion-
able as the foundation of the state’s authority.
The rationalization was formulated in modernized theories of natural
law and the social contract, resurrected from their first appearance in mar-
ketplace societies of antiquity.7 These theories conjured up a vision of
humans born free with inherent, equal, inalienable, individual rights, and
the notion of a contract struck between these “free-born” and a “Man” or
an “Assembly of men,” as Hobbes put it,8 who would become their “sov-
ereign” yet respect these rights. Such theories appeared in the first bour-
geois constitutions as the rationalization of the rights of the marketplace
and a ruler made accountable to those holding them. They claimed the
origin of private property to be the natural rights belonging to an imag-
ined atomized human living in a ‘state of nature’ and so they obscured the
real origin in the history of trade and commerce.
The Dutch were among the first to use such a justification in their
Declaration of Independence (the Act of Abjuration of 1581) in referring
to the need to defend “the law of nature … for the defense of liberty,”
against a “prince” who had sought “opportunities to infringe their ancient
customs and privileges.”9 The English Parliament in the Bill of Rights of
1689 similarly made its case by listing the violations by James II and, then,
spelled out the many ‘freedoms’ held by the English that future monarchs
were obliged to respect.10 Both the Dutch and English documents greatly
influenced the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the
Bill of Rights in 1789. Like the Dutch, the American rebels deposed a
monarch but placed in their constitution restrictions on the elected execu-
tive like those imposed by the Dutch and to a similar extent by the English
on their monarch. In turn, the several French constitutions that followed
the revolution of 1789 were influenced by these precedents: the accompa-
nying different versions of the ‘Rights of Man and Citizen’ all contained
similar references to natural rights and a social contract obliging a

7
J. W. Gough, The Social Contract, London: Clarendon Press, 1963 (1936).
8
Ibid., 107; see also T. Hobbes, Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976: p. 227.
9
Dutch Independence: Act of Abjuration 1581
[https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/dutch_independence_1581.html].
10
J. W. Gough, Fundamental Law in English Constitutional History, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1961: 1.
158 G. TEEPLE

monarch or an elected executive (after the execution of Louis XVI in

1793) to uphold these rights.
Although these declarations spanned more than 200 years, they shared
these references to exclusive individual rights defined as inherent and
rationalized as necessary to prevent the recurrence of violations of
the social contract between a ruler and subject individuals holding these
rights. In each case, the prevailing revolutionary forces claimed that the
violation of natural rights was the justification for overthrowing absolute
monarchs and establishing the primacy of the new property regime based
on these supposedly inherent individual rights. This vision of natural law
and the violated social contract resonated well in the era of mercantilism
marked by petty commodity producers and the ascendant market in the
face of feudal absolutism. And they served convincingly to justify the mod-
ern state as the regulator of the market and the market as overseer of the
state.11 This new reciprocal relation between market and state was the
essence of the bourgeois revolutions.

Private Property and Social Relations

Because private property came to characterize these social formations and
to prevail as the basis of most social relations, it implied changes to cus-
toms, traditions, values, beliefs, morality, and manners. Every aspect of
social life began to mirror the contractual relations that typify civil society
as the sphere of transfers of exclusive rights. Private property became the
foundation of this new way of life, and hence the content of the socializa-
tion process.12 Contract, or the exchange of exclusive rights, came to
define the way members of marketplace society interacted with each other

11
This point was well-stated in the 1793 draft of the French Constitution: “…to set forth
these sacred and inalienable rights in a solemn declaration, in order that all citizens, being
able constantly to compare the acts of government with the aim of every social institution,
may never permit themselves to be oppressed…, in order that the people may always have
before their eyes the bases of their liberty..., the magistrate the guide to his duties, the legisla-
tor the object of his mission.” J. H Stewart, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution,
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951: 455.
12
This transformed way of life was a significant part of the revolutionary nature of these
bourgeois revolutions, especially in France, but not so much where private property prevailed
before the revolution, as in the American Thirteen Colonies, or where it had come over time
to define certain classes and strata as in the Netherlands and England, but less so in France.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 159

and the material world; everything came to be seen and treated through
the medium of private property—a historically specific property form.13
If a particular form of property is characteristic of every mode of
production,14 private property is the defining form of social relations in
commodity-producing or marketplace societies. And so, while the origins
of natural law and the social contract are cast into a mythical timeless past,
they remain the defining folklore of commodity-producing societies, and,
at least in principle, contract and exclusive rights do reflect existing rela-
tions. Pre-commodity social formations also have their own myths explain-
ing the origins of human beings as their particular selves. All social
formations see themselves as what it means to be human, and in this,
marketplace societies are no different. To think otherwise requires one to
step outside one’s socialization, that is, what one is; and while this is pos-
sible, it is difficult; and it is not in the interests of those whose positions
exist to defend and perpetuate the structure of that social system.
All founding myths envisage community members to be born with the
social characteristics that are in effect the product of their socialization. All
humans are socialized by a given set of property relations, the particular
set of rights that defines their social system. It follows that humans con-
sider their own social systems to be the very definition of what it means to
be human. Like fish in water, humans cannot easily comprehend the social
milieu or property form that defines their particular social relations because
they are the two sides of a coin: the whole (property relations) and the
parts (human constituents) are mirrors of each other. For this reason, all
social formations have understood their own property relations, their own
particular social selves, as human beings pure and simple.15 In market-
place societies, members are socialized to see their atomized selves as the
quintessential human, the human as if simply the embodiment of exclusive
individual rights.

13
French constitutions of the revolutionary period (1789–1795) proclaimed private prop-
erty as the one and only form of property. The English had mostly abolished feudal land-
holding in favour of private property in 1660 with the Tenures Abolition Act.
14
By mode of production, we use Marx’s term as the combination of the forces and relations
of production; these relations are always expressed as property forms, that is, rights, claims,
and entitlements to the use of the social product.
15
There is, of course, no such thing as the human being pure and simple; there are only
humans socialized as reflections of the particular property relations that characterize their
social formation. From this it follows that there can be no human rights as if essentially human.
160 G. TEEPLE

Society as marketplace is, nevertheless, qualitatively different from non-­

market social formations because it is based on the production and
exchange of commodities, of labour and the products of labour as private
property, not on direct human relations. Commodity producers do not
produce for their own needs or that of their families or their communities,
but for exchange. To put it another way, it is the exchange of products in
the market that determines the general social allocation of resources and
division of labour, rather than custom and tradition or the rational deci-
sions of human beings. To paraphrase Marx, social relations in a market-
place society become relations between things, commodities, and these
relations move and develop in ways “apart from and outside the
producers,”16 beyond the control of their producers as the product of the
laws of value and of supply and demand.17 This is the source of what
appears as rationality in the market: humans whose behaviour is framed as
producers, owners, and sellers of commodities, by calculation of self-­
interest and contract. In short, in a marketplace society the production
and exchange of goods and services take place independently of the con-
trol of its members, according to economic laws associated with commod-
ity production18 and not directly according to human needs or interests.

Personification of Commodities: Humans as ‘Persons’

As the production and exchange of commodities came to prevail as social
relations, the producers and owners became the personifications of the
commodified components of this system.19 Participation in commodity-
producing society was defined by the individual’s possessions, even if they

16
K. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, New York: Vintage 1977: 164.
17
Commodities exchange in proportion to their embodied socially necessary labour time,
that is, their value. But vacillations in supply and demand will determine what is socially
necessary. Ibid., Chapter One.
18
This is a reference to the laws of supply and demand, accumulation, and value.
19
Marx writes: “Here [in the market] the persons exist for one another merely as represen-
tatives and hence owners, of commodities.” And he continues: “…the characters who appear
on the economic stage are merely personifications of economic relations; it is as bearers of
these economic relations that they come into contact with each other.” Ibid., 178–9. In
Volumes One and Three of Capital, there are many references by Marx to humans as “per-
sonifications” of capital. Here is another: “The principal agents of this mode of production
itself, the capitalist and the wage-labourer, are as such simply embodiments and personifica-
tions of capital and wage-labour….” Capital, Volume Three, London: Penguin Books, 1991
(1981): 1019–1020.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 161

amount only to self-proprietorship. Socialization, then, has been to learn

to behave, think, and desire as reflections of commodity relations, of one’s
assets and capacities as private property. It followed that participants in
these contractual relations came to be defined as persons, that is, legally
prescribed entities as private possessors of a set of assets. Persons
are humans defined by the legal status of holding private rights, and this
became the particular view of humans as socialized by a marketplace
society.20
What was proclaimed by these new governments in their declarations of
rights, then, was the view specific to a marketplace society of what it meant
to be a human. And this human was the personification of alienable assets,
defined in law as a person. Members of these societies would be socialized
to understand themselves and others as persons, and their relations as con-
tracts, which amount to the transfer of private rights to things in exchange
for private rights to others. These were rights, to be sure, but not human
rights as if they belonged to an imagined essential or universal human;
they were rather the rights, claims, and entitlements attached to private
property that defined the marketplace. As commercial relations spread
across the world, so too did this vision and reality of the human with the
values and morality of the market.21
With the spread of commodity production and exchange, beginning in
antiquity, there arose a certain commonality amongst trading peoples
from diverse cultures, namely, the assumption of private property in their
goods and services brought to market. Different cultures came to treat
each other with a degree of common understanding—as personifications
of private property. This did not mean, however, that they were able to
stand entirely outside their socialization in a particular property form, but
it meant that they embraced a partial commonality across cultures in so far
as commodity production and contracts characterized alien social systems.
In the marketplace, the human as representative of the commodity was
assumed to be normal, albeit also competitive, self-seeking, antagonistic,
egocentric, and so on. Because these rights were possessed by the solitary

20
See: https://thelawdictionary.org/legal-entity/; also: V. Kurki, A Theory of Legal
Personhood, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019: 83ff; and V. Kurki, ‘Legal Person,’ in
M. Sellars, S. Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 2020.
21
For a poignant contrast between First Nations communal property and European mar-
ketplace values and morality in North America, a contrast well understood by First Nations,
but merely exploited by Europeans, see T. C. McLuhan (ed.), Touch the Earth, London:
Abacus, 1973.
162 G. TEEPLE

individual and marked all trade relations, they were easily assumed to be
elemental and therefore natural and inherent; and as they spread with the
growth of trade, they could also be seen as universal. Although the rights
of private property were increasingly a common reality across cultures, the
flaw in these assumptions was that they were taken as inherently human,22
as universal and absolute, as opposed to simply the rights that went hand-­
in-­hand with the expansion of commodity production and exchange.

The Varied Origins of Human Rights

The crowning development of these rights came after World War II with
the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which, with
its two accompanying Covenants23 in 1976, comprise what is taken to be
the International Bill of Rights. These sets of rights are justified with the
same imagery of fictitious inherent rights and a broken social contract: the
first two paragraphs of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration refer to
“inalienable” rights and their violation. The third paragraph seals the
implied argument that to prevent “rebellion against tyranny and oppres-
sion…human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” In other
words, the upholding of human rights, or the principles of private prop-
erty and market relations (the contract), comprises the key principle of
liberal democracy, and the defence of the rule of law is the means. No
allowance, however, is made for the possibility that the development of
private property itself could be the reason for rebellion by producing
extremes of wealth and power and accompanying oppression, or in the
form of global corporate monopolies and oligopolies no longer in need of
political structures intended to accommodate competitive national capital
with its generalized individual rights. The mythical origins of human rights
22
To be the product of socialization is the only inherent quality of being human, but this
is the form not the content of socialization. A real existing human can only be the product
of socialization with a particular content, which carries the idiosyncrasies of a mode of pro-
duction and time and place. Because marketplace societies have become pervasive and pre-
eminent, they appear to be quintessentially human, but they remain a historical particular
that has come to prevail. The marketplace defines its members as relations between atomized
competitive embodiments of private property; we are socialized to be anti-social in a society
in which the end belies the means.
23
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), both binding on the signa-
tories came into force in 1976—almost 30 years after the non-binding Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 163

as natural law, then, were reasserted in the mid-twentieth century as the

rationale for the modern version of human rights as the foundation of
liberal democracy and its expansion in the post-colonial era.
While such myths have their ideological purposes, they cannot be
understood as having any relation to the real history of human rights.
These sets of rights, commonly divided into civil, political, and social
rights, and the subsets within them,24 have a somewhat different history,
origins with no relation to the fictional apologia of a social contract or
solution to the so-called Hobbesian problem. Civil rights arise out of the
spread of contractual relations, political rights appear with the separation
of the whole and the parts, and social rights are a response to social unrest
on the part of classes with no stake in the system. They all come with the
progressive expansion of market relations into every aspect of life; they are
the objectification or institutionalization of our relations in a marketplace
society with respect to shares of the total social product. For our purposes,
we will only touch upon these histories to establish their links to private
property and the marketplace society.
Civil rights. These rights have the longest history, and they can be
traced back to the earliest markets of antiquity. In general, they deal with
ownership, contracts, liability, private property, paternity and inheritance,
and criminal acts largely seen as violations of private property.25 Because
the market is the sphere of competition between commodity owners, the
rules have to be institutionalized and therefore codified or objectified. But
over their long history, from the time of Hammurabi early in the second
millennium BCE to the Justinian Code of 533 CE and to the Napoleonic
Code of 1804, there is a remarkable similarity that rests on the fact that at

24
T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, London: Pluto Press, 1992.
25
See, for example, Hammurabi’s Code (c. eighteenth century BCE), which served widely
as a guide for other codes in the ancient world, across many cultures and over many centuries
because of the commonality of the marketplace. Given its ‘finished’ quality, it was likely the
product of even earlier similar codes now lost to time. See: C. H. W. Johns (translator), The
Oldest Code of Law in the World, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1926. Also: G. Barjamoviv, et al.,
‘Trade, Merchants, and the Lost Cities of the Bronze Age,’ The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 2019, 1455–1503.
164 G. TEEPLE

the centre of these codes lies private property.26 The majority of the arti-
cles in the Napoleonic Code pertain to civil rights.27
In the UDHR, civil rights constitute the largest share of the 30 articles
that comprise the text (arguably Articles 3–20). They assume the human
to be ‘economic man,’ separate from social relations other than the con-
tractual, and exercising these rights in opposition to each other or the
state. Humans defined as social beings, whose relations are non-­contractual
and unmediated as found in kinship, friendship, love, honour, fidelity, and
a selfless consideration of others, are not to be found in the text.
Political rights. These rights in the UDHR, depending on the defini-
tion, are bound up in several articles, but for our purposes they amount
principally to the right to be elected, to vote, and to petition the govern-
ment and the rule of law. Historically, they initially represented the rights
demanded by those with assets sufficient to demonstrate a stake in the
system and to insist on a voice in public policy.28 Later, such demands
came from the productive classes, and the property qualification was even-
tually reduced to the minimum, the asset in the form of one’s labour-­
power, human capital.
Political rights have only ever been extended to members of society as
embodiments of private property, as persons. They have always been rights
tied to the tenure of some exclusive form of property, implying a sort of
allegiance or bond to the marketplace. In ancient Athenian democracy,
political rights were connected to citizenship, a legal status attached to a

26
When the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern Empire, where Justinian ruled, con-
tinued to trade throughout the Near East; and when Islam arose and oversaw an even wider
trading empire, Islamic property law developed in concert. See: H. Yanagihashi, A History of
Early Islamic Law of Property, Leiden/Boston: Brill 2004. See also: M. Hudson and
C. Wunsch (eds.), Creating Economic Order: recording keeping, standardization, and the
development of accounting in the ancient Near East, International Scholars Conference on
Ancient Near East Economies, 2000.
27
Napoleon is said to have considered this codification of the law of France as his crowning
achievement. The Code was very influential in the development of legal codes in Europe and
the United States in the early nineteenth century. See: ‘The Code Napoleon,’ Constitutional
Rights Foundation [www.crf-usa.org].
28
See the Magna Carta as one of the earliest expressions of political rights. Aside from the
prohibitions of unilateral action by the Crown, there were protections for barons and other
land holders, such as habeas corpus, due process, prohibition of torture, and trial by jury—
key elements of the rule of law. See: A. Shoenberger, “Magna Carta, the Charter of the
Forest, and the Origin of the Jury System,” Nottingham Law Journal, Vol. 24, 2015
(156–162).
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 165

territorial unit under Athenian jurisdiction,29 but the greater the posses-
sions the greater the political rights. Early modern political rights always
had a property qualification attached; in the modern case, these rights
began with the prevalence of the market and royal concessions arising
from the need for monarchs to draw increasing amounts of revenue from
merchant capital. Later with universal suffrage, the property qualification
has remained in the truncated form of the person, or self-proprietorship,
or as one person one vote. Suffrage in the modern era is offered only to
those who are of the age of majority, defined by the right to possess and
enter into contracts as embodiments of private property.
Social rights. Unlike civil and political rights, social rights are counter-
vailing rights; they contradict the underlying principle of the system
because they are not directly attached to the possession of private property
or to the status of person, but rather exist as a constant reminder of the
deficiencies of the marketplace and its inability to reproduce the system
without state assistance to socialize the costs of reproduction. They point
to a set of rights that are necessary for social and political stability, but that
contradict civil and political rights that imply the individual as a self-propri-
etor, as a set of exclusive rights and as solely responsible for the self.
Demand for social rights began to appear the more that the productive
classes were stripped of their means of production and made dependent on
employment, no longer self-sufficient. With the coming of industrial capi-
talism and the rise of the working class, these rights evolved as begrudging
responses by the state and corporate sector to social unrest over the condi-
tions of work and life faced by workers and their families. The chronic
inability to provide for the whole of the productive classes created con-
tinuous social instability, not to mention a critical understanding of capi-
talism, and no uncertain concern on the part of the corporate sector to
maintain social stability and retain and reproduce the working class as its
source of wealth. Here lay the origins and motives for social rights.30

29
P. B. Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997: 126–127. See: P. J. Rhodes, The Greek City States, A Source Book,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1986: 151–165.
30
J. H. Weiss, ‘Origins of the French Welfare State: Poor Relief in the Third Republic,
1871–1914,’ French Historical Studies, Spring 1983, Vol. 13, No. 1 (47–78); S. B. Fay,
‘Bismarck’s Welfare State,’ Current History, Vol. 18, No. 101, January 1950 (1–7); S. B. Fay,
‘German Unemployment Insurance,’ Current History, Vol. 18, No. 102, February 1950
(65–70); S. B. Fay, ‘State Ownership in Germany,’ Current History, Vol. 18, No. 103 March
1950 (129–133).
166 G. TEEPLE

Such rights consist of different forms of state intervention to alleviate

the worst effects of capitalism on the working class by ensuring a minimal
basis for its reproduction. The different national histories of these
rights bear few similarities, except as responses to the effects of unmiti-
gated industrialization. After World War II, however, they developed a
degree of coherence across the industrial nations that was often labelled
the ‘welfare state,’ although they never lost their overall quality of a patch-
work or medley of entitlements whose source of financing was varied and,
in general, always subject to the relative strengths of the organized work-
ing class and corporate sector.
They were responses by governments in the industrial nations to recur-
ring labour unrest, which they sought to address by institutionalizing key
aspects of the reproduction of the working class. There were four main
spheres of state intervention: the labour market for which laws were passed
for minimum wages, unemployment insurance, trade union rights, and so
on; the workplace for which regulations were introduced for health and
safety and employment standards, and collective bargaining; the mainte-
nance of the quality, or human capital, of the labour force for which there
was provided a degree of medical care, education, housing, and provision
of necessities; and the ‘unproductive,’ referring mainly to children, the
disabled, and the elderly, for which there were child and elder-care and an
allocation of benefits and pensions.31 These social reforms were developed
slowly over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reaching their high
point of development in the 1970s, after which, in the early 1980s, their
systematic retrenchment by the state and corporations began.
Despite appearances, these reforms have never been gifts from the state.
The state after all has few resources of its own from which to draw a rev-
enue; rather, these revenues have largely been a redistribution of taxes,
premiums, and deferred income from the working class to the working class.
In other words, they are by and large the socialization of wages and sala-
ries, which has largely freed the corporate sector from providing much of
a share. Nevertheless, it might be said that the corporate sector has had to
contribute a certain share in the form of wages and salaries higher than
their value during the roughly 25 years of the post-World War II era, the
high point of development of the welfare state. These high wages and sala-
ries, however, were compatible with postwar high profits (sufficient to
reinvest) because of the unanticipated historical confluence of several fac-
tors, namely, the enormous expansion of trade and commerce that

31
G. Teeple, The Riddle of Human Rights, op. cit., 13.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 167

accompanied the reconstruction of Europe and the de-colonization of the

European colonial empires, and the consequent increased demand for
labour and the growth of trade unions. Social reforms were also necessary
to curb the wide sympathy for socialism in the light of the prewar misery
of the 1930s Depression, working-class sacrifices in the war, and the prom-
ise the Soviet Union held for workers everywhere as the ‘workers’ state,’
not to mention the inherent social inequalities and instability of capital-
ism, including widespread labour strikes throughout the postwar era.
Social rights, then, have been dependent on the ‘social wage,’ a refer-
ence to that portion of wages and salaries deducted in the form of taxes,
premiums, and deferred income that is redistributed or returned to the
working class by the state in the form of goods and services as social rights
or entitlements.32 Why these social rights expanded after World War II is
in part answered above, but why they have faced decades of cuts in state
transfers and changed legislation after their highpoint of development in
the late 1970s requires an attempt at explanation.
First, social rights—as the state regulated non-market income redistri-
bution of wages and salaries—have been possible only as long as the eco-
nomic circumstances have permitted high wages. But once the confluence
of circumstances that characterized the postwar era had changed in the
1970s, and the resulting high profits that matched the high wages were no
longer possible, the economies of the industrial nations began to stagnate.
If there were to be economic growth, that is, capital accumulation, a high
social wage was no longer considered affordable, meaning wages had to be
lower so that profits could be higher. To this end, neoliberal policies were
introduced in the 1980s in an attempt to restore profitability and put an
end to the stagflation of the previous decade by diminishing social rights.33
Second, although all modern rights were won through class struggle,
those struggles were not all of the same sort. Civil and political rights were
initially won by one propertied class from another, ultimately transform-
ing a legal complex of privileges into a single prevailing form of private
property.34 Social rights by contrast were won by the unpropertied from

32
G. Teeple, Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform, Aurora: Garamond Press,
2000: 44, 48–9.
33
A. Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (Chapter 2);
G. Teeple, Globalization…, ibid., (Chapter 4); see also, Marx, Capital, Volume One,
op. cit. 770.
34
The wealth of monarchs, nobility, and the Church by and large remained after these
revolutions; their feudal powers, however, were eliminated or reduced to the private power
of their wealth.
168 G. TEEPLE

the propertied in a society defined by the accumulation of private prop-

erty, and they represent a different form of property from private property.
They are rights to the socialized ‘social wage.’ That is, rights won by the
working class to address needs that arise from the inherent limitations and
inequalities of a system of private property by means of access to pools of
a portion of wages drawn from taxes, premiums, and deferred income.
Unlike civil and political rights, social rights are not compatible with
the principles of the system; rather they embody countervailing principles
that have been contained and institutionalized; they have co-existed as
compromises but remain irreconcilables. In the development of capital-
ism, the working class has been the creation of capital and capital exists by
what it can extract from the working class—they define and need each
other. The highest development of social rights was reached in the 1970s
when labour and capital were still largely tied to national labour and capi-
tal markets, but once capital was able to transcend its national limits and
employ labour anywhere in the world, the high wages necessary to main-
tain these social rights were no longer necessary with the growth of the
global “relative surplus population” or “industrial reserve army.”35 By the
late twentieth century, the coming end of this mutual reliance on the
nation-state had become increasingly apparent.
Third, these social rights have always been matters of legislation, of
statutes, and so can be expanded or retrenched as a matter of political
policy. There are two points here. One is that civil and political rights, by
contrast, are matters of principle that define the system and are proclaimed
as absolutes in constitutions. Social rights are defined by legislatures and
usually have little or no constitutional guarantee. They are only as exten-
sive as necessary to reproduce the labour-power required by capital and as
demanded and defended by the organized working class. The second is
that the welfare state has always been by and large a national system of
social reforms, but by the 1970s, capital was beginning to be accumulated
at the global level as never before. Global capital demanded ever-freer
access to all national working classes, and so the working classes have grad-
ually lost their political leverage over capital as global and over the state as
neoliberal advocate, a loss reflected in the gradual global decline of the
labour share of GDP.36 The ability to pay high wages from which the social

35
K. Marx, Capital, Vol. One, pp. 790–793. See also: J.B. Foster, R.W. McChesney and
R.J. Jonna, ‘The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism,’ Monthly Review,
November 2011.
36
ILO Global Wage Report 2020–21 [https://www.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/
Campaigns/Wages/globalwagereport#introduction].
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 169

wage was extracted was undermined, and so too, it followed, the fiscal
foundation of the welfare state.
The difference between civil and political rights and social rights was
drawn out by Marx in Capital at the end of his discussion of the struggle
for “a normal working day.” Here, he pointed to the labour contract, a
civil right, by which workers are supposedly free to sell their labour-power
to capitalists; but once employed, workers find that their freedom is trans-
formed into the tyranny of the employer, a civil right held by the new
owner of the labour-power. And so, to prevent the extremes of exploita-
tion in the use of this civil right, there arises the class demand for counter-
vailing rights, in this case, legislated working hours, namely, the Ten Hours
Act. It was an achievement that Marx contrasted with civil rights: “In the
place of the pompous catalogue of the ‘inalienable rights of man’ there
steps the modest Magna Carta of the legally limited working day, which at
last makes clear ‘when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when
his own begins.’”37
Social rights have come a long way since the mid-nineteenth century,
but they remain the countervailing rights of the working class in opposi-
tion to the high-sounding list of civil and political rights found in most
constitutions, and they are under sustained attack by governments every-
where. But how can Marx make such a contrast, and what is his reasoning?
There are a few reasons we can mention here.
First, modern civil and political rights were won in struggles against the
arbitrary absolutism of the crown, nobility, and the church, by classes with
a stake in the system, while social rights were won in struggles against the
absolutism of private property, by classes without a stake. Just as civil and
political rights contradicted feudal absolutism, social rights are at variance
with private property—that is, in principle, although in practice they exist
as institutionalized and contained within legalized limits as continuously
contested compromises.
Second, civil and political rights are proclaimed to be inherent in all and
so deemed universal and absolute, but this supposedly inherent nature is a
matter of fiction, as we have argued. Notwithstanding this folklore of the
market, they are absolute only in principle—in practice they are privileges.
Why? Because they have been distributed only to some, those defined as
persons and citizens, framed by a property qualification, which at different
times excluded workers, women, indigenous peoples, colonial subjects,

37
K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, op. cit., 416.
170 G. TEEPLE

slaves, servants, children, and so on. Although now, after decades of strug-
gle the qualification is largely reduced to the simple asset of one’s labour-­
power, this property restriction remains. And because these rights can only
be exercised by means of one’s assets unequally; if there are no assets,
there is no reality to civil or political rights—they become mere abstrac-
tions. Social rights, by contrast, are in principle accessible to all as required
for social stability and the reproduction of the working class.
Third, there is another dimension to this differential provision of rights,
argued by Marx, and that is the difference between corporate and indi-
vidual civil rights. From the time of their declarations, civil rights were
already marked by this contradiction. To be sure, civil rights provided
guarantees for individuals to work for themselves and benefit from the
products of their own labour, to exist as free farmers, artisans, and petty
merchants—all possessors of private property in the means of production.
Individual civil rights were seen as liberatory in the face of feudal rights.
But the same rights were also, and more significantly, provided to accumu-
lated capital in the form of private corporations such as banks and joint-­
stock and chartered companies that had developed alongside, and were
encouraged by, the rising absolute feudal monarchs.

Corporate Versus Individual Civil Rights: Two

‘Levels’ of Rights
The mercantilist era saw the shift from simple commodity production to
‘manufacturing,’38 and then in the Industrial Revolution (1760–1830) to
machine production in corporate-dominated industrial capitalism.39
During these periods, civil rights were progressively extended to collective
capital in the form of the corporation. It was a natural outcome of a devel-
oped marketplace that the power of collective capital, exercised as civil
rights, proved vastly greater than that belonging to isolated individual

38
The craft form of production subordinated to capital. See Chapter 14 in K. Marx,
Capital, Volume One.
39
This is the distinction that Marx draws out in Capital, Volume One between Parts 2 and
3. In Part 2, he analyses the ‘world’ of commodity exchange in which much of our everyday
life is lived: the marketplace, the sphere of commodity exchange, “a very Eden of the rights
of man,” he called it at the end of Part 2. But this is not the same ‘world’ he analyses in Part
3: the coming of industrial capitalism in which every aspect of social reproduction is subor-
dinated to capital, and the ‘rights of man’ for the individual become subordinate to the rights
of corporations, collective capital.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 171

capitals. It was the former that became the force behind the bourgeois
revolutions or transitions and the raison d’être of the emerging capital-
ist system.
Capitalism, in other words, is not a system of small, petty commodity-­
producing capitals; it is not a system of the self-employed, but a system of
employers and employees, of collective capital organized for investment
on a scale generally beyond the capacity of individual capital investment
and dependent on the use of wage-labour. The corporate form of capital,
moreover, grows by usurping the markets and the labour-power of small
individual forms. Corporate capital and petty commodity producers are in
principle incompatible.40
Individual civil rights, however, characterize everyday life at the level of
consumer goods and services, in the sphere of the marketplace, commod-
ity exchange, and consumption, but not production. For this reason, the
working class—the overwhelming majority—has continued to see indi-
vidual private property as the main principle of their existence through the
sale of labour-power in exchange for wages to buy goods and services to
live. All individual needs are addressed within the bounds of buying and
selling equal value for equal value, the exchange of private rights upheld
by contract law, and the operative principle of the system. What more is
there to see?
What we do not see is the workplace—the sphere encompassing the
production, distribution, and circulation of value—the realm in which
workers do as they are told. And because they have no stake in the corpo-
rations, the need to understand the extent of their operations beyond the
fragmented job as a source of wages or salaries is obviated. The main exer-
cise of rights by the working class is in the marketplace of everyday life, not
the workplace where civil rights are exercised over workers, where they are
the commodity sold and bought, and where their exploitation takes place
and surplus value is extracted.
In the modern nation-state, then, two levels of rights can be seen devel-
oping. On the one hand, there is the marketplace marked by the freedom
to choose amongst commodities defined by capital and commensurate
with income, and by democracy in which persons or individual embodi-
ments of private property are free to choose between the pre-established

40
Marx, Capital, ibid., 776–780; 929. This is not to say that the self-employed and small
businesses do not exist, but that it is private property in the form of large corporations that
prevails.
172 G. TEEPLE

platforms of political parties. The choices of the citizenry as consumers

and citizens, however, are largely predetermined by the corporate sector.
On the other hand, there is the workplace marked by the power of collec-
tive capital to decide the production priorities of the entire system and by
the tyranny of management over purchased labour-power.41 Appearances
matter here: the broad working class exercises its civil rights in the market-
place daily and political rights periodically, and these exercises go far to
obscure the corporate civil rights that prevail in the production and distri-
bution of all commodities, that frame the exploitation of labour, and that
determine political options.
Although civil rights are extended to both individuals and corporations
as legal entities, the ability to exercise these rights is vastly different—one
stands at the centre of the system and in effect eclipses the other. Civil
liberties for individuals, for instance, can only be practised in a meaningful
way through corporate-owned and defined means, such as communica-
tions media, transportation, markets, mass-produced commodities, and so
on. Even the right to work is not a right held by workers but by corpora-
tions, employment being their prerogative.
Civil rights for corporations, then, come to frame all individual rights.
All aspects of social reproduction—food, housing, clothing, medical care,
leisure, energy, education, the military, policing, and finance—are increas-
ingly couched in the ownership rights of corporations. Individual civil
rights, in other words, are now exercised within the forms laid out by
corporate rights. State policy has also become subordinate to corporate
demands.

Another Level of Rights: The Era

of International Law

Capital needed the state at certain stages in its development, first as a part-
ner in the age of mercantilism to develop its colonial and domestic markets
and then as its own instrument beginning with the bourgeois revolutions
to expand these markets and make use of the state debt and associated tax
system. But relations between states as representatives of national capital
pursuing the same goals often led to ruinous wars and, it followed, to
attempts to prevent or mitigate such conflicts, the rise of international

41
See: J. W. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the Labour Process, Toronto:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 173

law.42 A brief survey of the nodal points in the history of international law
will help to explain its development and failure.
The age of mercantilism saw the growth of merchant capital creating
new divisions amongst the feudal states of Europe. During this time, the
nature of war was changing from conflicts of dynastic ambitions to con-
flicts of these ambitions and the demands of capital. Two of these wars, the
Thirty Years War (1618–1648), which engaged much of Europe, and the
Eighty Years War (1568–1648) between the Netherlands and Spain,
proved to be devastating for much of northern Europe. The decades of
destruction made it apparent that war could not solve the conflicts and,
moreover, it prevented the usual revenue stream from the land and its
inhabitants. Here was the main motive for the years-long discussions lead-
ing to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which began the era of interna-
tional law and state’s rights.
It is widely accepted that this treaty marked the emergence of interna-
tional law and the modern state as its main subject.43 It formalized the
rules of diplomacy as a means of conciliation and mediation in disputes, it
asserted the principle of state sovereignty in part to counter conflicting
dynastic claims, and it introduced the idea of the primacy of secular rule to
offset Catholic assertions of hegemonic political and spiritual supremacy.
The treaty indirectly defined the state in modern political terms: it was
to be secular, sovereign, diplomatic in its relations with other states, and

42
In the absence of a single accepted definition of international law, we will use it as a refer-
ence to relations between states, in which the subject is the state and the content is the regu-
lation of inter-state relations, realized in the form of treaties, conventions, pacts, protocols,
accords, etc., whose principles are derived from existing custom, treaties, judicial decisions,
and rules of international organizations. While many non-state organizations (NGOs) play a
role in inter-state relations, we do not include them in this definition; international intergov-
ernmental organizations (IGOs), however, can be included; and the presence or absence of
political rights held by a citizenry is irrelevant. By sovereign rights, we refer to the exercise of
state authority, which is predicated on national corporate rights, or some form of national-
ized capital, or some combination of these two.
International law, then, is not law in a conventional sense, that is, there is no single legiti-
mate authority that creates or enforces it. Instead, the signatures of the parties to the agree-
ment are supposed to agree with and respect the terms. It is usually a product of conflict or
potential conflict between the interests of two or more states, and the signing can be either
voluntary or coerced. States, however, represent national capital and capital has no inherent
ethical standards except ‘buyer beware.’ International law has been respected only as long as
the interests behind the signatures have found it beneficial.
43
L. Gross, “The Peace of Westphalia, 1648–1948,” The American Journal of International
Law. Vol. 42, No. 1, 1948: 20–21. (20–41).
174 G. TEEPLE

the subject of international law, at the centre of which were treaties. These
were all prerequisites for a system of states representing incipient forms of
merchant capital; it was the beginning of the state as representative of col-
lective corporate interests beyond the dynastic ambitions of absolute mon-
archs. It was the modern state taking form in the era of mercantilism and
the mutually beneficial relation between merchant capital and the absolut-
ist state.44
The Peace of Westphalia, however, did not stop wars between states
because it did not address the causes of war. Between the early seventeenth
and the late eighteenth century, the development of capital produced four
bourgeois revolutions—the Dutch, English, American, and French—and
for these new states, war was continual, it was the expression of national
corporations competing with other national capital formations, not to men-
tion dynastic claims and ambitions that were still present until the early
twentieth century. Conflict was the defining characteristic of all these
states, despite the constant attempt to mitigate it through the develop-
ment of international law from 1648 to 1945.
The French Revolution and its subsequent wars from the 1790s to
1815 forcefully brought to the rest of Europe the ideas of republican gov-
ernment and the ideals of private property in the guise of the ‘rights of
man.’ They freed much of Europe from hereditary absolute monarchy,
almost putting an end to the idea of hereditary and proprietary claims to
the state by European monarchs. But the remnants of feudalism, repre-
sented mainly by Britain, Germany, Austria, and Russia defeated
Napoleon’s armies and restored the old order—and brought in the next
development in international law.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815, along with subsequent congresses,
sought to re-establish what Napoleon and the French Revolution had
abolished. Among other things, it raised the ‘principle of legitimacy’ as a
necessary rationalization for the idea of the ‘rightful inheritance’ of state
rights by the European monarchs now restored to their ruling positions
after being deposed by Napoleon. Although the principle of legitimacy
was at the time seen as a doctrine to counter the ideas of the French
Revolution, it also pointed to the need to have ideological justification for
rulers who in fact had no legitimacy, only a claim of patrimony or birth-
right or conquest. With the gradual demise of monarchical rule, the

44
S. Patton, “The Peace of Westphalia and its Affects on International Relations, Diplomacy
and Foreign Policy,” The Histories: Vol. 10: Issue I, Article 5, 2019 (91–99).
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 175

principle of legitimacy became attached to the rights of private property

and as such a defining characteristic of modern liberal democracy. In this
context, however, the principle of legitimacy was used as a doctrine to
counter the implicitly seditious nature of the ‘voices from below,’ the
socialist theories, and the aspirations of the working classes.
The Congress made another addition to international law: the idea of a
‘balance of power’ as a means to forestall war. While it may be assumed
that the practice did mitigate the possibilities of war, conflict was inherent
in capitalist competition. The principle did not address the causes of war
but rather attempted to control inter-state conflict by using the tension of
a counterbalance to offset the inclination to go to war for national corpo-
rate interests. Nevertheless, wars between states big and small defined the
rest of the nineteenth century in Europe, including wars between nascent
capital and decaying feudal rulers and the emerging working class against
established power; and this is not to mention the wars of colonial
expansion.45
The balance of power could provide only temporary respite from war;
it could not contain the competitive expansion of capital in its national
forms. And this competition culminated in the most devastating war yet
fought between nations, World War I. This was the first instance of the
mechanized destruction of human beings. It left Europe in ruins, exhausted
national economies, desecrated their social fabric, and destroyed a genera-
tion. In the end, the ‘victors’ demanded reparations from Germany, which
were impossible to pay and which in part paved the way to the next cata-
clysmic war.46
World War I, however, did result in another acknowledgement that war
between states as embodiments of national capital, however profitable in
the lead-up, could ultimately prove disastrous to all sides. The League of
45
Following Metternich’s repression of uprisings in Italy in the 1820s and 1830s, the idea
of a confederated Europe was over. That is, until the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907,
at which arms limitations, revision of the laws of war, and dispute resolution were again the
subject of conventions by the capitalist nations of Europe.
46
J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1971 (1920). In the final chapter, Keynes recommends a “free trade union” uniting all of
Europe to avoid the renewal of the conditions that produced World War I. He wrote that if
the aim of the Treaty of Paris were to impoverish Central Europe, “Nothing can then delay
for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convul-
sions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing,
and which will destroy, whoever is the victor, the civilization and the progress of our genera-
tion” (268).
176 G. TEEPLE

Nations, established in 1920, was expressly designed to resolve inter-state

disputes through diplomacy and negotiation and by advocating disarma-
ment and ‘collective security.’ But it was ill-fated for several structural
reasons, namely, its decisions required unanimity, it lacked the means to
stop state aggression, and it was without mechanisms to enforce its sanc-
tions. In other words, its structure made it more a deliberative forum than
an actual force for peace. But then peace between the state representatives
of capital could only be hoped for, it could not be as long as capital
remained defined as national. The United States refused to join, Germany
was not allowed to join until 1926 and it left in 1933, and the USSR was
not invited until 1934 and left in 1939.
Once into the Great Depression of the 1930s, capital in its national
dress began to rekindle its protectionist policies and the necessity to
expand at the expense of others. In 1931, Japan invaded China to colonize
Manchuria with secret British concurrence and over the next decade
expanded its control of China; it resigned from the League in 1933. In
1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia to consolidate its Italian East African Empire,
with the agreement of Britain and France (the ‘Hoare-Laval’ pact); it left
the League in 1937. In 1936, the League adopted a British-French-­
sponsored ‘non-interventionist’ position on the Spanish Civil War, a pol-
icy that favoured the fascism of General Franco, supported by Hitler and
Mussolini. In 1938, Germany occupied Austria with the approval of Italy,
France, and Britain (the ‘Munich Pact’), and in the same year invaded
Czech Sudetenland, and then in 1939 it took much of the rest of
Czechoslovakia and Poland. Not to be left out of such territorial expan-
sion, Italy invaded Albania in the same year. By June 1940, Germany had
military control over almost all of Western Europe including Belgium and
France, and a year later, Germany turned east to attack the USSR.
The League of Nations, we can safely conclude, did not stop wars, but
then it could not. Capital, as represented by national states, could only
grow through conflict with other states. It was impossible for the League
to control this drive for expansion on the part of its main members; many
were guilty of transgressing the rules of the organization. It came to an
end in 1946 after the end of World War II and the inauguration of the
United Nations.
The wars of nations proved that the law of nations or international law
had limited effect. International prohibitions could be ignored or violated
with impunity, especially by the bigger powers. Such laws could not put an
end to state conflicts or secret manipulations because they did not address
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 177

the need for capital to expand, which it could only do in national dress,
leading to national conflict. International law as the political/legal expres-
sion of national capitals could not change the character of what it repre-
sented: the necessity for capital to accumulate, to expand.47
But it was World War II, not World War I, that turned out to be ‘the
war to end all wars’—at least amongst the industrial capitalist nations.

Yet Another Level of Rights: Transnational

Corporate Rights Versus International Law
The irony of international law, whose subject is the state and whose goal
is peaceable relations between states, has been that it holds primacy over
national law, ostensibly preventing a descent into a ‘war of all against all,’
but it possesses no power to enforce peace between competing states,
which are defined by capital and so driven to expand and incapable of last-
ing peace. The main stages in the development of international law—the
Peace of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna, the Hague Conferences, and
the League of Nations, among other milestones—all followed long and
destructive wars and represented the recognition by these warring states
that the price of war was more costly than the ‘rewards’ of victory. But the
state represented capital, and there was no other entity that could speak or
act on behalf of the corporate sector. And capital as the underlying dynamic
of state interrelations was the source of war. International law, treaties, and
agreements failed to prevent war between states because they could not
constrain or impede competition in the state-led accumulation process for
long. This was the problem that, to a degree, was resolved in the post-­
World War II reset.
Before 1945, capital remained largely in its national form, represented
by states expanding as best they could via colonial exploitation, interna-
tional wars, and trade pacts and rivalries. The war effort, however, created
the necessity for the main states that were engaged to organize and pool
wartime military, economic, and financial resources across the globe. The
United States, moreover, had become by the time of the war the represen-
tative of the largest and most powerful national formation of industrial

47
Keynes well understood this point when he contrasted his proposed “free trade union,”
that is, a single playing field for European capital, with the result of the Paris Treaty, which
he characterized as producing “new political frontiers now created between greedy, jealous,
immature, and economically incomplete nationalist states.” J. M. Keynes, ibid., p. 266.
178 G. TEEPLE

capital, or concentration of corporate rights.48 Even by World War I, its

industrial power and the growing international use of the dollar had
shifted its foreign policy from a certain isolationism to the pursuit of a
world open to capital in general, but the states of Europe along with Japan
were not about to relinquish their colonies and agree to a world of ‘free
trade.’ World War II and the destruction of the European and Japanese
industrial economies provided the opportunity for the United States to
dismantle the restrictive colonial empires and to open the European and
Japanese economies themselves to increased US corporate investment.49
This was the moment that allowed for the institutionalization and expan-
sion of capital outside of national controls, as transnational corpo-
rate rights.
The United States was not about to lose this chance50 and made efforts
within the first five years of the postwar era to restructure the world order
reflecting a new stage in the development of capital. Although led by the
United States as representative of ascendant American corporations, all the
changes encompassed capital in general. If World War II is taken as the
end of the era of imperialism—of the scramble by national configurations
of capital to divide the world into spheres of influence—the postwar period

48
American military aid to the Allied Powers during World War II was largely paid from
their gold reserves, leaving the United States as the main holder of gold at the end of the war.
This depletion of national gold reserves left little option for the Allied Powers in 1944 but to
agree to peg their postwar currencies to the US dollar, which at that point was amply backed
by gold. By making its currency the world’s reserve currency, the United States gained an
enormous advantage, which the French later called an ‘exorbitant privilege,’ referring to the
fact that the world had to pay for those dollars, the global reserve currency, whereas the
United States had merely to print them.
49
It might be added here that in 1918 US President Wilson’s ‘14 points,’ an outline of US
foreign policy for the postwar world, and presumptive guide for the formation of the League
of Nations, was merely the position of the world’s new pre-eminent capitalist power. Stable
and peaceful international relations, freedom of navigation, the end of national economic
and trade barriers, and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire (to allow for American,
British, and French control of Middle East oil) were among the key points. But the United
States did not join the League of Nations, the rationale likely being that the League did not
end the closed economies of the colonial empires and left the prewar economic structure of
protectionist national capital in place.
50
B. Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011: 30–33. “For a quarter of a century after World War II, the dollar
reigned supreme… [The US] economy towered above the world like no other. It accounted
for full half of global industrial production. Only its currency was freely traded” p. 39.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 179

began the era of the regime of global capital accumulation without nation-
ality, albeit under a US umbrella.51
There were several elements to this restructuring of global capital that
overlap but arguably can be grouped into five major shifts defined by their
role in this new regime. Each has certain integrity as a set of policies or
organizations and can be identified as (1) a framework for corporate civil
rights outside national jurisdictions, (2) a venue for international law or
legal relations between states, (3) conventions defining marketplace prin-
ciples as if the absolute ideal for individual and political relations, (4) the
curtailment of independent national rights of the industrial powers
through ‘free trade,’ common markets and military oversight, and (5) the
containment of socialism and bourgeois nationalism. These were the main
components of the post-World War II restructuring.

1. The economic framework. Even before the war had ended, the United
States was laying out a blueprint for a ‘new world economic order’
at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. The organizations set up
here, in particular, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank, comprised the foundation of a world economy largely
freed from exclusive national interests, except for the US dollar as
the world’s reserve currency. Here began the process of creating a
global enabling framework by and for the corporate sector.

To complete the framework, some components were resurrected from

the League of Nations and others were added over time, namely, the
GATT (later WTO),52 the Bank of International Settlement (BIS),
International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organisation for Economic

51
These key texts on the concept of regime of accumulation portray the state as central to
such regimes. This understanding has provided valuable insights into the centrality of the
state in capital development, but the regime we are pointing to here is a global regime that
develops separately from the state, run by and for the corporate sector and its agencies.
T. McDonough, M. Reich, D. Kotz (eds.), Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises: Social
Structure of Accumulation Theory for the 21st Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010. See also: D. Kotz, T. McDonough, M. Reich (eds.), Social Structures of
Accumulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; and R. Boyer (ed.),
Regulation Theory: The State of the Art, London: Routledge. 2002; M. Aglietta, A Theory of
Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience, London: New Left Books, 1979.
52
The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) was added in 1947; it was a pro-
gressive series of agreements intended to remove national barriers to worldwide commerce.
In 1994 it was expanded to become the World Trade Organization (WTO).
180 G. TEEPLE

Co-operation and Development (OECD), and so on. Taken together,

they began to comprise a rules-based, capital-dominated, set of organiza-
tions administering corporate rights at the global level. Although their
decision-making processes are different,53 what they have in common is
relative freedom from direct political interference, which does not mean
freedom from corporate lobbying, ‘revolving door’ executives, or other
means of corporate influence.
By separating economic issues from political oversight, they constituted
a major step towards ending wars between the capitalist powers because
they removed the state from the representation of competitive, expansion-
ist capital. The corporate sector now had a set of quasi-state structures at
the global level through which they were able to wage economic wars on
the less developed nations and the working classes of the world.54
Well into the twenty-first century, they remain the main framework for
capital accumulation at the global level, dominated by the United States
but in the interests of capital in general. They are economic authorities
with transnational power that constitute a regime of accumulation, estab-
lished by agencies reflecting the corporate sector, outside of any formal
national political jurisdiction, with voting rights dependent on assets, not

Before the GATT process was instituted, a proposal for the International Trade
Organization (ITO) was drawn up, which was “designed to provide the long-range pattern
for world commercial relationships, and to direct those relationships toward expanding trade
and away from policies of autarchy.” Autarchy refers to the “absolute sovereignty of the
state.” The key point here is the conscious development of “a set of rules limiting govern-
mental interference with competitive forces in international trade.” (Emphasis added.) This
is to say, an international market with minimal political oversight. But the ITO proposal was
dropped in favour of the GATT and its secretive, periodic, and unaccountable meetings—for
reasons not entirely clear but likely because the ITO promised equal treatment of states and
so restricted the state powers of the industrial nations to exploit the lesser developed.
G. Bronz, ‘The International Trade Organization Charter,’ Harvard Law Review, Vol. 62,
No. 7, 1949: 1092 (1089–1125). Sands describes the GATT as “a neo-imperial instrument.”
P. Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules from FDR’s
Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush’s Illegal War. New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009: 101.
53
See: W. Koo, Voting Procedures in International Political Organizations, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1947; Koo argues that the voting procedure in any given inter-
national organization will mirror the interests and power of the member nations. See also:
N. Woods, ‘The Challenge of Good Governance for the IMF and the World Bank
Themselves,’ in World Development, Vol. 28, no. 5, (823–841).
54
C. Payer, The World Bank, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982; C. Payer, The Debt
Trap: the IMF and the Third World, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974; J. Perkins, Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man, New York: Penguin 2004.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 181

democracy.55 They were administered by bureaucrats chosen by leading

capitalist states and corporations, and they possessed “dispute resolution
mechanisms,” quasi-judicial courts with binding decisions, separate from
national legal systems and the UN International Court of Justice,56 creat-
ing a global arena of rights by and for the corporate sector.
These organizations, comprising a relatively coherent whole, represent
the global corporate sector separated from the national state. Capital could
begin to expand as capital without a nationality, to compete as simply capi-
tal in a framework of rights at the transnational level overseen and advanced
by a set of organizations designed solely for the operations of capital at
that level and run by a cosmopolitan bureaucracy. The basis of war between
competing industrial capitals was considerably mitigated. A single world
market for capital free of national interests and control had begun.
From that time to the present, this framework has continued to expand
to embrace almost all aspects of global production, trade, commerce, ser-
vices, intellectual property, policing, and finance,57 leaving the state the
tasks of maintaining national social order, securing the national debt and
tax systems to assist in global accumulation, and making national laws
conform to the regional or global market rules.
The Bretton Woods organizations established transnational corporate
civil rights within their own framework exercising a primacy over national
political and economic rights. The corporation as the active embodiment
or agent of capital had created a global structure for its growth, indepen-
dent of representation by the state and therefore relatively free of self-­
defeating wars and progressively reducing costs extraneous to its growth,

55
W. N. Gianaris, ‘Weighted Voting Rights in the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank,’ Fordham International Law Journal 14, No. 4, 1990–1: 910–945. See also:
W. Koo, ‘Voting Procedures in International Political Organizations,’ Harvard Law Review,
Vol. 61, 1948: 1093.
56
The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has a long
history but has seen a resurgence in activity in the twenty-first century. See: A.R. L. Parra,
The History of the ICSID, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012; C. Schreuer, “The
Development of International Law by ICSID Tribunals,” ICSID Review—Foreign Investment
Law Journal, Vol. 31, Issue 3, October 2016 (726–739).
57
In the twenty-first century, economic activity has taken the form of a series of ‘global
value chains.’ See: G. Gereffi, “Global value chains in a post-Washington Consensus world,”
Review of International Political Economy, 21:1, (9–37); H. Compston, “The Global
Network of Corporate Control: Political Implications,” Paper presentation: Political Studies
Association Conference, Cardiff, March 2013.
182 G. TEEPLE

such as taxes for state administration, infrastructure, national emergencies,

the welfare state, and the military.
While the Bretton Woods structure separated the economic from the
political, and so went a long way to resolving inter-state rivalries in Europe,
the rationale for international law was not yet at an end. For the capitalist
powers, the grounds for conflicts between themselves had been mitigated,
but not their relations in the postwar era with the colonial world that
demanded independence and statehood or with the socialist countries that
retained state controls. The main postwar problems for capital were how
to keep the newly independent former colonies in the orbit of capital, how
to contain the spread of socialism, and how to curb the aspiring national
independence. These three issues were in part addressed, directly and indi-
rectly, through the United Nations.

2. The venue for international law. The United Nations (UN), formed
in 1945, was designed, along with several adjunct organizations, as
an institution of nation-states, defined by a Charter outlining a rela-
tively comprehensive but general statement of the principles of
international law. Like the Bretton Woods organizations, the UN
has been dominated by the United States by dint of its powerful
postwar economic position.58

The need for a venue for international law existed as long as the goal of
a single global market and regime of corporate rights was still in its early
stages. That is, while the state remained representative of competitive
national capital, a structure for international law was necessary to provide
the rules and regulations pertaining to relations between antagonistic
interests represented by states. The state, as argued, is not an independent
variable; it is a political form whose content is essentially economic. And
so, with the expansion of the Bretton Woods organizations, it was only a
matter of time before this rationale of competing states underlying interna-
tional law would recede in the face of the growing pre-eminence of the

58
While the structure of the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN have provided enor-
mous advantages of policy determination for the United States, the principles of all these
postwar institutions have been those of transnational corporate private property. And the
competitive nature of private property, for all the pretence of equality, in practice favours
those with largest assets, which means that although the pre-eminence of capital in general
or the ascendancy of competing corporate rights was established at the transnational or
global level, US dominance remained.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 183

supranational system of prevailing economic rules and regulations. In the

meantime, some framework for the management and control of interna-
tional law was necessary.
The stated objective of the UN was to prevent war and “maintain inter-
national peace and security” through the protection of international law.
Although the definition of international law remains a matter of debate, it
generally refers to treaties, protocols, and other formal agreements
between states and the member obligations under the UN Charter.59 But
like its predecessors, from the Peace of Westphalia to the League of
Nations, the United Nations did not stop war, at least not all war. Armed
conflict between the developed capitalist states came to an end because the
structure and governance of their economies had gradually been moved to
the regional and transnational levels, but wars against states representing
actual or potential bourgeois nationalism or socialism have proven to be
unending because they have embodied these two main continuing barriers
to the creation of a single world market regulated by market principles, the
intrinsic goal of the development of capital.
This seeming paradox of the end of conflict between the main capitalist
nations but increasing conflict between those nations and the lesser devel-
oped world can be grasped with a brief examination of the structure of the
UN and its role in restricting state sovereignty. Rather than providing a
platform for all states to voice their independent interests, it was struc-
tured to limit their individual powers and to frame their internal relations
and constitutions with the principles of the marketplace.
The governing structure of the United Nations is deceptive, while it has
the appearance of liberal democracy, a cursory study suggests otherwise.
The principal bodies are the Security Council (SC) and the General
Assembly (GA), which act with the semblance of an executive and legisla-
ture respectively. But the reality is a counterfeit analogy.
The Security Council holds the main levers of institutional power,60 but
it is not accountable to the GA. It acts as the putative executive of the UN,
with 15 members, 10 of which are elected for two-year terms and 5 per-
manent members whose privileged position is said to represent the out-
come of World War II, but such a criterion is now meaningless given the
structure of the twenty-first-century global economy. Although the elected
members of the Council outnumber any grouping of its permanent

59
See footnote #40.
60
See Articles 24–26 of the UN Charter.
184 G. TEEPLE

members, American economic and military supremacy has usually carried

sufficient influence to provide the United States with a favourable majority
vote. From the outset the United Nations has been an important instru-
ment of American foreign policy, despite the power of veto held by each
of the five permanent SC members. The SC is not responsible to the GA
or to any citizenry or to any institutional entity. The powers of the perma-
nent members of the SC over the GA are close to absolute; the SC is
accountable only to the veto of one of the five permanent members.61
Despite the democratic veneer, the General Assembly has never been a
political forum for the citizens of its member states. Although the opening
of the Preamble to the Charter reads, “We, the peoples of the United
Nations,” this claim is merely an ideological euphemism for the member
states, many of which do not even pretend to be democracies. But then
there has never been a mandate that member states be democratic; democ-
racy is not a criterion for membership. Member states need not be account-
able to their citizens.
The GA has been a quasi-legislature for national states as legal persons
or subjects in international law, whose formal purpose is to oversee the
‘peace and security’ between nations and to ensure respect for interna-
tional law. Its ability to act, however, is very restricted, framed as it is by its
relation to the SC. On the one hand, it does not and cannot perform the
usual functions of a legislature in questioning or criticizing or approving
the actions of an executive, while on the other hand, it is mandated to
“agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council”
(Article 25). In other words, the SC is not accountable to the GA, but the
GA is accountable to the SC.
All UN members are to be treated as sovereign equals,62 but their sov-
ereignty cannot be considered to belong to their citizens, who may not
have any political rights. Sovereignty for members of the UN is the sover-
eignty of the state, which, as we argued, has always been the interests of
the prevailing corporations; states are the legal representatives of incorpo-
rated national capital formations. Because most of the member states

61
The USSR saw the veto as the only means to prevent the United States and the United
Kingdom from using the SC and UN to attack it on the diplomatic level. See: N. Novikov,
‘The Novikov Telegram, Washington, September 27, 1946.’ Diplomatic History, Fall 1991,
Vol. 15, No. 4, 535.
62
See: J. G. Starke, An Introduction to International Law, London: Butterworths, 1967:
Chapter 3.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 185

represent capitalist economies, they are subject to all the economic pres-
sures and controls that emanate from the market and the Bretton Woods
organizations. The structure of the UN, then, has little to do with democ-
racy; and the main power lies in the SC, where the United States speaks
with the voice of preeminent global capital. This is one reason the UN has
reduced the cause of war between compliant capitalist nations, but not put
an end to continuous wars intended to expand or protect the global market.
The second reason for this paradox of peace for some and war for oth-
ers is found in changes to international law. Historically, it has been the
product of relations between states as the main subjects in the international
arena, in the form of treaties, judicial decisions, customary practices, and
so on. International law is generally considered to have primacy over
national law, a principle not always followed to be sure, but with the post-
war ‘new world order,’ there have been three changes to the nature of this
primacy of international over national law that bear noting.
One is the impact of the Bretton Woods organizations and common
markets in systematically diminishing the sovereignty of the state in eco-
nomic matters, such as trade, commerce, banking, tariffs, and so on. A
second is the proliferation of new UN organizations as authoritative inter-
national subjects that restrict state sovereignty in other matters concern-
ing, for example, health, education, culture, agriculture, justice, labour,
and finance. And the third is the “corporate capture” of these UN and
other global institutions and treaties such that any interests other than the
corporate are minimized or erased.63 These three changes represent the
63
There is a large and growing body of literature on the corporate takeover of international
organizations, especially the United Nations. See: B. Balanya, et al., Europe Inc., Regional
and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power, London: Pluto Press, 2000:
Chapter 18 ‘The Corporate Cooptation of the United Nations.’ J. Martens, ‘Corporate
Influence on the Business and Human Rights Agenda of the United Nations.’ Global Policy
Forum, Bonn: June 2014. S. Ross (ed.), ‘Democratising Global Governance and
Multilateralism,’ ActionAid, Johannesburg, 2021. M. A. Manahan and M. Kumar, The Great
Takeover: Mapping of Multistakeholderism in Global Governance, People’s Working Group on
Multistakeholderism: Amsterdam, 2021.
For a brief overview of the World Economic Forum’s proposed new system of governance,
Global Redesign Initiative, see: H. Gleckman, ‘Multistakeholder Governance: A Corporate
Push for a New Form of Global Governance’ [https://www.tni.org/en/publication/multi-
stakeholderism-a-corporate-push-for-a-new-form-of-global-governance] 19 January 2016.
See the appeal from global ‘civil society’ organizations concerning the strategic partnership
between the United Nations and World Economic Forum: ‘Corporate Capture of Global
Governance: WEF-UN Partnership Threatens UN System’ [https://www.escr-net.org/
news/2019/corporate-capture-global-governance-wef-un-partnership-threatens-un-sys-
tem] 26 Sept. 2019.
186 G. TEEPLE

distribution of state sovereign rights to unelected but authoritative and

corporate-­dominated quasi-state entities with international legal oversight
grounded in signed agreements and corporate civil rights.
If relations between states used to be the main content of international
law, that content has now expanded to include relations between states,
common markets, transnational corporations, their organizations, and a
plethora of international agencies. The continuous expansion of this dis-
tributed authority since World War II, mostly as transnational corporate
civil rights, has resulted in the steady decline of the state as the main sub-
ject of international law and the slow reduction of the need and respect for
international law. What gradually assumes the place of international law
are the Bretton Woods and other ‘rules-based international’ structures
dominated by global capital.
Capitalist nations intent on expanding their influence or policing an
international market have never treated international law as much of a
deterrent, especially if their economic and military strength has allowed
them to prevail over others. But once capital acquired its own authorita-
tive organizations at the global level, it has been able to expand without
formal state support. And when bourgeois nationalism or socialism has
threatened the project of a single global market, a world dominated by
corporate rights, international law simply becomes an obstacle that has
been violated with impunity by the representatives of capital. The United
States has likely committed more violations and abrogated more treaties64
than any other state throughout the Cold War years and after because it
was the world’s largest industrial power, the dominant military force, the
biggest consumer market, and the beneficiary of its dollar as the world’s
reserve currency. The use of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency
can be considered one of the most extreme examples of economic ‘rent’

64
Human Rights Watch, ‘United States Ratification of International Human Rights
Treaties,’ January 20, 2022 [https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/07/24/united-states-rati-
fication-international-human-rights-treaties]; Oona Hathaway, ‘Reneging on Treaties and
other International Agreements (Part I),’ Just Security, Oct. 2, 2020 [https://www.justse-
curity.org/72656/reeneging-on-treaties-and-other-international-agreements-part-i-presi-
dent-donald-trumps-rejection-of-international-law/]; A. Merelli, ‘It’s not just Trump. The
US has always broken its treaties, pacts and promises,’ 14 May 2018 [https://www.govexec.
com/oversight/2018/05/its-not-just-trump-us-has-always-broken-its-treaties-
pacts-and-promises/148179/].
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 187

defined simply as the appropriation of unearned value. By using the dollar,

the entire world contributes to the maintenance of the global US military
presence.
Although the United States was the principal founder of the UN, it has
been the chief violator of its rules and goals. The United States has ratified
only three of the nine ‘core’ human rights treaties and has unsigned or
refused to ratify numerous peace treaties.65 According to a study by the
Council on Foreign Relations, “the United States has one of the worst
records of any country in ratifying human rights and environmental
treaties.”66 The policies and practices of rendition, torture, assassination,
coups d’état, sanctions, invasions, threats, political interference, subter-
fuge, and the destruction of entire nations are all stock in trade for
Washington.67
Since the late twentieth century, with the establishment of the global
economy, the United Nations has increasingly become amenable to coop-
eration between the global corporate sector and UN organizations, with-
out state representation; the cooperation is now closer to a takeover.
Corporate capture of the UN undermines the rationale for international
law.68 Not that international law in fact comes to an end but the rationale
for it does: if state control over national economies is in decline, what is
the need for international law?

65
Z. B. Wolf and J. Carman, CNN, ‘Here are all the treaties and agreements Trump has
abandoned,’ February 1, 2019 [https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/politics/nuclear-
treaty-trump/index.html].
66
Council on Foreign Relations, ‘On International Treaties, the United States Refuses to
Play Ball,’ [https://www.cfr.org/blog/international-treaties-united-states-refuses-play-ball].
67
The literature covering these violations of international law, especially by the United
States, is large. The reader might begin with W. Blum, Rogue State, Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press, 2000; A. Bartholomew (ed.), Empire’s Law, The American Imperial
Project and the “War to Remake the World”, London: Pluto Press, 2006; P. Sands, Lawless
World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, New York: Viking, 2005;
J. St. Clair and J. Frank (eds), Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, Oakland:
AK Press, 2012.
See: Amnesty International Reports, see: Washington Office of Amnesty International,
Human Rights and US Security Assistance, 1996, p. 1: “Throughout the world, on any given
day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’, at the
hands of government or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States
shares the blame.”
68
See footnote #64.
188 G. TEEPLE

3. The transnational conventions. The third aspect of the postwar reset

was the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). If
the Bretton Woods institutions created a transnational framework of
economic rules for the corporate sector, and the UN and its Charter
established a venue for the management of international law, it was
the UDHR that outlined the principles of the two defining charac-
teristics of liberal democracy, namely, individual civil, political, and
social rights, and the rule of law.

The main political rights and key aspects of the rule of law that define
the modern capitalist state were presented in the UDHR, and later in
more detail in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as the universal ideal of democracy. In other
words, the form of government for capital at a particular stage in its devel-
opment was idealized as the very model of democracy. These rights, how-
ever, have never been treated by UN members with the respect such ideals
would suggest.69
In 1948, moreover, the UDHR was only a declaration, with no obliga-
tion for the signatory states to uphold its principles. It took almost
20 years—to 1966—before it was given some meaning beyond a mere
declaration when it was recast as two covenants, namely, the Rights ICCPR
and the RightsICESCR, both of which carried the obligation for the sig-
natory nation to uphold these rights.
The covenants, however, came into force only 10 years later in 1976,
almost 30 years after the original declaration. Even so, there was no
enforcement mechanism, and the covenants have been abused ever since
in one way or another by corporations and UN member states.70 Their
chronic violation, especially by the largest capitalist powers, is not a matter
of deviant or atypical behaviour; this is the norm in a world driven by capi-
tal accumulation and characterized by systemic inequalities of wealth and
power within and between states.

69
In the post-World War II era, anti-colonial wars were fought by Britain, France, Belgium,
Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United States across Africa, Asia, and the
Middle East.
70
Lists of violations by the main democracies are numerous and very long. See the annual
reports by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, among other organizations that monitor international
rights.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 189

That there are two covenants deserves comment: it points to the split
between civil/political rights and social rights. Social rights (as entitle-
ments to part of the socialized national product) contradict civil rights (as
exclusively private rights), and so the two covenants allowed states that do
not admit to the principle of social rights to sign the other covenant and
continue to appear to respect human rights. While the United States is not
alone, it is the only liberal democracy that has not ratified the ICECSR,71
and it did not sign the ICCPR until 1992, 16 years after it came into
effect. Human rights in the UDHR are declared indivisible, a principle
that prohibits the selective support for some rights and not others. The
very existence of two covenants and the American refusal to sign one sug-
gest that they are only universal in their abuse and violation.
By the 1970s, the movement of capital away from the national stage to
its independent development at the transnational level was increasingly
evident. And by the 1980s, liberal democracy itself was actively being min-
imized by neoliberal policies.
If the UDHR and its associated covenants were meant to define the
ideal of individual and political relations in the modern state, they are
problematic in every aspect. First, there is very little that can be called
democratic in the UN decision-making process itself. Second, there is no
mandate for the UN member states to be democratic, and in fact, a size-
able minority of members are autocratic by any standard, and those
deemed democratic can be ranked by degrees of political corruption.72
Third, flagrant violations of these UN-defined rights by the main liberal

71
It has moreover not ratified most of the ‘core’ human rights treaties; see Human Rights
Watch, ‘United States Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties,’ 2009
[https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/07/24/united-states-ratification-international-
human-rights-treaties].
Not only has the United States refused to ratify these key human rights treaties but also
passed a law giving itself the power to use military force to free any Americans or allied citi-
zens held for trial by the International Criminal Court. Human Rights Watch, ‘US.: “Hague
Invasion Act” Becomes Law’
[https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law].
72
See: Transparency International or Democracy Index for rankings of state corruption.
See also: A. J. Heiderheimer and M. Johnston (eds.), Political Corruption: concepts and con-
texts, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002; G. Myers, The History of Great
American Fortunes, New York: The Modern Library, 1936, and his The History of Canadian
Wealth, Toronto: J. Lewis & Samuel, 1975 (1914). J. Nichols and R. McChesney,
Dollarocracy: How Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America, New York:
Nation Books, 2013; J. S. Hacker, P. Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington
Made the Rich Richer, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.
190 G. TEEPLE

democratic powers have not stopped since their first declaration in 1948.73
Fourth, the UDHR has been employed by its main violators as a means to
espouse the abstract virtues of liberal democracy and human rights, the
ideals of the marketplace, as if they were the reality of existing liberal
democracies. And fifth, these abstractions have been continually used to
criticize nations that do not follow US directives or that define themselves
as socialist or nationalist. Such weaponization of the UDHR has a long
history, and it continues with enormous investments, particularly on the
part of the United States.74

4. The national barrier to global capital accumulation. The fourth

aspect of the postwar reset was to curtail the independent expression
of national rights by the industrial powers. The goal of a global mar-
ket depended on the opening of the national markets of these
nations to US investment, to put an end to their colonial systems, to
allow the building of US military bases at strategic points in Europe,
Japan, and elsewhere, and in the case of Europe to create a ‘United
States of Europe’ effectively undermining the postwar development
of national economies. For Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) was established to guarantee the permanence
of an American commander-in-chief over the main body of European
military forces.75 Germany was not to be rearmed, and Japan’s post-
war constitution, written by the Americans, allowed only defensive
forces to be established.

By preventing European nations and Japan from being able to act inde-
pendently, these institutional arrangements, expanded markets, and mili-
tary oversight were the means employed by the United States to prevent
73
See note #67.
74
The use of human rights as an instrument in the Cold War against socialism was exten-
sive. The Helsinki Accord of 1975 was a landmark in this regard. It laid out three main
objectives: the ‘inviolability’ of European borders, the rejection of the use of force, and
respect for human rights. While the first two were probably preventative measures, in light of
the Soviet interventions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the third proved
to be the real point of the treaty. As soon as the ink was dry, “Helsinki monitoring groups”
appeared in Moscow and in Czechoslovakia to paint the Soviet Union as a chronic and incor-
rigible violator of human rights. The Helsinki Accord was a poisoned chalice for the USSR.
Such use of human rights continues widely because there is a lack of critical appreciation
of (a) their relation to capitalism, instead defining them as absolute and universal, and (b) the
different kinds of rights that characterize different modes of production.
75
The United States also established military agreements with many of the remaining non-
socialist nations.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 191

war between European centres of capital, to use their combined military

forces for capital in general, and to prevent Japan from threatening other
nations in the former Asian colonies of Europe.
The receipt of Marshall aid after the war was made conditional on ‘eco-
nomic collaboration’ amongst European nations, ‘cooperative planning’
for the postwar recovery, ‘reduction’ in trade barriers, and a degree of
oversight by the US Congress on compliance. In other words, to receive
US financial aid for reconstruction, Europe had to begin to create a com-
mon market open to US capital and restrictions on pan-European trade
unions. The main initial step in European assent or submission to this
project came in 1950 as the ‘Schuman Plan,’ which was explicitly intended
to put an end to the war in Europe.76
The United States also played an important role in rebuilding the
bureaucracies of the postwar governments of Germany and Japan. In both
countries the United States carefully reinstalled large numbers of former
state officials of the wartime anti-communist regimes of Germany and
Japan in their ‘new’ state administrations.77 And the United States assumed
ultimate authority over European militaries by means of NATO in 1949,
and from the 1950s to the 1980s it placed many former German
Wehrmacht officers, who had been Nazi party members and participants
in the war against the Soviet Union,78 into NATO positions of high com-
mand in Europe.

76
The ‘Schuman Plan’ embraced six Western European nations in forming the European
Coal and Steel Community in 1950, which was intended to make war in Europe ‘not merely
unthinkable but materially impossible.’ It is widely seen as providing the foundation for the
European Economic Community established in 1958, which evolved through several stages
until the 2007 Lisbon Treaty establishing the European Union [https://www.britannica.
com/event/Schuman-Plan].
77
M. Furstenau, ‘Nazi ties unbroken in post-war government,’ DW 03.03.2012 [https://
www.dw.com/en/nazi-ties-unbroken-in-post-war-government/a-15785235] [18/12/21].
See also: P. Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany 1945–48. The History Press Ltd.,
2006; and H. B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan,
1945–1952. Kent State University Press, 1989: 190–4.
See also: M. Gortemaker and C. Safferling, ‘The Rosenberg Files—The Federal Ministry of
Justice and the Nazi Era.’ October 2016 [https://www.bmj.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/
DE/Akte_Rosenburg_EN_Geschichtsband_1.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=6].
78
The National Interest, October 17, 2019 [https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/
covert-ex-nazi-army-helped-nato-keep-stalins-troops-out-west-germany-88616];
K. Wiegrefe, ‘Nazi Veterans Created Illegal Army,’ Der Spiegel International, 14 May 2014;
Eric Lichtblau, The Nazi Next Door: How America became a safe haven for Hitler’s Men,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014; C. Simpson, Blowback: The First Full Account of
192 G. TEEPLE

World War II, however, did not end in the destruction of the Soviet
Union, a possible goal from the point of view of capital and its potential
global market. It did however draw a line between the two systems very
well, a development that very soon after the war resulted in a renewed
Cold War against the USSR. This divide between a form of socialized capi-
tal and capitalism had no solution but the demise of one side, and that is
what happened with China in 1979 and with the Soviet Bloc between
1989 and 1991, although only partially, as we will argue.

5. Global capital and the containment of socialism and bourgeois nation-

alism. If the key postwar objective of the United States was to create
a single global market for the accumulation of capital free of political
interference, it was necessary to create these transnational economic
institutions, establish multinational regional markets, make national
militaries into ‘collective security’ systems, and promote ‘free trade’
everywhere. But two important and recurring barriers had to be
addressed, that is, the continuing interest around the world in
socialism and national independence. Both grew rapidly after the
war throughout the Middle East, the colonial world, and war-rav-
aged Europe.

The first to voice this problem was the American diplomat, George
Kennan in his “Long Telegram” of February 1946. Here he spelled out
the case for the containment of the USSR.79 In March 1946, shortly after
Kennan’s assessment of the postwar situation, Winston Churchill gave his
‘Iron Curtain’ speech, which called for the United States and the United
Kingdom to guard against the expansion of the Soviet Union. This speech
and Kennan’s telegram are now considered to be the beginning of the
‘Cold War,’ the decades-long effort to undermine socialism and restrict its
spread around the world. And less than a year after the UN Charter was
signed in June 1945 and the UN inaugurated in October 1945.80 In 1947

America’s Recruitment of Nazis, and Its Disastrous Effect on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy.
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988.
79
Kennan’s Long Telegram: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.
pdf. The reply by Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Telegram, September
1946, can be found here: N. Novikov, ‘The Novikov Telegram, Washington, September 27,
1946.’ Diplomatic History, Fall 1991, Vol. 15, No. 4, (527–537).
80
Less than a year after the UN Charter was signed in June 1945 and the inauguration of
the United Nations in October 1945.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 193

US President Truman followed with his ‘Truman Doctrine,’ a pledge to

provide economic and military assistance to all ‘democracies’ allegedly
threatened by the Soviet Union; and this was followed by the Marshall
Plan in 1948, which made many more millions of US dollars available to
European countries to help rebuild their still war-damaged economies in
the hope of forestalling growing demands for socialism and nationalism,
not to mention advancing the international role of the US dollar.81
In 1949 NATO was created, ostensibly “to safeguard the freedom,
common heritage and civilization of their peoples founded on the princi-
ples of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.” It was in effect
to place European military forces under the control of the United States,
to secure the defence of capital and American corporate dominance in
Europe, and to confront the Soviet Union and its satellite nations in
Eastern Europe—all done with allusions to liberal democracy and human
rights. By uniting the military systems of Europe, NATO ended the pos-
sibility of war between European powers, gained control over European
military forces, and consolidated them in the Cold War to confront
the USSR.82
Despite the end of the wars between the industrial powers in 1945,
these nations entered increasingly into wars opposing colonial liberation.
All the colonizing nations of Europe—Britain, France, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Portugal, and Spain, as well as the United States—faced wars of
liberation in their colonies in Asia and/or Africa unless they had already
been granted independence. While the colonizers all tried to maintain
their control, in patent violation of the UN Charter and the UDHR, the
costs of continuing colonial conflicts after the World War proved to be too
much for most of the European nations, even though many of those costs
were picked up by the United States; and new independent nations began
to appear by the mid-1950s and 1960s.83

81
B. Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011: 49.
82
NATO also created undercover paramilitary units in coordination with secret service
agencies across Europe to prepare ostensibly for a possible Soviet invasion, but they per-
formed an array of secret actions in aid of the European establishment. See: D. Ganser,
NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe. 2005; and
P. L. Williams, Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA and the
Mafia, New York: Prometheus Books, 2015.
83
D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, Volume Two: 1950–1960, London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1961; S. Williams, ‘White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization
194 G. TEEPLE

The wars, however, never stopped; they continued in Asia, Africa, the
Middle East, and South and Central America to the present day, wars
against national independence or socialism or both. Even the strong pres-
ence of socialist parties in Western Europe was reason enough for con-
certed efforts by the CIA and European secret service agencies to continue
their activities throughout the postwar era.84
Nevertheless, within a few short years after the World War, much of the
world was being opened to capital in general, over which American capital
prevailed. US direct investment as well as consumer and cultural goods
flowed into Europe and into the dismantled colonial empires of Asia and
Africa. The new nations were gradually opened to further investment
through the policies of the World Bank and IMF and outright war, and
resistance to the expansion of socialism became implicit in trade pacts and
military treaties. With the exception of the USSR, Eastern Europe, China,
and later Cuba and Vietnam, the world was being opened to the expan-
sion of global corporate private property. A global enabling framework for
establishing corporate rights free from national controls had been con-
structed at the global level under the auspices of the United States.
The structure successfully waged ‘soft wars’ on the USSR and later
China, managing by the late 1970s to move China down the ‘capitalist
road,’ and in the late 1980s to move the USSR down the same road, such
that by the end of the twentieth century, the world was, for all intents and
purposes, capitalist, and remains so to this day, the threatened conflict
between the United States and Russia and China, notwithstanding. What
was a conflict between capitalism and socialism had become in the twenty-­
first century a conflict between global capital and the renewed expression
of national or politically influenced capital.

of Africa,’ New York: Hachette 2021; Democracy Now: ‘Wave of Coups Disrupts Africa as
U.S.-Trained Soldiers Play Key Role in Overthrowing Governments’ [https://www.democ-
racynow.org/2022/2/8/us_presence_in_africa_fuels_coups].
Besides being active in Europe and Africa after the war, the CIA was ever present in Latin
America; see: M. Becker, ‘The CIA on Latin America,’ Journal of Intelligence History, Vol.
20, No. 2, 2021. (146–167).
84
P. Agee and L. Wolf (eds.), Dirty War: the CIA in Western Europe, London: Zed
Press, 1978.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 195

Liberal Democracy as Barrier to the Global Market

As the global regime of accumulation came into being, the role of liberal
democracy came into question. After the war, in part to save capitalism
from socialism, and resting on a confluence of new economic factors, the
industrial nations embarked on a massive reconstruction programme,
which included significant expenditures for infrastructure, education,
technology, healthcare, and so on, programmes often captured by the
concept of the Keynesian welfare state (KWS). Liberal democracy was
positioned to allow what the working class was demanding, a degree of
political leverage that provided part of the motive for the development of
a broad range of social rights. In the industrial nations, the postwar era
presented conditions that allowed the working class and capital to find
improvements in wages and profits, but only as long as those conditions
prevailed.
Such times have their limits, which arrived in the 1960s when the post-
war conditions of expansion began to change. The postwar reconstruction
boom and the expansion of trade began to wane, undermining the basis of
the high wages necessary to support the expenditures on the KWS, and
this decline had an impact on capital accumulation. From the corporate
point of view, the problem could easily be understood as a political system
that gave too much power to the working class, which resulted in increased
expenditures to ‘non-productive’ investments such as education, health-
care, daycare, pensions, and public sector infrastructure.
The earliest effort to undermine the Keynesian ‘mind-set,’ the eco-
nomic theory that underlay the welfare state and influenced much public
policy in the industrial nations, came in the 1960s in the form of another
theory, monetarism, widely associated with the University of Chicago
economist, Milton Friedman.85 If Keynesianism focused on the power of
the state, and therefore politics, to resolve economic problems, monetar-
ism was promoted as a strictly economic solution to the economic stagna-
tion in the industrial economies of the 1970s. It was in effect a theory that
minimized the role of the state in economic matters, leaving the economy
to operate ostensibly on its own.
Monetarism focuses on the questions of money supply and interest
rates, which determine the broad limits to fiscal policies and other state
interventions in the economy. In most industrial nations the central banks

85
M. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
196 G. TEEPLE

have had a monopoly over monetary policy, and by the end of the twenti-
eth century, most nations had granted their central banks independence
from government control, removing the broad control of the economy
from the state. Fiscal policy, usually defined as the domain of the state,
operates within the boundaries set by central banks and monetary policies.
Central banks are now mostly independent of national governments and
able to determine the overall direction of development by means of mon-
etary policy. Their policies in turn follow from the Bank of International
Settlement (BIS) in Basel where monetary policy for the world is estab-
lished—free of national influence. Monetarism is an argument for eco-
nomic control limited to monetary policy, which implies the subordination
of fiscal policy, usually the domain of state policy. It is an argument for
minimal government and a key component of supranational control over
global banking.
The growing stagnation throughout the 1960s spurred the US corpo-
rate sector to take a close interest in what was happening in the early
1970s. The US Chamber of Commerce commissioned a report on the
state of affairs in the United States in 1971. A corporate lawyer, Lewis
Powell, authored the review entitled: “Attack on American Free Enterprise
System.”86 The first few pages described the broad opposition by Americans
to every aspect of their society, likely spawned by the well-known atrocities
committed by the US military in the Vietnam War; Powell then detailed a
comprehensive plan to reassert corporate influence over the political and
legal systems, with a special effort to capture the courts and to reform tort
law in ways to protect corporations from class-action suits and large settle-
ments. But no part of the system was left out; he championed corporate
intervention in the mass media, education at all levels, the creation of
‘think tanks’ as corporate advocates, intensive lobby campaigns to change
public policy and create like-minded politicians, and conscious promotion
of business-friendly lawyers throughout the judicial system. It was a bold
proposal for the assertion of corporate dominance, which by the late
1970s began to become a reality.
Coincident with the promotion of monetarism and the submission of
the Powell Memorandum was the 1973 formation of the Trilateral
Commission, an elite venue for influential political figures, academics, and

86
‘The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy’ (full text)
‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System’ [https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democ-
racy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/].
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 197

corporate officials to discuss the state of the world and to promote global
interdependence. One of its first projects was a cross-national study of
what it called ‘the crisis of democracy.’ The report covered the political
systems of Japan, Western Europe, and the United States, and it con-
cluded that there was “an excess of democracy,” that is, the systems of
liberal democracies allowed the working class too much political power,
which by implication led to the welfare state and the need for high wages
and “non-productive” state expenditures.87 Its concluding recommenda-
tions read like the policies now known as neoliberalism.
The ideas found in monetarism, the Powell Memo, and the Trilateral
Commission Report pointed clearly to what was to follow in 1980. They
provided the preamble to neoliberalism—or the progressive reduction of
the state to the status of a manager of the social order, a tax collector, and
a mechanism for public debt, with little or no independent source of rev-
enue and very little economic control. That these ideas emanated from the
United States did not mean they were simply national expressions; they
could be found across the industrial capitalist world. With the elections of
Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in
the United States in 1980, neoliberalism found its first clear statement in
the political domain of the capitalist world: ‘We are open for business.’
This simple refrain let the world know that the politicians mouthing it
had embarked on promulgating policies that, although enacted by the
state, actually worked to incapacitate the state. It meant the dissolution of
the state was being carried out by the state itself. There was no need for
external forces to reduce the role of the state. In the name of economic
growth, neoliberal policies began (a) to retrench the KWS, including
labour rights,88 which benefited the working class, (b) to de-regulate state
oversight of corporations, which circumscribed corporate activity, (c) to
privatize state ownership, which excluded private investment in potentially
lucrative arenas, and (d) to remove trade protection for domestic capital,
which encouraged foreign direct investment.
Neoliberalism has been used the world over to privatize, de-regulate,
sell off, and give away to the corporate sector every aspect of reproduction

87
M Crozier, S. P. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: On the
Governability of Democracies, New York: New York University Press. 1975.
88
For one of the better reviews of the retrenchment of labour rights, see: L. Panitch and
D. Swartz, From Consent to Coercion: The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms, Aurora:
Garamond Press, 2003.
198 G. TEEPLE

in capitalist societies. From social security programmes that have spanned

all aspects of the welfare state to the judicial system and policing, and to
the militaries, many functions that states had assumed during and after the
war have been gradually given over to the corporate sector.89 It can be seen
as the beginning of the reduction of the state to the level of a municipality,
that is to the status of a derivative level of government, with powers that
are framed or conditioned or defined by the higher levels of governance by
the corporate-dominated, unelected transnational organizations discussed
above. And all this is done by the liberal democratic state itself ostensibly
representing its citizens through elections.
After 1980, there followed several decades of state retrenchment and
economic crises, which led to the near collapse of the financial sector in
2007–2009. To mitigate the crisis, without addressing its causes, the
major industrial states adopted ‘austerity’ policies, which merely increased
the neoliberal changes that underlay the crisis and introduced “quantita-
tive easing” as a way of using the national debt to shift wealth from taxpay-
ers to the financial sector.90 They were not able to address the causes
because the causes were the system itself, in which states are structured to
serve and to which they are deeply bound in debt and subordinate to the
very financial institutions they are bailing out.
After decades of self-retrenchment with neoliberal policies, military
integration in NATO and other agreements, and economic subordination
to the rules and regulations of Bretton Woods organizations and other
global agencies, the modern state no longer represents the significant cen-
tre of power as an international actor it once did. It has been increasingly
reduced to a mechanism for national debt (capital mobilization), a tax
collector (for debt servicing, the welfare state, and national infrastruc-
ture), a national contributor to the military advancement of the global

89
Corporate Europe Observatory has produced several studies of ‘corporate capture’ in
the nations of Europe; see its study of the capture of the European Union, Captured States:
When EU governments are a channel for corporate interests, 2019 [https://corporateeurope.
org/sites/default/files/captured-states-exec-summary-en-basic.pdf]. See also: G. Monbiot,
Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, London: Macmillan, 2000.
90
S. McBride and B. M. Evans (eds.), The Austerity State, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2017; M. Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013.
C. Grover, ‘Violent proletarianisation: Social murder, the reserve army of labour and social
security ‘austerity’ in Britain,’ Critical Social Policy, December 1, 2018 (335–355).
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 199

market, and the front line in the struggle between national labour and
global capital.
For these reasons, liberal democracy is too important for now to allow
it to be dissolved, but to ensure its compliance and prevent its resistance
to corporate control, politicians and state officials have been subjected to
intense corporate lobbying, corporate financial assistance, and ‘revolving
door’ arrangements for their acquiescence to corporate agendas.
Governments themselves are ‘open for business.’

‘Rules-Based International Order’ (RBIO) Versus

International Law91
By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, after several
decades of neoliberal policies and then austerity, the continuous develop-
ment of capital had gone far to undermine the power of the state, and so
the role of the political, as a determining force in economic development.
Global capital had established a relatively comprehensive regime of accu-
mulation at the transnational level, outside of state structures, managed
and regulated by the Bretton Woods and several other related but diverse
organizations.
In the 1990s, in academic and diplomatic circles, this regime began to
be called the ‘rules-based international order,’ a descriptive label that has
focused on the heterogeneous agencies and practices of the regime but
not the rationale. As a result, there has been considerable debate over the
definition of the concept,92 likely resting in part on the difficulty in relin-
quishing the perception of international law and its subject, the state, as
primary in the global arena. The concept, moreover, does not point to a
single coherent entity but to a set of transnational institutions and organi-
zations that are at best loosely related, yet comprise a relatively

91
This is not to imply that there is no overlap between these two; in practice there is,
but in principle the central agent for one side is the corporation and for the other the state.
92
See, for instance: Vylegzhanin, A. N. et al., ‘The Term “Rules-based International
Order” in International Legal Discourse,’ Moscow Journal of International Law, No. 2.
(35–60) 2021; Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs), ‘Challenges to the
Rules-Based International Order,’ 2015 [https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/
files/London%20Conference%202015%20-%20Background%20Papers.pdf]; S. Martel,
‘Unpacking the “Crisis” of the “Rules-Based International Order”: Competing Hero
Narratives and Indo-Pacific Alternatives,’ Working Paper: Defence & Security Foresight July
2020. (1–20).
200 G. TEEPLE

comprehensive system of corporate oversight in the interests of corpora-

tions. They are not formerly accountable to any specific state or constitu-
ency, other than to the most powerful concentrations of corporate power.
There is, nevertheless, a degree of consensus on its meaning as a refer-
ence to the decline of state power and the gradual rise of this set of private
non-state authoritative agencies,93 or as one author put it: a system of
“privatized global governance.”94 Because its referent is an amalgam of
relatively discrete agencies, institutions, trade blocs, policy forums, corpo-
rate bodies, and so on, it is a concept that defies greater precision than that
it is transnational governance distributed to private, non-state, but author-
itative entities. In other words, it is the privatization of authority or more
specifically the formalization of corporate rights outside of political control
or influence; this is their common defining element. It represents the cur-
rent stage in the continuing development of competitive capital in the
global arena where it has created a regulatory regime for itself because no
global state exists. But understood in analytical rather than descriptive
terms, the RBIO serves as the structure of a global regime of capital accu-
mulation, the institutions required to regulate profit generation globally
without political intervention at this historical juncture.95
It may be asked why the RBIO and not international law has become
the means to regulate TNC activity. International law presupposes a state-­
based system, but the state and law are not independent variables. They
depend on the nature of the economy or mode of production and accu-
mulation process, but economic activity is now carried out and largely
regulated at the global level. It is true that international law, treaty-based
formal relations between states, persists, but it presumes the existence of a
relatively coherent national economy as the basis of state power. To an

93
R. Hall, with T. Biersteker (eds.), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global
Governance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
94
C. Cutler, ‘The Privatization of Authority in the Global Political Economy,’ in G. Teeple
and S. McBride (eds), Relations of Global Power, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2011, 50 (41–59).
95
But it must not be taken as the only possibility; China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ is another
model; and there are other large multinational trade agreements, which do not inordinately
privilege the United States through the use of its dollar.
For a recent network analysis of the world auto industry, see: M. Russo, F. Alboni,
J. Sangin, M. De Domenico, G. Mangioni, S. Righi, A. Simonazzi, ‘The Changing Shape of
the World Automobile Industry: A Multilayer Network Analysis of International Trade in
Components and Parts,’ Institute for New Economic Thinking, Working Paper No. 173,
January 3, 2022.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 201

increasing degree, however, the nationally integrated economies of the

world’s nations are in obvious decline. What has arisen in their place are
global production and supply chains, a global economy defined by inter-­
firm and intra-firm networks, and international treaties that reflect these
structures. The RBIO is not an international system of national states, but
a global system of interrelated organizations, answerable to themselves and
to the transnational corporations and agencies they are designed to serve
and regulate.
The division of national economies into supply and production chains
across national borders began in the 1960s, expanded in the 1970s and
1980s, and then increased dramatically in the 1990s. In the words of one
analyst:

In the 1990s and 2000s, the industries and activities encompassed by global
supply chains grew exponentially, covering not only finished goods, but also
components and subassemblies, and affecting not just manufacturing indus-
tries, but also energy, food production and all kinds of services, from call
centers and accounting, to medical procedures and research and develop-
ment (R&D) activities of the world’s leading transnational corporations.96

The early twenty-first century saw the continuing development of these

global value chains (GVC), the production and distribution of goods and
services whose value is augmented across many jurisdictions, and the
appearance of the so-called platform economy, a digital host system that
provides a base for buying and selling goods or services, both of which
brought considerable changes to the structure of labour, unions, labour
relations, and the nature of work across the global economy. Both are
based on “digital technology” that “allows a greater dispersion of eco-
nomic activity and increases the ability of producers to reach ever-more
distant consumers,” effectively a liberation of commerce from the previ-
ous bonds of national geographies.97

96
G. Gereffi, ‘Global value chains in a post-Washington Consensus world,’ Review of
International Political Economy, 21: 1, 10 (9–37).
97
M. Kennya and J. Zysman, ‘The platform economy: restructuring the space of capitalist
accumulation,’ Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2020, 13, 56–57
(55–76). See also: G. Valenduc, ‘A historical perspective on the drivers of digital labour plat-
forms,’ in J. Drahokoupil and K. Vandaele (eds.), A Modern Guide to Labour and the Platform
Economy, Elgar Modern Guides, Monograph Book Oct. 2021.
202 G. TEEPLE

The world economy as defined by relations between states representing

national capital formations, as it was before the mid-twentieth century,
appears now more residual than real, with the state increasingly more ves-
tigial than essential. But the state and its national jurisdiction survive and
remain open to political influence and pressure, especially on questions of
the corporate privatization of all aspects of reproduction itself, not to men-
tion the regulation of environmental destruction, the health and safety of
workers and consumers, the management of the public debt. And for these
reasons it remains a barrier to continuing global corporate expansion.
Transnational corporations and their relations, however, appear as
ascendant and have become structured as a set of complex networks com-
prised of extensive global production and distribution chains that span the
world.98 It is this heterogeneous assemblage of corporate relations at the
supranational level that has made necessary a regulatory system outside
state jurisdictions, the RBIO. And just as capital in its early stages needed
to be represented by a state, the RBIO at the transnational level has devel-
oped mechanisms to act on behalf of the corporate sector, but also to
challenge the state as a real or potential barrier to capital accumulation.
The existence of the RBIO itself—with its extensive array of organizations,
agencies, informal policy forums, and regulatory systems, all outside the
jurisdiction of the national state—is testimony to the decline of state sov-
ereignty and the growing significance of transnational non-state authori-
ties regulating corporate rights in the global marketplace.

Arbitration
All the component agencies of the RBIO give primacy to the rights of
corporate private property over the state’s rights in their own specific ways
(via debt, currency devaluation, export-oriented economic policies, struc-
tural adjustment programmes and loans, corruption enabling99)

98
For an early collection on global regimes, see: M. W. Zacker with B. A. Sutton (eds.),
Governing global networks: International regimes for transportation and communications,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. For more recent studies, see: G. Gereffi,
J. Humphrey, and T. Sturgeon, ‘The Governance of Global Value Chains,’ Review of
International Political Economy, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2005; S. Vitali, Glattfelder J.B., Battiston S
(2011) ‘The Network of Global Corporate Control.’ PLoS ONE 6(10): e25995. https://
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025995.
99
C. Payer, Lent and Lost: Foreign Credit and Thirds World Development, London, Zed
Books, 1991; A. Ismi, ‘Impoverishing a Continent: The World Bank and the IMF in Africa,’
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 203

authorized by the state but ultimately suffered and paid for by the citi-
zenry. But there is another growing means to assert corporate rights over
the rights of states and individuals. It is the use of a quasi-legal means to
adjudicate disputes between states or corporations and between corpora-
tions and employees, consumers, and states. We are referring to arbitra-
tion, a mechanism to resolve disputes that arose from conflict over civil
rights, rights largely covered by contract and tort law,100 but outside
national justice systems.
Arbitration has a long history that dates from antiquity as a method to
resolve disputes mainly between merchants or other commercial interests,
but also periodically between states.101 The settlement of inter-corporate
disputes remains in wide use today, but it has also become increasingly
employed as a process for corporations to deal with employee and con-
sumer complaints—especially in the United States.102
Its widespread and growing use represents a significant shift from the
use of the national justice system; it calls into question the civil right to
one’s ‘day in court.’ It is not simply an alternative to an authoritative
national system of justice, but more a step towards the ‘privatization of the
justice system.’ Its employment is increasingly found in disputes concern-
ing all aspects of civil life from birth to daycare, school, job, and, finally,
the nursing home, including the commodity consumption of the com-
plete range of life’s necessities.
It means that corporations can circumvent the state legal system, the
result of long class struggles reflected in legal principles and practices.
Arbitration is in part intended to ‘insulate’ corporations from expensive
class-action lawsuits and in part to shield companies from liability for

Canadian Policy Alternatives, July 2004 [http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/

files/uploads/publications/National_Office_Pubs/africa.pdf].
100
Both contract and tort concern disputes over private property. A contract is an agree-
ment to exchange rights that are specified, and complaints arise when one or both sides fail
to meet the expectations of the exchange. A tort is a violation of an entity’s legal rights, for
which the complainant can sue for losses or damage. Both assume the equality of the parties
involved, which is never the case between corporations and consumers and/or employees,
but without equality, no justice. For a critical review of tort law, see: R. L. Abel, ‘Torts,’ in
D. Kairys (ed.), The Politics of Law, New York: Pantheon, 1982.
101
D. W. Rivkin, ‘The Impact of International Arbitration on the Rule of Law,’ Arbitration
International, Vol. 29, No. 3, 329–336 (327–360).
102
K. Stone and A. Colvin, ‘The Arbitration Epidemic: Mandatory arbitration deprives
workers and consumers of their rights.’ Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper,
December 2015.
204 G. TEEPLE

crimes of all sorts defined as torts and contract breaches.103 It performs

these tasks by constraining consumer challenges to unsafe products,
“predatory financing,”104 wage theft,105 job discrimination, and other
labour protections.
The ‘reform’ of tort and contract law to avoid liability and large jury
awards was highlighted by Powell in his memo to the American Chamber
of Commerce in 1971, which helped to spur this shift to arbitration. In
the 1980s, the US Supreme Court expanded the range of arbitration law
to encompass a large array of disputes between businesses and their con-
sumers and employees. It has become a widely used process that under-
mines or excludes the use of statutory and common law for the protection
of consumers and workers; in short, it overrides established legal rights and
practices.
Arbitration, moreover, is costly for plaintiffs who are consumers or
employees, although this characteristic is now not much different from the
state legal system in which the cost of lawyers and trials makes legal chal-
lenges no longer affordable for most citizens.106 The proceedings, more-
over, are generally confidential and often the results are not reported. The
decision is usually final with no right of appeal. The choice of the arbitra-
tors is limited and those chosen need not have regard for the law, legal
processes, or rules of evidence; it is a private affair.107 Whatever the faults
of the formal legal system, it at least has objective rules, regulations,

103
Because most corporate crime is defined as tort or breaches of contract, it allows for a
judicial contest between two unequal parties with a ‘remedy’ as monetary compensation and
no criminal record.
104
M. Hudson (ed.), Merchants of Misery: How Corporate American Profits from Poverty,
Munroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1996.
105
K. Bobo, Wage Theft in America, New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.
106
G. K. Hadfield, “The Price of Law: How the Market for Lawyers Distorts the Justice
System,” Michigan Law Review, Vol. 98, No. 4, February 2000 (953–1006); R. N Knake,
“Democratizing the delivery of legal services,” Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 73, Issue
1, 2012.
107
Most of these points are drawn from the New York Times series on arbitration: J. Silver-
Greenberg and R. Gebeloff, ‘Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice,’
November 1, 2015; ‘In Arbitration, a Privatization of the Justice System,’ November 2,
2015; November 15, 2015, ‘Efforts to Rein in Arbitration Come Under Well-Financed
Attack,’
See also: Stone and Colvin, ‘The Arbitration Epidemic,’ op. cit. ‘In the past three decades,
the Supreme Court [of the USA] has engineered a massive shift in the civil justice sys-
tem…’ p. 3.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 205

standards of procedure and judgement that serve as mandatory guidelines

for the judicial process and can be assessed in principle and practice.
Arbitration for corporations at the international level was initiated by
the International Chamber of Commerce in 1923, in the form of the
International Court of Arbitration, which reflected the large increase in
American foreign investment after World War I, and the need for a means
to exact compensation for the expropriation of foreign direct investments
given the lack of an international mechanism. After World War II, for simi-
lar reasons, the United Nations adopted a convention in 1959 obliging
state signatories to use arbitration for corporate-state disputes and to
enforce the awards.108 But the large increase in postwar foreign direct
investments by the United States required a more formal structure, and in
1966 international arbitration was made part of the World Bank Group,
with a Convention overseen by the International Centre for Settlement of
Investment Disputes (ICSID).
From that date, the use of this Convention grew rapidly to be ratified
by about 150 signatory nations in the early twenty-first century, and its
framework for ‘investor-state dispute settlement’ (ISDS) is now attached
to well over 3000 international treaties and other agreements. It can be
considered a central part of the RBIO, providing numerous advantages to
the many thousands of transnational corporations that make up the global
economy.
A large majority of the world’s nations have agreed to use these means
of adjudication for disputes between themselves as host nations and invest-
ing foreign corporations. But in this innocuous-sounding phrase there lies
a major shift in relations of global power. The foreign corporation has
achieved a legal status equal to that of the state, the corporation can chal-
lenge the sovereign rights of the state.109 But more than that, these ISDS
clauses place the corporation in a privileged position vis-à-vis the state, in
a process without accountability.
A short review of common criticisms. First, only foreign corporations can
sue host states under these clauses; there is no clause that gives domestic
corporations similar rights. Such a privilege does two things: it prejudices
108
The Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards or
sometimes called the New York Convention, 1959.
109
For a good review of the ISDS clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), see: S. McBride, ‘Reconfiguring Sovereignty: NAFTA Chapter 11 Dispute
Settlement Procedures and the Issue of Public-Private Authority,’ Canadian Journal of
Political Science, 39:4, 2006 (1–21).
206 G. TEEPLE

domestic firms, while at the same time it opens national economies to

foreign investment with unequal advantages. The effect is to promote a
global economy under the RBIO at the expense of national sovereignty
and domestic corporations and consumers.
Second, these dispute mechanisms comprise a procedure in an unde-
fined legal arena, which can be used only by one side: only the corporation
can sue and only the state can be found liable for damages. The state can-
not sue the corporation because it is not party to the treaty in which the
clause is found; the treaty is between states, not corporations. If the state
wants to sue the corporation it must do so in domestic courts under
domestic law, which generally does not happen because such a lawsuit is
one of the reasons for the ISDS clauses in treaties and it would be seen as
a deterrent to foreign investment. So, this is a dispute settlement system
designed exclusively for foreign corporations, in which only the corporate
plaintiff can ‘win’ the arbitral decision. If the lawsuit fails, that is, the state
is found not liable, the case is simply dismissed, although the state may
have to shoulder some of the costs.
Third, the remedy in a successful corporate lawsuit is usually a sum of
money. This means that in a corporate-designed transnational quasi-legal
procedure, foreign corporations can, with the state’s agreement, be
awarded state funds, which for the most part are the taxes from its citizens.
‘Public’ monies in the form of state assets are relinquished to a private
corporation for real or imagined losses due to political policies ostensibly
made in the name of the citizenry.
Fourth, the ISDS is not a neutral legal device: it has an effect on state
policy. While it does not directly impact public policy, it can inhibit changes
to programmes and laws that might precipitate lawsuits concerning per-
ceived or potential or possibly real discriminatory implications for the for-
eign investor. An electorate may vote for a government that promises
policy reform for public benefit, but if it is seen to prejudice the invest-
ments of the foreign corporation, the door is open to lawsuits. Policies
regarding state procurement, social programmes, public health and educa-
tion systems, expansion of the public sector, environmental protection,
respect for indigenous rights, labour rights, or domestic business, and so
on can be considered real or potentially ‘discriminatory’ policies.
Fifth, the ISDS has no relation to any democratic process. It takes no
account of the state that supposedly reflects the will of the people. It is
strictly a matter of civil rights held by transnational corporations, giving
them a primacy over political and social and state’s rights, not to mention
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 207

historical traditions and indigenous rights. Disputes are settled by a tribu-

nal of secretly selected arbitrators, after confidential deliberations, in an
arbitral process specifically designed to secure the confidence of foreign
investment, and so inherently biased in favour of foreign corporations.
Sixth, all the arbitrators here have a ‘conflict of interest’ because it is the
corporation that initiates the suit and chooses one arbitrator, a lucrative
position, hopefully, to be repeated if the decision is the ‘right’ one.
Arbitration law firms are now big business because the awards are substan-
tial and so too the legal fees.110 The state also chooses one arbitrator, but
it does not initiate the process and does not stand to gain from it.
Moreover, what it stands to lose has no implications for state officials, and
the ‘remedy’ of millions of dollars may be taken as a statement by a gov-
ernment that it is business-friendly to encourage foreign investment.
In general, the state ‘wins’ more cases than it loses, but this is not rel-
evant to the significance of the ISDS process. It is to privilege the transna-
tional corporation over the state, the global over the national, the private
over the public, and the exclusive over the inclusive.
As argued by many,111 the growing use of ISDS mechanisms and the
development of the RBIO has resulted in an unmistakable privatization of
authority in economic matters. That is, the decisions once made by the
state in the ‘national interest’ are increasingly made at the transnational
level by organizations, agencies, forums, and so on that represent transna-
tional capital and have no formal accountability to any electorate that in
any way resembles a democratic process. They represent the civil rights of
globe-straddling TNCs, which now institutionalized constitute forms of
privatized global governance, reducing actual state control and increasing
the impotence of liberal democracy. It is the growth of private authority
that is gaining priority over public authority.

110
P. Eberhardt and C. Olivet, ‘Profiting from injustice: How law firms, arbitrators and
financiers are fuelling an investment arbitration boom.’ Corporate Europe Observatory and
the Transnational Institute, Brussels/Amsterdam, 2012.
111
T. Biersteker and R. Hall, ‘Private authority as global governance,’ in R. Hall and
T. Biersteker (eds.) The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002; D Katsikas, ‘Non-state authority and global governance,’
Review of International Studies 36 (1), (113–135) 2010; C. Cutler, V. Haufler, and T. Porter
(eds.), Private Authority and International Affairs, New York: University of New York
Press, 1999.
208 G. TEEPLE

Conclusions
Our argument began with the set of rights associated with private property
in the era of mercantile capitalism. These rights were initially mainly civil
rights, which soon divided into individual and corporate civil rights. As
corporate rights, rights of collective private property, they provided vastly
greater power than individual civil rights, but they lacked representation
by overarching state powers. A relation grew between merchant capital in
need of the state for representation and capital mobilization and the abso-
lutist state in need of capital for loans and corporate taxes to finance its
wars and non-productive court life.
This reciprocity was beneficial to both sides: one became politically
absolute while the other became an ever larger and more powerful aggre-
gate of commercial power. Ultimately, however, capital found the arbi-
trariness of the absolutist state intolerable and through revolution or
negotiation overturned these states to create the modern state. From that
moment on the state became accountable to capital, until resistance from
small entrepreneurs and the nascent working class demanded a share of
institutionalized accountability.
Once represented by the state, capital grew more rapidly than previ-
ously, and the consequent expanding corporate competition became a
competition between states. The ensuing wars proved increasingly self-­
defeating, until the two World Wars of the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury demonstrated the utter destructiveness of competing national capitals,
suggesting that the power of capital had superseded its national definition.
This was the moment that capital had to move beyond its political shell to
continue to expand but now as capital without nationality. The regulatory
structure for corporate rights was moved to the transnational level, subor-
dinating state and national interests, to begin to transform the world into
a single unified market or set of global production chains.112 Overseeing
this developing global market was a framework or set of organizations run
according to the demands of capital accumulation.
After 1945, there was a continuous separation of corporate rights from
national controls. Corporations increasingly operated within a global
framework of rules and regulations that effectively and increasingly placed
them outside national jurisdictions, relatively free to accumulate on the

112
P. Andras, ‘Conceptual Aspects of Global Value Chains,’ The World Bank Economic
Review, 34 (3), 2020. 551–574.
 5 HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 209

global level. Individual civil, political, and social rights were confined to
the national and sub-national levels, and their limits were defined by the
overarching transnational framework.
Implied in this institutionalization of corporate civil rights at the global
level is a hierarchy of rights. This is an idea that is obscured by the casting
of human rights, as found in the UDHR and its two Covenants, as equal
and absolute, which precludes the notion of a hierarchy. The existence of
the RBIO, not to mention the state, however, points to the reality of hier-
archies of rights, and because rights are forms of power and control so too
are these hierarchies are structures of power and control. There are two
such rankings that we can point to, one is the relation between civil, politi-
cal, and social rights, and the other is the relation across different jurisdic-
tional levels.
Regarding the first hierarchy, civil rights are rights of private property,
and as argued, they were divided long ago into individual and corporate
civil rights. This division opened a difference in power between the corpo-
ration as accumulated capital versus individual capital, and also a differ-
ence in dynamics, given that corporate private property is defined by the
drive to accumulate and represents the very heart of capitalist develop-
ment. As the corporations grew, so too did their power in relation to
employees, consumers, and the state. This power enabled the corporate
sector to influence state policy and determine the political division and
distribution of the total social product. In other words, corporate civil
rights have all along been the main driver of economic growth and state
policy, subordinating political and social rights to the economic.113 Within
national jurisdictions, individual rights have been framed by corporate
rights; but civil, political, and social rights for individuals or ‘natural per-
sons’ could still be exercised by citizens to the extent that they are neces-
sary for the reproduction of the system and for national legitimacy. This
has given them a reality but only as circumscribed by the hierarchy of
rights from the individual to the state to the agencies of the global regime.
The other hierarchy pertains to the jurisdictional level of corporate civil
rights. Now embodied in global structures, these rights are positioned to
frame all civil, political, and social rights at the national and sub-national

113
People for the American Way Foundation, ‘The Rise of the Corporate Court: how the
Supreme Court is Putting Business First,’ Washington, DC: 2010 [https://www.pfaw.org/
press-releases/the-rise-of-the-corporate-court-how-the-supreme-court-is-putting-business-
first/].
210 G. TEEPLE

levels. It is a hierarchy that provides the RBIO with the power to exact
considerable conformity across a now global economy and to sanction
those nations and corporations that step outside its rules, its ‘borders.’
The post-World War II restructuring of the world, led by the United
States, transformed the history of national states and set the stage for a
single united world as marketplace, marked by preeminent transnational
corporations striving to complete this shift to the form of global value
chains and production networks outside state jurisdictions. This has not
happened, however, without ongoing contestation on every continent,
and resistance from China and Russia as forms of bourgeois nationalism as
the main barriers to US dominance.

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pone.0025995.
Vylegzhanin, A. N. et al., ‘The Term “Rules-based International Order” in
International Legal Discourse,’ Moscow Journal of International Law, No. 2.
(35–60) 2021.
Yanagihashi, H., A History of Early Islamic Law of Property, Leiden/Boston:
Brill 2004.
Zacker, M. W., with B. A. Sutton (eds.), Governing global networks: International
regimes for transportation and communications, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1996.
 CHAPTER 6

The Constitution

The history of modern liberal democratic constitutions began with the

struggle to secure restrictions to the powers of feudal monarchs. All the
early modern constitutions were born out of decades of conflict, centuries
for some, it could be argued. Ultimately, they were the product of the
conflict between feudal absolutism and private property and the need to
establish a change in political institutions consistent with the advance of
this new form of prevailing property. The first of these revolutions in the
Netherlands, England, the Thirteen Colonies, and France were all charac-
terized by somewhat different class alignments, yet all took place in the era
of mercantilism and declared the principles of private property to be the
foundation of their new constitutions.

The Constitution as a Site of Class Struggle

The coming of liberal democratic constitutions, however, did not end
political conflict. On the one hand, they put an end to, or compromised
with, feudal forms of rule, while on the other hand, they faced new antag-
onisms. Their continuing existence has stood as testimony to the need for
a means to institutionalize on-going conflicts inherent in the new system
of private property. The first set of struggles were for civil and political
rights and were won from monarchies in the name of private property
whose corporate bearers were integral to the new system. Private property,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 217

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_6
218 G. TEEPLE

however, brought its own conflicts that were the content of the second set
of struggles, now continuous; and they too were for civil and politi-
cal rights, but also social rights, largely for those without a stake in the
system yet nevertheless an essential part of it.1
The outcome of the first struggles against feudal absolutism was the
declaration of the rights of private property cast as if absolute and institu-
tionalized in the constitution as the repudiation of feudal absolutism and
as a set of foundational principles. The outcome of the second set of strug-
gles against the absolutism of private property was either the exacting of
political compromises (such as an expanded franchise and countervailing
rights) or the overturning of the system of private property (as in socialist
revolutions).
Evidence of these conflicts is embedded in the very principles and struc-
ture of all constitutions. The framing of these early modern constitutions
was about how to mitigate these conflicts, which were the subject of
lengthy constitutional debates, often spanning many years.2 The disputes
were over the content and structure of the new ruling institutions and the
constitution that was to outline their principles in abstract form: source of
authority, structure of governing, making and executing of laws, and pro-
cess of constitutional change. The different sides to these arguments rep-
resented the conflicting interests of various stakeholders in this system of

1
James Madison, one of the framers of the US Constitution, wrote: ‘the most common
and durable source of factions has been the various … and unequal distribution of property.’
James Madison, “The Federalist Papers.” In S. J. Hammond, K. R. Hardwick, H. L. Lubert
(eds.), Classics in American Political and Constitutional Thought. Indianapolis: Hackett
Press. 2007, p. 464.
2
W. U. Solberg, ‘The Genesis of American Constitutionalism,’ in W. U. Solberg (ed.), The
Federal Convention and the Formation of the Union of the American States, Indianapolis: A
Liberal Arts Press Book, 1958 (xii-cxvii); E. P. Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, The Struggle
for Equal Political Rights and Majority Rule During the American Revolution, University of
North Carolina Press, 1955; G. E. Aylmer, The Struggle for the Constitution, England in the
Seventeenth Century, London: Blandford Press, 1965; J. H Franklin (ed.), Constitutionalism
and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century, New York: Pegasus, 1969; G. Robertson, The
Levellers, The Putney Debates, London: Verso, 2018; J. Rees, The Leveller Revolution, London:
Verso, 2017; F. D. Warmuth, The Origins of Modern Constitutionalism, New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1949; M. Valensise, ‘The French Revolution in Prerevolutionary Debate,’ The
Journal of Modern History, Vol. 60, 1988, (22–57).
And the Dutch continue to debate theirs; among many other articles, see: J. Gerards, ‘The
Irrelevance of the Netherlands Constitution, and the Impossibility of Changing It,’ Revue
Interdisciplinaire D’Etudes Juridique, Vol. 77, No. 2, 2016 (1–30) [https://www.cairn.
info/revue-interdisciplinaire-d-etudes-juridiques-2016-2-page-207.htm#no1]
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 219

private property, but the views of those representing potentially the great-
est opposition—those with few or no material assets—were rarely
addressed, except as an obstacle to be circumvented.
The result of these debates was nevertheless the modern democratic
constitution, all of which came in the form of a pact defined by compro-
mises. All modern liberal democratic constitutions comprised structures
reflecting the concessions and trade-offs amongst the main private prop-
erty stakeholders and the need for preemptive mechanisms anticipating
demands from small proprietors and the unpropertied. They are the insti-
tutionalization of these struggles in the form of the principles and means
of governing a system of private property relations, and so are marked by
the contradictions of such a system.
Presented in the abstract and asserted as absolute, however, these gov-
erning principles, structures, and processes are difficult to see for what
they are. They are written in imperative sentences with an overarching
sense of authority. The reality, however, is that the exercise of these prin-
ciples and procedures is expressed through class relations that have pro-
duced extreme inequalities,3 incessant violations,4 and selective uses by
corporations, states, and NGOs.5 From the outset, moreover, liberal dem-
ocratic governments have never operated without widespread criminality,
corruption, and dishonesty.6 The constitution with its imperious tones and
grand assertions disguises the conflicting interests that define civil society
and the concessionary structures and defensive mechanisms that are
declared to be the political principles of liberal democracy. Nevertheless,

3
Oxfam: “Survival of the Richest: How Billionaires are Amassing Eye-Watering Wealth
Amid Crisis,” 16 January, 2023 https://www.oxfam.org/en/take-action/campaigns/
survival-of-the-richest.
4
J. Frapper, “Above the Law: Violations of International Law by the US Government
from Truman to Reagan,” in Crime and Social Justice, No. 21–22, International Lawlessness
and the Search for Justice, 1984 (1–36).
5
T. Ulltveit-Moe, “Amnesty International and Indigenous Rights: Congruence or
Conflict?” American Indian Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2006/2007 (717–742).
6
D. della Porta, A. Vannucci, Corrupt Exchanges, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1999;
M. K. Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America, Durham: Duke
University Press, 1998; G. Barak (ed.), Crimes by the Capitalist State, New York: State
University of New York Press, 1991; M. Halperin, R. Borosage, J. Berman, and C. Marwick
(eds.), The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, Penguin Books, 1976;
K. Gibbons and D. Rowat, Political Corruption in Canada: Cases, Causes and Cures, McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 1976; G. Myers, The History of Canadian Wealth, ….; G. Myers,
The History of Great American Fortunes, …; etc.
220 G. TEEPLE

the formal document is important as a measuring rod for assessing the

actions of the state and its legitimacy. It also defines the legal position and
powers of the working class in the form of the electorate and its range of
legitimate action in a repressive and exploitative system.

The Study of Constitutions

Constitutions, then, are a sort of riddle; they take an array of societal con-
tradictions, institutionalize their management, and then assert paradoxi-
cally that the governing process and its principles are absolute. It is because
of this incongruity that their meaning is to be found beneath the surface.
They have been studied since at least the time of Aristotle,7 but the various
approaches can be reduced to three main ways. One is to take constitu-
tions at face value and describe their principles and governing structures,
often making comparisons with others, highlighting the differences in
principles and practices.8 And at this level, we also find debates over the
meaning of concepts, the development of interpretations, and the original
intent of the framers.9 This is the necessary starting point of all constitu-
tional analysis, but on its own it does not provide an explanation of the
significance of constitutions—that is, why they exist and persist—and it
can leave the impression that the formalities of written constitutions reflect
the realities of governing.
A second approach introduces a critical element by studying the con-
trast between the formalities and the actual operation of government.10
This approach reveals the hypocrisy, deceit, and illegal actions of states and
produces a well-founded scepticism about the principles and meaning of
liberal democracy,11 but it does not produce an explanation as to why the

7
J. Frank, “Aristotle on Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law,” Theoretical
Inquiries in Law 8, no. 1 (January 2007): 37–50
8
These studies began with Aristotle but continue to be done in the form of complex
typologies and comparisons. See: A. Lijphart, ‘Typologies of Democratic Systems,’
Comparative Political Studies, v.1, n.1, April 1968. A. Lijphart, Democracies: Patterns of
Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1984.
9
A. L. Westin, ‘Introduction: Charles Beard and the American Debate Over Judicial
Review, 1790–1961,’ in C. A. Beard, The Supreme Court and the Constitution, Englewood
Cliffs N. J., 1962 (1912).
10
See Chap. 2, pages 14–15.
11
D. Rothe, State Criminality: The Crime of All Crimes, New York: Lexington Books,
2009; Wm. Chambliss, ‘State-Organized Crime – the American Society of Criminology
Presidential Address 1988,’ in Criminology, Vol. 27, Issue 2, May 1989 (183–208).
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 221

reality of governing is so out of keeping with its formality, and it can easily
lead to the conclusion that it is the shortcomings of humans in govern-
ment not the contradictions of the system reflected in the constitutions
that are the problem. It can also produce a degree of cynicism that can
inhibit further criticism and resistance.
There is a third way, namely constitutionalism, the essence of which can
be called Solon’s dilemma. Solon, it will be recalled, was invited in ancient
Athens by its aristocratic rulers in the early sixth century BCE to address a
potential civil war between its impoverished and indebted populace and
the clan oligarchs, now creditors.12 The immediate task was to mediate the
contradictory demands from both sides, and then to prescribe a system for
governing a marketplace society, characterized by the inherent and grow-
ing inequalities of private property. As such, the rich could remain rich and
their source of wealth, the poor, would not confront the perpetrators of
their poverty, and both could survive within the same socio-political unit.
Solon’s solution was an elaborate set of compromises required from both
sides, with a focus on degrees of debt relief and a differential set of voting
rights and eligibility rules for public office based on property qualifica-
tions. Such restraints on the power that flowed from accumulated wealth,
however, proved too difficult for the aristocratic rulers to accept, and after
a few years Solon’s reforms succumbed to the leadership of Peisistratus
and a return to the arbitrariness of private property.13
Here lies the meaning of constitutionalism: it is the notion that a con-
stitution comprises institutional arrangements that allow a contest over
the use of state power by sectors of accumulated wealth, yet imposes
restraints on the winner on its unrestricted exercise of power, while avert-
ing the possible assumption of power by those without wealth. The pur-
pose of this orchestration of interests was to maintain the legitimacy of a
system of inequality. In other words, constitutionalism amounts to restrict-
ing the exercise of divided powers of accumulated wealth, and to

12
Aristotle saw the issue as ‘a long struggle between the nobles and the common people’;
‘the many as slaves of the few’; ‘the people opposed to the nobles.’ Cited in J.R. Ellis and
G. R. Stanton, ‘Factional Conflict and Solon’s Reforms,’ Phoenix, Vol. 22, No. 2, Summer
1968, 96 (95–110).
13
A. French, ‘The Economic Background to Solon’s Reforms,’ The Classical Quarterly,
Vol. 6, No. 1–2, Jan.–Apr.,1956, (11–25). The Romans had more success with the Laws of
the 12 Tables (449 BCE), which served as the basis of their laws until assumed in the
Justinian Code of 534 CE.
222 G. TEEPLE

forestalling claims to power by those who create that wealth. These prin-
ciples and institutions allow existing property relations to persist but in a
modified fashion to maintain the system of exploitation without mutual
destruction or one side assuming open dictatorship over the other.14

Constitutionalism and the Necessity of ‘Noble Lies’

In short, constitutions arise in societies in which there is continuous con-
flict over the disposition of the total social product. They are necessary
because they comprise the codified principles, structures, mechanisms,
and devices that allow for the protection of the accumulation of wealth
and subordination of the producers, while appearing to be in the general
interest. To put it another way, they allow for the orderly contest over
power by those with a stake in the system while providing indirect barriers
to the assumption of power by those classes without a stake in the system.
The contemporary study of constitutionalism, then, leads to the examina-
tion of liberal democratic constitutions for the role they play in resolving
Solon’s dilemma in modern capitalist societies.15 That is, if Solon’s
dilemma was about mitigating the debt-related poverty of the productive
classes, today that dilemma is complicated by the need to reconcile a work-
ing class whose exploitation is the foundation of a system in which it has
no essential stake; it exists to be exploited and must fight for everything it
receives. By the late twentieth century, moreover, its exploitation became

14
This definition goes beyond most definitions of constitutionalism by adding constitu-
tional protection against those without a stake in the system, but this point is always at least
implicit in modern constitutions. J. H. Franklin, Constitutionalism and Resistance in the
Sixteenth Century, New York: Pegasus, 1969; and F. D. Wormuth, The Origins of Modern
Constitutionalism, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949; C. H. McIlwain, Constitutionalism
Ancient and Modern, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1940.
It must be noted that much of the large body of current literature on global constitutional-
ism does not go beyond the first method of studying constitutions as merely the formaliza-
tion of international laws into the form of a global ‘basic law’ or constitution. The concepts
of constitutionalization and constitutionalism, however, should not be confused or con-
flated; see, J. Habermas, ‘Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still have a
Chance?’ in his The Divided West, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006. The lack of distinction is
found in a review of this issue in C. Schwobel, ‘Situating the debate on global constitutional-
ism,’ International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 8, No. 3, 611–635.
15
A. Hamilton wrote: ‘In framing a government which is to be administered by men over
men, the greatest difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the
governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.’ Cited in Wormuth, op. cit., p. 3.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 223

the basis of an economic system that had outgrown its national politi-
cal shell.
This definition of constitutionalism, furthermore, implies the study of
the component parts of constitutions must include the cultivated or man-
ufactured beliefs that rationalize the increasingly self-evident contradic-
tions. The argument that political structures require a set of ideas to
rationalize them is at least as old as Plato’s Republic; here he writes that
the governing of the unequal structure of society he has outlined requires
a “convenient fiction,” or “a flight of invention,”16 that everyone, even the
rulers, would accept as plausible justification for the inequality. If initially
not everyone accepts these “fictions,” says Plato, subsequent generations
will and “finally the rest of mankind.” First comes the improprieties and
then the justifying myths or fabrications; later, there is little to suggest to
anyone, including leaders, that the role they play in governing structures
is anything but normal and merited. The ideological rationalization of the
inequalities of a system can arise by virtue of assuming that what is is the
truth, but justificatory ideas produced by conscious invention or manipu-
lation must be continuously perpetuated to maintain legitimacy.17
Our discussion will be restricted to the key elements of modern liberal
democracies, namely rights as human rights, sovereignty of the people, the
rule of law, the separation of powers, and the ‘new constitutionalism.’ All
of them operate as restraints on the rule by any particular sector of com-
petitive capital and on the possibility of rule by, for, and of the people, but
they are presented as the very essence of democracy. The operative con-
cept here is ‘competitive capital,’ the raison d’être of liberal democracy;
once it has moved beyond its competitive stage, as it must and has, the
rationale for liberal democracy comes to an end, with each particular state
moving through its own stages of demise.

16
These translations of the more common ‘noble lie’ more accurately convey Plato’s mean-
ing, according to the translator Francis Cornford. In so far as ‘noble lie’ conveys the sense of
a conscious deceit by someone, the translator makes a valid point; although Plato’s invention
of the allegory suggests such consciousness, the whole system can eventually come to believe
the lies, or rather, fictions. F. M. Cornford, The Republic of Plato, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1942; 103–104.
17
The first kind of rationalization is the object of analysis by Dorothy Ross, and the second
by S. M. Amadae. See: D. Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991; and S.M. Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, the Cold War
Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
224 G. TEEPLE

Rights as ‘Human’ Rights

The preamble to modern democratic constitutions, logically if not actu-
ally, is a declaration of the fundamental rights of individuals, but these are
rights belonging to a marketplace society, a source never mentioned, and
instead presented as inherently ‘human’ rights. The notion that members
of market societies possess the same individual exclusive rights, albeit
abstractly, is a powerful ideological unifier in a social formation character-
ized by conflict and inequality. These are rights, however, that are peculiar
to the marketplace and, moreover, it is in the exercise of these abstract
rights, particularly civil rights, that the inequalities arise. No one is born in
equal circumstances; from birth everyone faces unequal wealth and the
differential power that accompanies it. The possession of private property
is always unequal, and this inequality is the very source of its own continu-
ous unequal expansion.
The possession of equal abstract private property rights declared as uni-
versal disguises the reality of inequality that appears in their exercise.
Under the banner of universal inherent rights, everyone appears equal in
possessing the same abstract rights. But no one is equal in actual posses-
sions, and the associated unequal powers provide privileges for some at the
expense of others. Proclaimed abstract universalism is difficult to see
through when all citizens actually do possess equally the full range of civil
rights as abstractions, but these rights can only be meaningful rights when
exercised, and this one can do only to the extent of one’s wherewithal,
which, moreover, perpetuates and expands the inequality. The employ-
ment contract affords a good example of the exchange of equal rights,
wages for labour-time, that ends in inequality. Marx argues that there is no
injustice in this exchange of equal value for equal value, but the net benefit
of surplus labour-time goes to one side, the employer, the owner of the
means of production.18
Because private property is the foundation of the system and the prin-
ciples of its operation, it cannot be allowed to be understood as the basis
of systemic inequalities. For this reason, liberal democratic constitutions
contain assumptions or often explicit assertions about the roots of their
principles as inherent in the very nature of the human. Bits and pieces of
social contract theory and notions of natural law, for example, often find
their way into constitutions, providing an appeal to a past mythical natural
state of being that is surprisingly like that in a marketplace society even

18
K. Marx, Capital, op. cit., p. 301.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 225

though no such state of nature has ever been recorded. But nature is taken
as an absolute, an unchanging state of being, and it follows that if we natu-
rally exist as so many independent competitive and combative embodi-
ments of private property, then it seems obvious that the kind of
government such as we have is necessary. All the principles and institutions
defined in constitutions are seen as natural and necessary.
For similar reasons, the rights of private property are not presented as
the product of the marketplace. They are ‘converted’ into what are
declared to be the rights of humans, and if they are human rights then they
must be universal as well, which is self-evidently untrue as any cursory
study of non-market social formations past or present will attest. It is true
that a marketplace society socializes its members in its own image as the
bearers or possessors of exclusive rights that mirror corporate entities, and
that such societies have come to dominate the world, but that does not
make such rights into human rights, rights inherent in humans, or make
them universal. All social formations are marked by their particular rights,
their property relations, but they are as variable as the modes of produc-
tion and moments in history that they reflect. And so it is with the capital-
ist mode of production and the declaration of its rights as universal human
rights in 1948.
To assert that rights, which are always historically particular, are rights
that are deemed inherently human and therefore universal is self-evidently
untenable and unverifiable, but nevertheless such beliefs are widely
accepted and deeply held. That these rights are asserted as human rights is
a convenient fiction for the affirmation of particular rights replete with
contradictions as if universal and absolute. Such assertions, moreover,
inhibit, restrict, and discourage critical thinking about the nature of these
rights that are fundamental to the modern constitution and the source of
economic and social inequalities.
This leap in logic—making a particular into a universal—provides an
insight into the nature of ideology. To label these rights human rights is to
take what exists (i.e., private rights in marketplace societies) and parade
them as if the essence of the human, to make a historical particular into a
transhistorical universal. It is very difficult to grasp such ideological beliefs
when our socialization and the experience of everyday life provide so few
alternatives to market relations.
The God Allusion. There is another way in which the authors of modern
liberal democratic constitutions have attempted to cast the constitution or
its fundamental rights as a sort of eternal verity, an enduring document
with immutable principles. This impression is achieved by the inclusion of
226 G. TEEPLE

an implication or assertion that a ‘god’19 has in some way sanctified the

document, that there is a transcendent authority infused in the constitu-
tion or its foundation implying a legitimacy from beyond the authors and
the system and era of its formulation. There are over 40 nations that
invoke the presence of a god in the preambles of their constitution, and
more that make some official mention of a god in a national anthem or
pledge or declaration or perfunctory opening prayers in schools or gov-
ernment proceedings, or on forms of currency, all in aid of pretending that
there is a ‘higher’ source of the principles and practices of liberal demo-
cratic governing.
Modern liberal democratic constitutions, crafted by fractions of a par-
ticular class with their own interests in mind, in the absence of other classes
and strata, often make references to a god to sanctify a particular version
of ‘earthly’ rule. The reference is a pretence that the laws made in the
interests of a certain class, by mortals with particular interests, are god-­
given or god-sanctioned, that they embody a sort of cosmic or transcen-
dent approval that goes beyond existing political, economic, and social
relations.
The god allusion also promotes the conviction that the constitution,
because it is sanctified, is eternal and not subject to change save for excep-
tional reasons. The implication that otherworldly authorities endorse the
constitution also helps to inhibit criticism of real-world political practices
by placing the focus on politicians as the problem and not the consecrated
constitution. Such is the role of a god in constitutionalism; it provides the
temporal, mundane, contradictory, and partisan governing arrangements
with a legitimacy that for believers cannot be more authoritative.

19
The term ‘god’ is used in the lower case because that is the reference to the concept of
god; the upper case would denote a specific god or gods or imply a one and only god or gods.
It is worth pointing out that none of the sects that comprise the major religions agree on the
nature their gods; and all of them consider their god or gods to be the one and only; in other
words, any argument for an upper case ‘God’ will have its difficulties.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins with “Canada is founded upon
principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” What this means is
anyone’s guess, but it is not dissimilar to other constitutional references to a god, which are
uniformly and appropriately nebulous. The German Basic Law is likewise vague; its Preamble
begins: “Conscious of their responsibilities before God and Man ….” Just which god and
responsibilities the German authors had in mind are not specified.
A. Sandstrom, ‘God or the divine is referenced in every [US] state constitution,’ [https://
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/17/god-or-the-divine-is-referenced-
in-every-state-constitution/].
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 227

What is more, the reference to a god or monarch in a constitution is a

clear violation of democratic principles; that they remain in many constitu-
tions today is due to the fact that they serve a purpose. They create an
implicit mindset that the ultimate authority is otherworldly, a power
beyond the presumed sovereign in liberal democracies, the citizen partici-
pants. They undermine the democratic impulse that is present in liberal
democracies. Reverence or respect for a god or monarch in politics dis-
guises the people’s own political impotence.

Popular Sovereignty, or the Contradiction Implicit

in All Liberal Democratic Constitutions

A notable authority on constitutions, A. V. Dicey, defines them as outlin-

ing “all rules which directly or indirectly affect the distribution or the
exercise of the sovereign power in the state.”20 The issue of sovereignty
remains one of the unresolved dilemmas in liberal democratic theory, or
perhaps it is better understood as ignored rather than uncertain because
the operating assumption in international affairs is that the state itself is
the sovereign. But this is not how most liberal democratic constitutions
define the issue. The problem concerns the location of the ultimate source
of power and authority in modern constitutions. There is no single answer
because some existing constitutions point to a monarch, and some give
arbitrary powers to the executive or legislature, although the majority
claim the people or citizenry. In a modern industrial society free of past
political encumbrances, in which to be an active participant is to be a per-
son, a legal entity and sovereign individual, the assumption is that the
people as the aggregate of persons is the first and final authority, the heart
of popular sovereignty in a modern liberal democracy.
In most republican or representative systems, which are the quintes-
sential form of modern liberal democracy, this point is made explicitly:
sovereignty is said to reside in the people, that is, the ‘will of the people’ is
taken to be the first and final authority underlying the constitution. The
Constitution of the Fifth French Republic, for example, reads: “All sover-
eignty stems from the people.” The German Basic Law states: “All state
authority is derived from the people.” And in the Constitution of Japan,
we find: “The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the unity

20
A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics. 1982 (1915), p. cxl.
228 G. TEEPLE

of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom
resides sovereign power.” However simple and assertive these statements
may appear, this is where the difficulties begin. The authority underlying
the constitution (the ‘will of the people’) is separate from the power of the
legislature (the ‘will’ of the elected). To put it another way, liberal demo-
cratic constitutions give the legislature the power to change the constitu-
tion whose authority in the people lies outside the legislature; or another
way, the power of the legislature to change the constitution is separate
from the authority that underlies it.21 Authority here we take to mean the
power arising from the people by virtue of the fact that a truly demo-
cratic government can only ever be government of the people and there-
fore legitimate only to the degree that it is responsible to the people or is
their direct voice. Power, by contrast, is merely the ability to act, legiti-
mately or not.
The purported way around this contradiction in constitutions is usually
stated soon after the assertion of popular sovereignty. As the German Basic
Law puts it, this authority “shall be exercised by the people through elec-
tions and other votes and through specific legislative, executive and judi-
cial bodies.” Indeterminate wording to be sure, but this is not an
uncommon way for constitutions to address the contradiction—voting by
the electorate for representatives to state bodies is the supposed voice of
the people implying a transfer of authority. But unlike most other consti-
tutions, the German constitution gives the game away when it then states:
“The legislature shall be bound by the constitutional order, the executive
and the judiciary by law and justice.” In other words, there may be elec-
tions, but the legislature is not bound by the people who have exercised
their sovereignty through elections; the legislature is not bound by a
responsibility to the electorate. Once this sovereignty is supposedly trans-
ferred to the legislature, the people are no longer sovereign.
Stated or not, all liberal democratic constitutions are marked by this
contradiction and its alleged resolution: the ostensible sovereignty of the
people as the authority underlying the constitution is contradicted by the
power of the legislature, but supposedly remedied by elections. A brief
review of the electoral process, the apparent exercise of sovereignty, will
suffice to undermine this convenient fiction. First, the alleged transfer of
sovereignty takes place only at the time of election, but once that is over,
sovereignty is transformed into the exclusive preserve of the legislature or
21
Posed slightly differently, these questions are raised by K.C. Wheare, Modern
Constitutions, London: Oxford University Press, 1966: Chap. 4.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 229

executive. Second, elections are infrequent and so the purported exercise

of this sovereignty is similarly infrequent, and non-existent for the elector-
ate in between times. Third, very few modern liberal democratic constitu-
tions oblige elected representatives to represent their constituencies. For
example, the principle of “imperative mandate” is rarely found in constitu-
tions; and if there are questions on this point, the European Union forbids
such an obligation in member state constitutions, and of course in the
European Parliament.22 Fourth, the electoral process amounts to the
choosing between different political parties and candidates over which the
electorate has had no choice. In effect, elections are the transformation of
the people’s sovereignty into the sovereignty of the parties and their
selected representatives; there is no sovereignty of the people exercised
over the formation of parties, or their platforms, or the selection of their
representatives. Fifth, it is possible that there may be no parties that repre-
sent certain key interests in civil society, and it is also possible that all the
parties might have more or less the same policies—situations that imply
that choice is an illusion. Sixth, it is possible for an individual or party to
be elected by a minority of the pertinent electorate or by a minority of the
votes cast or both. Seventh, in some jurisdictions there exists the right of
recall of an elected official, a democratic principle, but the process is usu-
ally made very difficult and subject to financial interference; in the end,
this right is no solution to the contradiction at issue. Eighth, the right of
a referendum is not to be dismissed, but it usually leaves the people with
little or no say over the issues at stake, the questions asked, the subsequent
campaign, the interpretation of the results, or the influence of money
involved. Ninth and last, there is, for the most part, no democracy in the
workplace; one’s livelihood and one’s main link to society by means of
employment is carried out under a corporate dictatorship. The electoral
process can have some indirect effect on the workplace through public
policy, but in liberal democracies sovereignty in the workplace remains by
and large in corporate hands. Employers do not hire citizens, they hire
workers.23

22
It must be noted that the prohibition of the “imperative mandate” in the EU and mem-
ber states is to relieve the representative of all responsibility to constituents, leaving the rep-
resentative with power but no authority and the constituent with no representation. The
representatives of the people can act without regard for the interests of the people who they
purportedly represent. M. Tomba, “Who’s Afraid of the Imperative Mandate?” Critical
Times, Vol. 1 (1), April 2018 (108–119).
23
J. W. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: alienation and the labour process, Scarborough,
ON, Nelson, 2006; R. Kazis and R.L. Grossman, Fear At Work, Job Blackmail, Labor and the
230 G. TEEPLE

All these arguments can be expanded, and there are more that could be
added, as we will do in subsequent chapters, but here they suffice to make
the point that the claimed link between the authority of the people as
sovereign and the power of elected bodies of government is tenuous.
Elections and their results can be seen as ‘a flight of invention,’ as Plato
put it, about this transfer of authority to the exercise of state power. From
the perspective of ruling agencies, they are understood more like polling
results than a transfer of sovereign power from the people.
Why does this contradiction not find a resolution in liberal democratic
constitutions? The answer rests on the nature of a capitalist society, the
foundation of the liberal democratic state. Given that the operative prin-
ciple of this society is private property—meaning that we exercise civil and
political rights as persons, as embodiments of private, exclusive rights—
our atomized, competitive, individualistic, antagonistic wills represent the
nature and amount of our assets. The citizenry, then, adds up to an aggre-
gation of exclusive units, without integrity or coherency: the people as an
integrated collectivity is a fiction in this system. It follows that the author-
ity of the people cannot exist as such; there are only diverse competitive
interests that are held together by the prevailing property relations, trans-
formed into the laws of the state. There is no ‘general will’: what is general
is the atomized individual will corresponding to exclusive rights and the
framework of private property relations, contractual relations. It is because
of this structure of property relations that political parties and their con-
trol of the legislature are necessary to provide a certain coalescence of
antagonistic interests and are empowered to change the constitution with-
out responsibility to the electorate.
Political participation in liberal democracies according to the principle
of ‘one person one vote’ affirms the atomized nature of the electorate and
contributes to the maintenance of the people as a plurality, a mere sum of
the parts without integrity, rather than as a collectivity with a unity of
interests. This official, constitutionally guaranteed process of political par-
ticipation limits participation to indirect ways and inhibits collective action
by providing a supposed democratic principle that precludes the collective
expression of common interests and confirms the necessity of political par-
ties to consolidate the purported disparate individual interests of the
electorate.

Environment, New York: Pilgrim Press, 1982.

 6 THE CONSTITUTION 231

This electoral principle of liberal democracy does not mean that there
cannot be a coalescing of the electorate or parts of it. Despite the structure
of atomized political participation, there regularly arise expressions of
unity in different sectors of civil society. Protest movements against state
actions or policies, social movements for broader policy change, trade
union organizing and strikes, general work stoppages, cooperation in food
production and distribution, demands for an array of countervailing
rights, and so on are all part of working class and other class and strata soli-
darity actions. These are matters of regular occurrence in modern liberal
democracies,24 although certainly not well reported. Although these
expressions of a genuine ‘general will’ amongst the productive classes are
on-going and an abiding threat to the system, they cannot be expressed
within the formal structures of liberal democracy, and so they often find
expression in extra-parliamentary and extra-legal ways. When the expres-
sion of the integrity or solidarity of the electorate threatens the mainstay
of the system, capital accumulation, such collective action is suppressed
through legal/police measures or sheer coercion or institutionalization in
legal structures and procedures. The long struggle for trade union rights
and its institutionalization as industrial relations provide the most obvious
examples of the ways in which collective action on the part of the elector-
ate, outside formal democratic processes, has been dealt with.
Sovereignty of the People as Convenient Fiction. There is then a problem
with the concept of popular sovereignty and its expression in liberal
democracies. The idea of sovereignty, whatever its appearance,25 cannot in
truth be anything but the sovereignty of the people. And to be legitimate,
power must rest on the authority of the people. And yet, whatever the
form of government, it is always the exercise of power over a people. In
other words, some other source of authority always seems to underlie this
power. We have shown, moreover, that the people in republican systems
are defined as clusters of atoms without integrity or a ‘general will,’ and
without viable formal mechanisms to exercise sovereignty even if it existed.
Furthermore, to define the electorate as aggregates of persons obscures
the fact that what appears as a plurality in the political domain is, in the
real-world, a number of classes with degrees of class consciousness, in par-
ticular a working class that is increasingly aware that it has no stake in the
system and no formal way to express its growing actual collective will

24
That is whether it is expressed as general strikes or demonstrations or simply voting.
25
That is, as the ‘people,’ parliament, monarch, dictator, emperor, or a god.
232 G. TEEPLE

within constitutional mechanisms. The people as sovereign in liberal

democracies is a fiction, but for the sake of the system the people must be
kept believing it.
A more obviously fictional location of sovereignty is in those modern
constitutional monarchies in which the monarch continues to be defined
as sovereignty incarnate. Here political accountability is not to the citi-
zenry but to a monarch and ultimately a god; sovereignty is reduced to the
principle of arbitrariness.26 But even though sovereignty can be alienated
in the person of a monarch, monarchs can only be sovereigns insofar as
they represent the unity of the nation. It is an absurdity to imagine a mon-
arch (or dictator) standing as the ‘nation’ outside the people who com-
prise the nation; a monarch can only be but the symbol, the representation
of the nation as a whole. National sovereignty exists by virtue of the peo-
ple who comprise the nation, and so a monarch as sovereignty incarnate
cannot exist except as an existing ‘untruth,’ a fiction, but nonetheless an
existing fiction. That monarchs can and do have sovereignty in nations
with capitalist modes of production attests, among other things, to the
fact that civil society is maintained as a sphere of disunities. But the persis-
tence of monarchies parading as democracies in capitalist economies points
to the disguised nature of sovereignty in all democracies.
If a monarch cannot be a sovereign incarnate except as a falsehood, and
the people as sovereign in republican systems is a fiction because the peo-
ple are atomized as persons and by the ‘one person one vote’ principle that
ensures there is no collective will, then, what exactly is the ultimate source
of the first and final authority in liberal democracies and where does it lie?
To put it another way, what is it that is sovereign?
What is sovereign in all social formations is the prevailing property rela-
tions. It is only when those relations are characterized by irresolvable con-
tradictions producing social antagonisms, as in marketplace societies,
however, that they require a concrete embodiment for their representation
and enforcement (Chap. 3). In modern liberal democracies, sovereignty
then is the sovereignty of private property; and the property form that
prevails in capitalist society is corporate private property, that is, accumu-
lated private property imbued with the power of ownership of the means
of production, whose concrete form is the corporation. On a small scale,
this sovereignty can be seen as that of the corporation over the workplace

26
Even where monarchs are merely a symbolic head of state, they may well have reserve
powers or powers resting on past veneration that can be used at certain times, and in their
use there is a degree of functional sovereignty.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 233

and the market over the distribution of goods and services; at the national
and global scales, sovereignty lies with the power of the most powerful
sectors of capital and their organizations over individual states.
Because corporate private property has its own internal conflicts and is
continuously challenged by its nemesis, the unpropertied, these property
relations must be generalized and objectified in an authoritative and over-
arching form, which is found in the structures and agencies of the state
and is abstractly outlined in constitutions. The exercise of ‘really existing
sovereignty’ is done informally, and usually behind closed doors by corpo-
rate agencies through political parties, politicians, and by means of regular
private meetings, lobbying, ‘revolving door’ appointments, bribery,
threats, campaign donations, state indebtedness, and so on.27 Political cor-
ruption has always existed.28
The British assertion of ‘parliamentary supremacy’ seems to preclude
the idea of the sovereignty of the people, but the claims that parliament is
elected and therefore represents the people appear to offset such a conclu-
sion.29 This notion, however, is no more valid for the British than for any
liberal democracy.30 The British Parliament is only sovereign insofar as it
reflects the prevailing corporate demands. The authoritative exclusion of
the “imperative mandate” for all European Union member states is ample
testimony to the validity of this point. Sovereignty in liberal democracies,
or the authority underlying a self-governing state, lies in the entity that

27
P. Geoghegan, Democracy For Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics, London: Head of
Zeus, 2020; Transparency International, ‘Cabs for Hire:’ Fixing the Revolving Door
Between Government and Business’. 2010. https://www.transparency.org.uk/publica-
tions/cabs-hire-fixing-revolving-door-between-government-and-business.
28
M. I., Finley, Politics in the Ancient World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983; C. Eyre, ‘Patronage, Power, and Corruption in Pharaonic Egypt,’ International
Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 34, No. 11, 2011(701–711).
29
C. F. Strong, Modern Political Constitutions, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1958: 220.
30
K.C. Wheare, op. cit., writes about the Irish attempt in 1937 to promulgate a new con-
stitution when they introduced “a law-giver which was – and is – unknown to British law,
namely the people.” p. 54. Legally speaking, the Irish would have had to resort to the
authority of the British Parliament or the Queen in Council for a new constitution. In the
end, the Irish parliament drew up a constitution, submitted it to a referendum, and then
declared it to be the will of the people. This is how most republican constitutions have been
born, but not Canada, which dutifully requested the British Parliament to legislate its new
1982 Constitution, and it remains a “constitutional monarchy.”
234 G. TEEPLE

maintains and advances the prevailing corporate interests, without which

there is no national economy and therefore no national state.31
It is possible to have authority without power, and power without
authority, as is the case in liberal democracies in which the people have
nominal authority in constitutions but not the power to change them.
And the legislature has the power to change the constitution but not
directly the authority. Legislative authority is indirect and presumed,
ostensibly lying in the fiction that legislatures represent the people (see
above and Chap. 8). Once promulgated the constitution establishes the
process of change as a legislative matter outside the authority of the peo-
ple. Legally, the people can demand change only by means of their repre-
sentatives, who have no legal responsibility to their constituents.

The Meaning of Rule of Law

In The Law of the Constitution, Dicey opens his chapter on “The Rule of
Law” with this assertion: “This authority of the state or the nation was
during the earlier periods of our history represented by the power of the
Crown.” “This royal supremacy has now passed into [the] sovereignty of
Parliament”32 (emphases added). “The principle of Parliamentary sover-
eignty means … that Parliament has … the right to make or unmake any
law whatever.” To be very clear, he writes: “an absolutely sovereign legis-
lature … cannot be bound by any law.”33 He is discussing Britain, but the
argument holds for the coming of the early liberal democracies. If previ-
ously the crown was the sovereign and the source of law, whose content
was feudal privilege, the bourgeois revolutions changed the location of
sovereignty and the content of law. Now, it was to be parliament (the leg-
islature) that ostensibly was sovereign and its statutes the main source of
law; and the content of law was, as argued earlier, the prevailing property
relations, that is, private property, although this was taken for granted and
cast as the rights of man.
Whether modern law is understood as common law or statute law or
codified law, its origin is the same. They are all born of the marketplace,

31
Transparency International, EU Office 2016 [https://transparency.eu/wp-content/
uploads/2016/10/TIE-003-16_web.pdf]; Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘Revolving
Door Watch,’ [https://corporateeurope.org/en/revolvingdoorwatch].
32
Dicey, Op. cit., 107.
33
Dicey, Op. cit., 3, 4, and 80.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 235

which is the defining characteristic of civil society; and all participants in its
reproduction are also defined by private property, personified as natural or
juridical persons, and their relations are contractual.34 The concept that
captures the idea of a competitive and overarching system of private prop-
erty, formalized as law and promulgated and administered by government
underscoring its component essential rights, is the rule of law,35 which
comprises the principles of the application of law but not its content.
The historical significance of the rule of law is that it makes the mem-
bers of the system and its government accountable to a set of legal prin-
ciples. It stands as the antithesis to the arbitrariness and absoluteness of
feudal monarchies, master/servant relations, slavery, and other forms of
arbitrary rule. It is the all-embracing principle that asserts that all are sub-
ordinate and accountable to the law that is formulated within the frame-
work of some form of non-arbitrary governance. The structure and limits
of this subordination and accountability comprise the principles of the rule
of law.36

34
D. P. Kehoe and T. McGinn. Ancient Law, Ancient Society. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2017, https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.3998/
mpub.9374271. See also: H. Maine, Ancient Law, New York: Henry Hold and Co, 1906;
and G. Heiman, Otto Gierke: Associations and Law, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1977.
35
While the origin of the term, rule of law, is usually understood as British, the German
concept of ‘Rechtsstaat’ can be read as very close in meaning. See: F. Neumann, “Rechtsstaat,
the Division of Powers and Socialism,” in K. Tribe (ed.), Social Democracy and the Rule of
Law, London: Allen and Unwin, 1987 (66–74); O. Kirchheimer, ‘The Rechtsstaat as Magic
Wall,’ in K. H. Wolff and B. Moore (eds.), The Critical Spirit, Essays in honor of Herbert
Marcuse, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968, 287–8, (287–312); see also, W. Friedman, Legal
Theory, London: Stevens and Sons, 1949: 384.
36
It is often argued that the rule of law guarantees the rights of individuals in opposition
to the state. This understanding of the rule of law fits with the struggle against arbitrary
forms of rule, in particular pre-modern forms in which the state has interests of its own, but
the modern state is a creature of corporate private property, and its task is to protect this form
of property from individual rights and/or socialized rights. The only time that corporations
need protection from the state is when they have gained a monopoly position deleterious to
social reproduction or when they threaten systemic legitimacy by their lawlessness. The
majority electorate as the working class, however, needs to protect itself from the state that
represents corporate interests; and this has amounted to an on-going struggle within the
system fighting for voting rights and as large a range of social rights as possible regarding
healthcare, education, pensions, housing, wages, and trade union rights, all countervailing
rights. For the working class, the rule of law is needed to defend its struggle for these coun-
tervailing rights. For these struggles the rule of law is very important for the protection of
legal principles and rights in opposition to corporate and state arbitrariness.
236 G. TEEPLE

Liberal democratic constitutions generally claim or at least imply the

rule of law as their primary principle, whether formally declared or not. In
theory, it assumes law to be the product of political processes and subject
to analysis for internal consistency and compatibility with the principles of
the marketplace. The rule of law provides a framework for the decisions
and actions of citizens and elected officials, and in so doing it precludes
the exercise of privilege and guarantees the preeminence of legal rights.
Despite its constitutional importance, the rule of law lacks a comprehen-
sive definition with wide consensus and continues to be the subject of
considerable debate. The definition that follows is a composite from sev-
eral sources;37 nevertheless, the principles outlined here are, we sug-
gest, commonly accepted components.
Perhaps the most frequently cited of these principles is that no one is
above the law. That is, there are no special statuses that allow individuals
in whatever capacity not to be prosecuted for their transgressions. In prac-
tice, however, heads of state,38 members of government, corporate execu-
tives, police, military personnel, the rich and privileged, professionals,
religious functionaries, and sundry notables are all regularly granted
degrees of immunity or impunity from prosecution in all nations. The
degree of relief is usually granted informally and depends on many factors,
but the point is that the abstract equality of legal personhood and subor-
dination to the rule of law does not translate into equality in the real
world. The belief in equality before the law, however, is an important
bulwark for the legitimacy of a legal system upholding unequal economic
relations.
Despite this claim for the rule of law, from the point of view of the non-­
privileged, the law is exercised regularly in an unquestionably biased man-
ner. Workers, women, trade unions, indigenous peoples, minority groups,
critics, dissidents, in effect any person or marginal subsector of society
outside established circles, find that their experience of the supposed

37
Among other sources, see: Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, op.cit.; and W. Friedman,
Legal Theory, op. cit.
38
E. TarBush, ‘Immunity and Impunity: Personal Immunities and the International
Criminal Court,’ [https://globaljustice.queenslaw.ca] 24 June 2020. Similarly, state actions
are supposedly subordinate to international law, but see: M. Mandel, How the US gets away
with murder: illegal wars, collateral damage, and crimes against humanity, Pluto Press 2005.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 237

equality of the law can easily become so oppressive as to deny their very
membership in society.39
A closely related tenet is that all citizens are subject to the ordinary laws
and, it follows, susceptible to the jurisdiction of ordinary tribunals and
ordinary punishments. These two principles are intended to ensure that
everyone is treated equally before the law and under the same legal proce-
dures, precluding other judicial procedures, such as, ad hoc or kangaroo
courts (unofficial courts for specific persons or crimes), administrative
courts (tribunals under administrative law), military courts (for transgres-
sions of military orders or of civilian law by military personnel), “star
chambers” (secret or in-camera judicial proceedings), or religious courts
(subject to interpretations of religious doctrine) that would constitute
unequal and therefore unfair treatment. It goes without saying that
extraordinary courts would involve extraordinary sanctioning or punitive
measures. While examples of these extraordinary judicial practices can be
found across liberal democracies,40 even the practice of ordinary laws,
courts, and punishments often vary well beyond the ordinary.41
Even the use of official trial procedures began to succumb decades ago
to the adoption of plea-bargaining, which now can be found in most juris-
dictions around the world.42 Expediency and the presumption of guilt
have begun to mark judicial systems and eclipse due process and the pre-
sumption of innocence.43

39
See, e.g., E. Hilton and D. Cook, ‘The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A
Historical Overview,’ Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 4, 2021 (261–286); J. Sangster, ‘
“We No Longer Respect the Law”: the Tilco Strike, Labour Injunctions, and the State,’
Labour/Le Travail, Vol 53, 2004 (47–88);
40
With respect to the USA, see: B. Olshansky and the Center for Constitutional Rights,
Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy, New York:
Seven Stories Books, 2002.
41
See, for example, the state persecution of Julian Assange. N. Melzer, The Trial of Julian
Assange: A Story of Persecution, London: Verso, 2022.
42
M. Langer, ‘Plea Bargaining, Conviction Without Trial, the Global Administration of
Criminal Convictions,’ Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 4, 2021 (377–411); see also:
‘The shadow justice system: the global spread of plea-bargaining,’ and ‘A deal you can’t
refuse: Plea-bargaining,’ The Economist, Vol. 425, Nov. 11, 2017.
43
S. J. Schulhofer, ‘Plea Bargaining as Disaster,’ The Yale Law Review, Vol. 101: 1979;
J. H. Langbein, ‘Torture and Plea Bargaining,’ in University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 46,
3 1978: 3–22; M. Yant, Presumed Guilty: when innocent people are wrongly convicted,
New York: Prometheus Books, 1991.
238 G. TEEPLE

Trial by jury is another right often found under the rubric of the rule of
law. It arose in antiquity in some Greek city states44 and in Rome in
response to arbitrary rule and to offset the biases present in the actions
and decisions of rulers who often combined the roles of judge, jury, and
executioner. While it used to be employed frequently in common law
systems,45 it is giving away in part to the use of plea-bargaining and in part
to arbitration, but in civil law systems as in Europe trial by jury has been
always infrequent because the legal system has been largely a question of
prosecution and administration by a specialized body in the bureaucracy
trained in law and legal processes.46
Another precept of the rule of law is the independence of the judiciary,
that is, independence from the elected executive and from financial con-
siderations to avoid corruption. This issue is discussed in Chap. 9, but for
now, it is obvious that this principle is more honoured in the breach than
in the practice. In almost every nation, with the notable exception of most
American states and a few other but minor instances, judges are appointed
by the executive branch,47 that is, either by a politically partisan executive
or a department of the permanent executive. For the most part, then, the
process of judicial appointment is rarely free of bias, reflecting the political
party in power or the conservatism of the upper reaches of state bureau-
cracies, and the chosen candidate usually comes with a clear record of
compliance with the decisions and processes of the mainstream legal sys-
tem. Critics and radicals need not apply.

44
C. Carey, I. Giannadaki, B. Griffith-Williams, Use and Abuse of Law in the Athenian
Courts, Brill 2018.
45
R. Burns, The Death of the American Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
46
When the British government arbitrarily abolished “trial by jury” for many legal charges
in 1977, E. P. Thompson wrote a defence of the jury system. His main point was that trial by
jury represented a relation between the legislature (law-making), the judiciary (adjudica-
tion), and the people (those who produce the wealth that supports the unproductive mem-
bers of government). The principle of the jury system, in other words, was that a selection of
ordinary people has a final say in the application of the law in particular cases, able to assess
the role and interpretation of the police, to circumscribe the opinions of judges, and to com-
ment on the nature of the law itself. E. P. Thompson, ‘Trial By Jury,’ New Society, 29
November 1979. By implication, the police, judges, legislators, and executive are all on one
side, and the people on the other; trial by jury represents a small bit of oversight by the
people over the legal establishment.
47
A. Liptak, ‘U.S. voting for judges perplexes other nations,’ May 25, 2008. https://
www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/americas/25iht-judge.4.13194819.html.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 239

A related but not often mentioned issue that burdens, we might say, the
rule of law is the question of the independence and accountability of the
police.48 The degree of independence, accountability, enforcement discre-
tion varies considerably across the spectrum of liberal democracies. But
within modern capitalist societies, whose credo is ‘buyer beware,’ the need
for police is obvious given the chronic dishonesty in the search for com-
petitive advantage, the profitability of criminal acts for corporations, and
the frequent necessity of theft by the lowest strata of society to eke out a
living. And this need will rise or fall depending on the state of the econo-
my.49 From a legal perspective, the question of policing reduces to the
kind and degree of discretionary power given the police in enforcing the
law and the separation of these powers from those of a judge, jury, or
prison guard. From a political point of view, these powers can be expanded
or restricted quite arbitrarily as the interests of private property or the
police require.
Another key principle of the rule of law to offset discretionary or biased
judicial decisions is the right of habeas corpus. This is a right for those
detained or arrested by police to appear before a judge or court within a
certain period after detention to determine the reason and to set a date for
a trial. It is considered one of the fundamental rights against arbitrary
arrest, detention, disappearance, or preventative detention, and appeared
in written form as early as 1215 in the Magna Carta. It has, however, been
increasingly violated over many decades and now so frequently that its
violation has become seemingly regularized in many liberal democracies.50
We are referring to state-sponsored death squads, assassination policies,
drone executions, disappearances, rendition programmes, indefinite
detention, anti-terrorist laws, and so on. It is not only the United States
that has engaged in these violations of habeas corpus, but also all the
nations that have collaborated with the United States, including most

48
P. Stenning, ‘The Idea of the Political “Independence” of the Police: International
Interpretations and Experiences,’ 2004/01/01. [https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.
ca/inquiries/ipperwash/policy_part/meetings/pdf/Stenning.pdf].
49
R. Rosenfeld and S.F. Messner, Crime and the Economy, London: Sage, 2013;
50
B. Olshansky and Center for Constitutional Rights, Secret Trials and Executions: Military
tribunals and the threat to Democracy, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002; J. Boys, ‘What’s
So Extraordinary about Rendition?’ International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 15, #4,
2011; M. Hakimi, ‘The Council of Europe Addresses CIA Renditions and Detention
Process.’ American Journal of International Law, Vol. 101, #2, 2017.
240 G. TEEPLE

European countries, which, if part of the EU, are defined as liberal

democracies.51
Although we contend that these principles are the main elements of the
concept of the rule of law, it is impossible to point to a definitive list
because there is little agreement on the definition or its components.
Other aspects often cited include the prohibition of discrimination, the
presumption of innocence, the right to counsel and a defence, a ban on
retroactive laws, the prohibition of secret laws or procedures, and the prin-
ciple of “due process,” which refers to judicial procedure according to
established regulations and principles applied equally to all cases,
among others.
The final aspect of the rule of law considered here, again coming from
Dicey, is that the constitution is grounded in the prevailing property rela-
tions. In a capitalist social formation these are rights that are in essence the
rights of private property held by natural persons (i.e., individuals) and
juridical persons (i.e., corporations)—and these rights are the source of the
basic law and not the consequence.52 It is for this reason that most modern
liberal constitutions begin with a bill of rights or declaration of rights and
proceed to outline the principles of law and the process of legislation that
are in keeping with these rights. In other words, all the defining elements
of the rule of law operate within the framework of a system of private
property. In a system of communal or collective property, the principles of
the rule of law do not appear because there it is not law that is sovereign
but the members of the freely associating democratic collectivity.
Calls for the strengthening and upholding of the rule of law by neolib-
erals53 are in large measure appeals for the reinforcement of the rights of
private property and for demands to respect all substantive laws. And the
call for these rights to be upheld as paramount can disguise an assault on
other forms of property. Countervailing rights, especially those that are
collective in some sense, as embodied in entitlements to healthcare, unem-
ployment insurance, social security, old age pensions, public education,
and trade union rights are easily juxtaposed to private individual rights and
cast as subordinate or inferior to private property rights. Such
51
Many European nations have collaborated with US rendition programmes and torture,
questionable arrests (Julian Assange, Slobodan Milosevic), arbitrary detention and torture at
the US base in Guantanamo Bay, assassination of Iranian officers, sanctions that kill hundreds
of thousands by the United States in Iraq, death squads, and so on.
52
Dicey, op. cit., p. 121.
53
Margaret Thatcher as the UK Prime Minister (1979–1990) made this a common
practice.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 241

countervailing property rights are claims that are not individual but
­collective and can exist without reference to the private property rights
ensconced in the principle of the rule of law.
While the promotion of the rule of law may be used to assert the pri-
macy of private property in some jurisdictions, the demand for the rule of
law in the face of authoritarian regimes is extremely important for resis-
tance to such governments. In other words, the absence of rule of law in
the modern state implies the dominance of political and legal arbitrariness,
which makes political criticism and opposition, not to mention the exer-
cise of what are understood as basic freedoms much more difficult or
impossible. Dictatorship and the rule of law are not compatible.
This paradoxical nature of the rule of law points to several other para-
doxes. One is that the rule of law is an important bulwark for the system
of private property, while at the same time a significant protection for the
rights of the working class to express their demands for countervailing
rights and to maintain a political voice in the determination of public pol-
icy. Another is that whatever its import, it begs the question of just whose
law it is that rules. Yet another, it appears as neutral and as a guarantee of
equality because it is declared in the abstract, while in practice laws provide
for the maintenance of a system of inequality. It allows, moreover, for the
opportunity to criticize and protest, but at the same time its use can be
repressive when it is biased or instrumental or chronically violated by
police, the judiciary, and governments. And while a key principle of liberal
democracy, it is ill-defined and never appears in constitutions as a compre-
hensive statement. And although often asserted as an absolute, it ignores
the fact that the substantive law in question is an exercise in class privilege
and subject to frequent changes.
In the Preface to the last edition of The Law of the Constitution in 1915,
Dicey discusses what he calls “the decline in reverence for the rule of
law.”54 Prescient as it seems for its time, none of what he points to would
surprise anyone today. His first example is the rapidly expanding use of
administrative law, which in the early part of the twentieth century would
have been very noticeable, although no longer today because it is so wide-
spread. His complaint is about quasi-judicial powers being extended to a
variety of state agencies and departments and widely abused through lack
of knowledge about law or legal processes, complaints which would
become commonplace in the second half of the twentieth century. The

54
Dicey, op. cit., lv-lxi
242 G. TEEPLE

second example he labels “the distrust of judges and courts,” and here he
points to instances of the use of the courts for the adjudication of labour
relations, stating in careful language that the decisions of judges are easily
seen to be class biased. The final example has to do with what he calls
‘lawlessness,’ which included a number of actions, now accepted as more
commonplace and within the bounds of law, but then to him worrisome,
namely the clergy breaking state laws that conflicted with church teach-
ings, conscientious objectors, protests for women’s rights, tax resistors,
legal indiscretions by politicians, state officials, and police officers, and a
variety of objections on democratic grounds to laws passed by parliament.
How to sum up the question of the rule of law? First, it has been a
defining principle in legal and political history as a counter to arbitrary
rule, which has often been portrayed as the conflict between “the rule of
man versus the rule of law,” in which “man” is a reference to unaccount-
able rule. While the principles of the rule of law as standards for legal
practice have made substantive laws accountable, they have not eliminated
the political and property bias inherent in those laws. This raises a second
point: while Dicey discusses lawlessness, he does not mention what has
always been present in liberal democracies, namely the lawlessness of gov-
ernments themselves.55 The breaking of national and international laws
has been commonplace amongst these states that pretend to defend the
rule of law, from their beginning.56 A third point, which is rarely raised
although Dicey is one of the few who does, is that the premises of the rule
of law rest on the relations of private property, which as contract law con-
stitutes the basis of everyday life and the reproduction of the entire system,
and for this reason is experienced as normal and natural and is usually
taken for granted. These are the relations that make us what we are, and
so implicitly what we take to be essentially human. A fourth point is the

55
D. Nelken and M. Levi, ‘The Corruption of Politics and the Politics of Corruption: An
Overview,’ Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 23, No.1, March 1996; the articles in this issue
are on political corruption. See also: Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 34, No. 11, 2011
for articles on political corruption in the ancient world.
56
A. Sarat and N. Hussain, When Governments Break the Law: the Rule of Law and the
Prosecution of the Bush Administration, New York: New York University Press, 2010;
N. Andersson, D. Iagolnitzer, and D. Collier (eds.), International Justice and Impunity: the
Case of the United States, Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2008; A. Bartholomew (ed.), Empire’s Law:
the American Imperial Project and the ‘War to Remake the World’, London: Pluto Press,
2006; P. Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules from
FDR’s Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush’s Illegal War, New York: Viking, 2005.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 243

fact that demands for and success in establishing forms of socialized prop-
erty, such as public healthcare, education, and pensions—that is, counter-
vailing rights, which are not in principle compatible with the system
although vital for the working classes—are not defined by state authorities
as fundamental components of the rule of law, yet the working classes
need the rule of law to undertake their struggles legally. When resistance,
criticism, protest, demonstrations against state and corporate crimes
become illegal or suffer repression, there are significant negative implica-
tions for liberal democracy and the necessity of the working class to defend
its standard of living.
Last, we can point to a long list of books and articles over many decades
detailing the breakdown of the rule of law in the United States. Some of
this literature was summed up in the conclusion by R. Alford to his
Permanent State of Emergency, where he writes that the US “constitu-
tional order does not comply with the minimum requirements of the rule
of law state.”57 All the key points mentioned above and all the widely
accepted peremptory norms in international law are regularly violated by
the US government: torture, wars of aggression, indefinite detention, and
so on. Almost the entire range of laws deemed jus cogens or non-derogable
is violated, even as policy.

The Separation of Powers

In all the debates about the structure of government during the early
bourgeois revolutions (Dutch, English, American, and French), the doc-
trine of the separation of powers was central, that is, how ultimate power
previously held by a crown would be divided. If it is asked why there is a
need for the separation of powers to uphold the rule of law, the answer is
that the rule of law begs the question of whose law is to rule, and in that
era there were several contenders: the monarch, the nobility, different sec-
tors of corporate wealth, and the propertyless. With the growth of mer-
cantilist and then capitalist economies, moreover, the basis of social
organization became more or less completely based on contract relations
and, it followed, increasingly complex, combative, litigious, and needing a
ruling structure that could keep conflict within the boundaries of private
property.

57
Ryan Alford, Permanent State of Emergency: Unchecked Executive Power and the Demise
of Rule of Law, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017, 7.
244 G. TEEPLE

Once monarchs and the nobility were deprived of their privileges and
feudal wealth was converted into private property, the dominant new con-
flicting interests lay between different sectors of corporate capital and
between those sectors and the majority, those without significant prop-
erty—artisans, petty commodity producers, and peasants. It was apparent
to the participants in these debates that the power to make law in the
hands of one sector of capital could prove detrimental to other sectors;
and this power in the hands of the unpropertied could prove disastrous to
the entire system of private property. These were the two main conun-
drums in the constitutional debates in the aftermath of these early revolu-
tions: how to ensure that all were subordinate to the law yet able to
compete for power to make the law, while guaranteeing that the principle
of private property remained absolute. And the solution was the theory
and practice of the separation of the powers of government. The distribu-
tion of power was to be the guarantee of the rule of law, and the rule of
law the guarantee of law based on private property.
All modern democratic constitutions are characterized by the separa-
tion of powers, different powers that are embodied in the three main insti-
tutions of modern government. In general, and among other powers, the
legislature is concerned with the making of rules into the law; the judi-
ciary is tasked with interpreting the law, the adjudication of the general
rules in particular cases, and making decisions on particular cases into gen-
eral law as precedent; and the executive is assigned the role of enforcing the
rules laid down by statute and the orders of the courts, and the general
administration of state affairs.
It is widely accepted that this doctrine of the separation of powers was
first set out as a principle of modern democracy in Montesquieu’s The
Spirit of the Laws (1748) in which he argued that it was in the interests of
good government that each of the above functions should be performed
by different institutions within the government. The idea was supposedly
drawn from his studies of the British parliamentary system from which this
principle had evolved in practice after the English Civil Wars of 1641–1648.
Originally, these powers were embodied as powers of the monarch, but
with the growing complexity of the social division of labour, the develop-
ment of private property, the concomitant rise of formal laws, and class
demands for curbs on the power of the monarch, so too was there a rise in
the need for the division of governing powers.
One of the first formal manifestations of the principle is found in the
Constitution of the United States, which made this separation of powers
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 245

into the bulwark of freedom, the well-known checks and balances of

American government. Now, all modern liberal democratic constitutions
embody this practice as an accepted principle of democratic rule. On the
surface, its purpose lies in the potential need to circumscribe the arbitrary
assertion of power by one sector of civil society through one branch of
government by means of the ‘checks and balances’ of the power of one or
both of the other branches.
There are several points to be made about the separation of powers.
One is that this structural balancing provides a guarantee against the arbi-
trary claim of the will of any one section of private property asserting itself
as the general will should it gain ascendancy over a part of government. To
put it another way, it is a guarantee that the general framework of the rule
of law, of the rule of private property, will hold sway for all corporate prop-
erty holders. Its practice is a defence of the freedom of private property,
freedom as the right to compete and that no one competitor, or group of
competitors, should hold all the reins of power, but rather, the reins
should be so divided as to prevent the total control by any one faction. It
is the separation of powers that allows representatives of private property
to compete equally—abstractly considered, of course.
The doctrine and practice of the separation of powers can also be seen
as a preemptive structure to ensure the maintenance of the system of pri-
vate property whose benefits are obviously unequal. If that part of civil
society that does not own the means of production, or has only very lim-
ited or no property rights, were to gain control of one part of government
(most plausibly the legislature), then, there are other sections of govern-
ment that can offset possible challenges to private property proposed by
these classes with control over one branch of government.
There is an assumption in this doctrine that civil society is defined by
competing sectors of capital. When, however, the corporate sector becomes
more and more monolithic, oligopolistic, or cartelized, the guarantee
described above for the separation of powers becomes less and less mean-
ingful. Increasingly amalgamated corporate interests require fewer guar-
antees against each other, and this state of affairs becomes politically
manifest in the decline of political party policy differences.58 Regardless of

58
P. Liddiard, ‘Are Political Parties in Trouble?’ Occasional Papers, The Wilson Center,
December 2018
[https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/
happ_liddiard_are_political_parties_in_trouble_december_2018.pdf]; Jae-Jae Spoon and
246 G. TEEPLE

the number of parties to choose from, the differences are increasingly

minimal and highly circumscribed by increasingly merged corporate inter-
ests at the global level. The use as a preemptive structure, however, gains
importance. The early stages of liberal democracy were accompanied by
the industrialization and rise of the working class as a force that made
demands for countervailing property rights as socialized rights. After
1980, neoliberal retrenchment of countervailing rights took the shine off
liberal democracy for workers. Nevertheless, since then, the possibility of
a working-class gaining power through a representative party in the legis-
lature has grown, but at the same time, social democratic parties have
come to embrace neoliberal policies.
With the economic changes of the twenty-first century, the working
class now faces a cartelized and collaborative corporate sector at the global
level, which now competes for labour power across the world.59 National
working classes in liberal democracies no longer enjoy the same political
leverage they once did. The achievement of countervailing rights in the
form of the welfare state since its high point in the early 1980s has been
attenuated, retrenched by decades of neoliberal policies, falling wages, and
corporate and judicial decisions. The separation of powers in the twenty-­
first century has lost much of its meaning because it is a principle belong-
ing to an age of competitive capital and national economies and
governments that now face the rules-based international order, which has
no need for such a doctrine or practice.

The Fate of Constitutions

In the first chapter of his book Modern Constitutions, K. C. Wheare writes
that it is “fairly obvious … that what a Constitution says is one thing, and
what actually happens in practice may be quite another.” “What is more,”
he laments, “although almost all countries in the world have a Constitution,
in many of them the Constitution is treated with neglect or contempt”—a
condition in which the majority of the world lives, he states. Then he asks,

Heike Kluver, ‘Party convergence and vote switching: Explaining mainstream party decline
across Europe,’ European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 58, no. 4, November 2019; Jae-
Jae Spoon and Heike Kluver, ‘What explains mainstream party decline across Europe?’
Democratic Audit UK 12/03/19 [https://www.democraticaudit.com/2019/03/12/
what-explains-mainstream-party-decline-across-europe/].
59
K. Moody, Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy, London:
Verso, 1997
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 247

“does it make any difference whether a country has a Constitution or

not?” He answers in the affirmative and makes the point that it provides
the formal limits on the actions of a government,60 limits that are mean-
ingful, he should have added, only as long as a government needs to fol-
low the constitutional restrictions or global capital has use for them. But
he offers no reason for the increasingly wide divide between constitutional
theory and practice.
Liberal democratic constitutions lay out the political structures that
allow different sectors of national capital to compete over public policy
and disposition of the public purse and to prevent the unpropertied from
gaining decisive political power or becoming conscious of their lack of
power. It follows that the holders of civil rights were bound by national
laws defined by national labour and capital markets, an economic structure
designed to promote national capital accumulation while allowing a politi-
cal voice for the organized working class, albeit in circumscribed and insti-
tutionalized forms.
The constitution then has been a site of class struggle, both between
corporate sectors and between capital and labour, conflicts that the consti-
tution cannot resolve but can only provide degrees of compromise.
Compromise because the contradictions underlying the struggle are not
resolvable but inherent in the system. Moreover, the constant dynamic
growth of capital has given rise to new contradictions and in turn a new
concept, the new constitutionalism, which we define as the restraints to
constitutional practices that come from the growth of capital accumula-
tion at the global level.61 If the ‘old’ constitutionalism took the form of
institutionalized restraints on the exercise of national political power, the
‘new’ constitutionalism is about global restraints on national sovereignty.
A brief survey of some recent external limitations to national sovereignty
due to the processes of global capital accumulation62 will make the point.
The ‘Rules-Based International Order’ (RBIO). Although rarely explic-
itly defined, the RBIO is used here as a reference to the set of institutions
established at the end of World War II, largely orchestrated by the United

60
K.C. Wheare, Modern Constitutions, London: Oxford University Press 1966, 4–5.
61
There are various definitions of the ‘new constitutionalism,’ but this one is consistent
with the use of the concept of constitutionalism so far employed here. For other definitions,
see: S. Gill and C. Cutler (eds.), The New Constitutionalism and World Order, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014.
62
A. Wiener, A. F. Lang, J. Tully, M Maduro, M Kumm, ‘Why a new journal on global
constitutionalism?’ in Global Constitutionalism, Vol, 1, Issue 1, February 2012 (1–15).
248 G. TEEPLE

States due to its preeminent economic position at the time. Initially it

comprised the US dollar as world reserve currency, and included the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the
International Labour Organization, and the Bank of International
Settlements. It then systematically expanded to include numerous similar
organizations at the global level, overseeing with broad rules and regula-
tions all major aspects of most national economies, but unaccountable to
any democratic processes or to any semblance of a world citizenry. If we
call this process the ‘constitutionalization’ of global accumulation, we can
also see that its underlying authority, its accountability, lies in the power of
transnational corporations (TNCs). To sign on to these organizations has
been necessary if a nation is to be part of the growing world economy, but
this signing on also has meant potentially severe limitations to national
sovereignty through the constitutionalism that accompanies the quasi-­
constitutionalization of global rules by global agents.63
Military Treaties. Shortly after the war, the United States formed mili-
tary alliances with all the major capitalist industrial powers, the most
important being the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in
1949. It was less a treaty that benefited member nations than an instru-
ment of US dominance over European military matters and a significant
source of revenue for American weapons production.64 Some key bilateral
military agreements with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, among
others, and several multilateral treaties, played the same role allowing for
US power projection across the world and economic support for the US
military industrial complex. All these treaties marked a significant loss of
sovereignty with the consequent diminution or forfeiture of members’
military command and weapons production in favour of the US arms
industry and the constitutionally supreme US military command.65
Free Trade Agreements. The movement towards a global economy after
World War II was initiated with numerous free trade agreements to

63
The UK in 1976 was to discover the humbling power of the IMF when the British
pound needed external support; see ‘Sterling devalued and the IMF loan’ [https://www.
nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/sterling-devalued-imf-loan.htm].
64
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/04/28/ukraine-weapon-
switcheroos-are-flushing-soviet-arms-out-of-europe/.
65
‘U.S. Collective Defense Arrangements’ [https://20092017.state.gov/s/l/treaty/col-
lectivedefense/index.htm].
D. N. Gibbs, ‘The military-industrial complex in a globalized context,’ in R. N. Cox (ed.),
Corporate Power and Globalization in U.S. Foreign Policy, London: Routledge, 2012.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 249

accommodate the need for larger integral markets for industry, but which
to varying degrees diminished national control over the production and
distribution of goods and services.66 The decades-long development of the
European Union through many stages is the best example of a now highly
integrated economy spanning the territories of numerous European states,
with their own long histories. Among the series of treaties leading to the
creation of the EU, these are some of the more recent notable milestones:
the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) created the European Union and citizen-
ship; the Treaty of Amsterdam (1999) established the European Central
Bank, providing the Euro more stability as the single European currency;
and the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) gave the European Commission more
power over foreign policy. After five decades of slow movement towards a
single state-like jurisdiction, the EU has assumed by treaty most of the key
elements of national constitutions, leaving the member states with much
reduced powers as sovereign nations; and yet the EU has no formal con-
stitution of its own.67 One might argue that its constitution is ‘unwritten,’
as in the UK, an amalgam of past treaties and agreements that well suits
the operation of a government parading as democratic but is, in effect,
functioning as a corporate best friend. In the case of the EU, its unwritten
constitution embraces more than two dozen nations to comprise a single
market for capital and labour mobility but not for trade unions, which
have largely been consigned to the remnants of national jurisdictions.
The ISDS Clause. Many of these free trade agreements have an ‘investor-­
state dispute settlement’ (ISDS) clause attached. As a limitation on
national sovereignty, this mechanism deserves special mention because of
the significant implications that it holds for the privatization of the public
provision of social services, for environmental policies, and for all public
policy that may be construed to affect negatively foreign corporate invest-
ments, real or potential. These clauses have been promoted by govern-
ments like Canada and Germany as net exporters of capital to privilege
their own corporations at the expense of the sovereign development of

66
For a discussion of economic agreements and national sovereignty, see: N. D. White, The
Law of International Organizations, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996, Chap.
2, ‘The legal personality of international organizations.’
67
N. Walker, ‘The European Union’s Unresolved Constitution,’ in M. Rosenfeld and
A. Sajo (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, Oxford University
Press, May 2012.
250 G. TEEPLE

other nations.68 And these ISDS clauses do have an effect on national sov-
ereignty: they act to depoliticize what are ostensibly political decisions, the
products of elected governments. They negatively influence the growth of
publicly supplied goods and services; they constrain the development of
public policies on the entire range of issues related to the health and well-
being of citizens; they override national justice systems, using private arbi-
tration services instead; and arbitration decisions can amount to fines of
hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes for foreign corporations, without
the right of appeal by the state.69
One of the least known but most widely signed treaties containing an
ISDS clause is the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) that came into force in
1998, promoted as an agreement to encourage international investment
in the energy sector of signatory nations. This encouragement was an
ISDS clause in the Treaty, which not only locks in the extraction or use of
fossil fuels in these countries, but also permits energy corporations to sue
member states over any policies the investors consider to be detrimental to
their interests.70
GP3s—Global Public-Private Partnerships. Another important but
largely unrecognized aspect of the new constitutionalism is the advent of
the so-called global public-private partnerships or GP3s.71 They comprise
public or state organizations that have been institutionally linked with
transnational private corporations, but GP3s also include international

68
Report of the Standing Committee on International Trade, ‘Investor–State Dispute
Settlement: Some Considerations For Canada’ [https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/
Committee/432/CIIT/Reports/RP11415350/ciitrp08/ciitrp08-e.pdf].
69
For a review of the ISDS clause in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
see: S. McBride, ‘Quiet Constitutionalism in Canada: The International Political Economy
of Domestic Institutional Change,’ Canadian Journal of Political Science, 36:2; June 2003
(251–273). For an expansion of this argument to Europe and the United States, see
S. McBride, ‘The New Constitutionalism and Austerity,’ in S. McBride and B. M. Evans
(eds.), The Austerity State, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2017, (169–188).
70
P. Eberhardt, C. Olivet, and L. Steinfort, One Treaty to Rule Them All, Corporate
Europe Observatory and the Transnational Institute, Brussels/Amsterdam, June 2018.
[https://corporateeurope.org/en/international-trade/2018/06/one-treaty-rule-
them-all].
See Also: Y. Saheb, Modernization of the Energy Charter Treaty: A Global Tragedy at a
High Cost for Taxpayers, OpenExp, January 2020. [https://www.openexp.eu/sites/default/
files/publication/files/modernisation_of_the_energy_charter_treaty_a_global_tragedy_
at_a_high_cost_for_taxpayers-final.pdf].
71
M. Machacek, ‘Global public-private partnerships and the new constitutionalism of the
refugee regime,’ in Global Constitutionalism, 7:2, 2018 (204–235)
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 251

governmental organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations and its

numerous associated agencies and commissions, such as the World Health
Organization, as well as many non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which
have substantial private sector representation on their Boards of Directors.
Our concern, however, is with IGOs or government organizations.
There is no accepted single definition, but at bottom they are all joint
projects between state or quasi-state agencies and private corporations. As
collaborative corporate and state endeavours, they are defined by degrees
of privatization of state or state agency activities. GP3s, or national public-­
private partnerships (PPPs), are a form of restricted privatization that
retains a measure of government control. They have been part of the mod-
ern state since its beginning, particularly in the development of infrastruc-
ture projects, and they can take many different forms that allow the state
side of the partnership to guarantee financing and to absorb certain costs
and responsibilities, including the externalities that the private corporate
wants to avoid—allowing the private side to influence any public policy
that may define the project and to profit from the project.
With the advent of neoliberal policies in the 1980s, GP3s were increas-
ingly employed by the industrial nations to hasten the privatization pro-
cess. To this end they became the standard approach to state-run projects
in the UK in 1997 under the Labour PM Tony Blair (1997–2007).72 GP3s
grew rapidly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and now
they are widespread around the world and are applied to any public proj-
ect or activity that can be configured to be shared with private corpora-
tions. They are actively promoted by the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the United Nations and its many agencies.
Some forms of the GP3s are not so easy to recognize. An umbrella term
to catch certain types of PPPs, for example, is ‘asset monetization,’ which
refers to ‘revenue-generating’ activities that have been ‘leased’ to corpora-
tions from which they draw their running expenses and profits. But the
forms are as varied as the possible opportunities for the private sector to
capture revenue by piggybacking on the ubiquity and necessity of state
functions. And this is the purpose of GP3s: the private corporation is guar-
anteed a profit—why else accept an agreement with shared oversight? The
state partner generally picks up the externalities: the costs of

72
In 2016, Blair created his consultancy corporation, The Tony Blair Initiative, which has
become a global agent for privatization of national governance.
252 G. TEEPLE

environmental clean-up, maintenance, insurance, all aspects of the project

that do not contribute to profit. The private sector usually holds at least
half of the control of management but has only one interest, its bottom
line. The state has a complementary interest: it dispenses public revenues
with the aim of encouraging the private sector.
The use of GP3s is in part justified by the claims that private enterprise
is more efficient than the state and is able to offer expertise not available
to government, but neither rationale can be supported with evidence.73
GP3s are also justified by suggesting that there is a cost-saving dimension
to them, but the evidence points to the opposite conclusion, given the
need for profit for the corporate partner, not to mention the transaction
costs: the cost of accountants, consultants, and lawyers and other assorted
professionals. They have been widely criticized as lacking in transparency
and accountability, being chronically over budget, and increasing the risks
entailed in these projects to the state. They are a state mechanism to sub-
sidize the private sector at the expense of the taxpayer, a form of circuitous
defrauding of taxpayers for corporate interests. And for our purposes here,
GP3s are a form of restriction to constitutional sovereignty, a form of
depoliticization of government activities, hidden by unsupported rational-
izations and state promotion.
The ‘New Public Governance’—New but Not Public.74 Related to the
GP3s, or in general PPPs, is the phenomenon of the ‘new public gover-
nance,’ a reference to all the governing activities usually carried out by
governments or their agencies that have been privatized in one way or
another. The adjective public here is deceptive; the concept of new public
governance refers to private sector management of the public sector, a
state of affairs that arguably represents much of the current stage of man-
agement of state financed activities. If the postwar period (1945–1980)
can be characterized by the state administration of government services
according to principles determined in political venues, what followed with
neoliberalism from the 1980s to the twenty-first century can be seen as the

73
G. Hodge and C. Greaves (eds.), The Challenge of Public-Private Partnerships: Learning
from International Experience, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019. H. Whiteside, Purchase for
Profit: public-private partnerships and Canada’s public health-care system, Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2015; H. Whiteside, Public-Private partnerships in Canada, Halifax:
Fernwood Publishing, 2016; H. Whiteside, ‘Unhealthy policy: the political economy of
Canadian public-private partnership hospitals,’ in Health Sociology Review, 20 (3): 258–268.
74
S. P. Osborne (ed.), The New Public Governance? Emerging Perspectives on the Theory and
Practice of Public Governance, New York: Routledge 2010.
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 253

new public management, a reference to the introduction of private sector

managerial principles and the use of private corporations to manage gov-
ernment policy in the ‘design and implementation’ and ‘delivery’ of
services.
In other words, the great number of activities carried out by the state
has potentially become open to actual private sector management—
schools, universities, hospitals, prisons, retirement homes, the military,
policing, pensions, and so on. These functions, then, are subordinated not
only to market principles but also to privately owned corporate manage-
ment itself for the purposes of profiting from the public sector.
Global Production or Value Chains75—What Sort of Economy Is This?
And Whose Is It? The growth of GP3s and privatized governance accom-
panied the advance of economic globalization in the 1990s, and coinci-
dent with these developments there arose what is now called ‘global
production chains.’76 This economic metamorphosis, the outcome of the
expansion of corporate globalization, points to a shift in the structure of
the global economy away from the central role of state oversight to the
growing preeminence of corporate networks of control.77 Here we see
corporate-driven disaggregated production, distribution, and retailing
outside the singular jurisdictions of states. Governance becomes a layered
structure of private and public authority, with ‘multi-stakeholders’ appro-
priating their ‘value-added’ as the chain crosses different jurisdictions.78
This chain of corporate-led interconnected processes challenges the

75
S. Newman, ‘Global commodity chains and global value chains,’ in B. Fine and A. Saad-
Filho (eds.), The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics, Northampton, MA: Edward
Elgar, 2012.
76
G. Gereffi, ‘The Global Economy: Organization, Governance, and Development,’ in
G. Gereffi, Global Value Chains and Development: Redefining the Contours of 21st Century
Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, (137–175)
77
H. Compston, ‘The network of global corporate control: implications for public policy,’
Business and Politics, Volume 15, Issue 3, October 2013, pp. 357–379. DOI: https://doi.
org/10.1515/bap-2012-0049; A. Rungi, G. Morrison, and F. Pammolli, ‘Global Ownership
and Corporate Control Networks’ (July 31, 2017). IMT Lucca EIC WP Series 07/2017,
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3031955 or https://doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.3031955.
78
G. Gereffi and K. Fernandez-Stark, ‘Global Value Chain Analysis: A Primer.’ Center on
Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness (CGGC), Durham, North Carolina: Duke
University. May 31, 2011.
254 G. TEEPLE

question of state sovereignty and national territory and the notion of a

national economy.79
Corporate Capture of Governance.80 With the initiation of neoliberalism
in the early 1980s, and the growth of these corporate-run production
chains, there has been a multi-pronged effort to insinuate the private sec-
tor into the governing structures of nation-states. Early in the twenty-first
century this gradual structural engagement between the corporate and
state sectors had been given the name of ‘multi-stakeholder governance.’
In 2009, the World Economic Forum (WEF) produced a lengthy study
called ‘The Global Redesign Initiative’ (GRI), which argued for the pur-
suit and implementation of this public-private arrangement as a system of
governance purportedly, in the view of the WEF, to address the crises
faced by the nations of the world.81

79
The concepts of GDP, Gross Domestic Product, and GNP, Gross National Product,
have always been problematic, but given the concept of global production or value chains,
their definitions are now even more so. For a brief popular review of the history of the con-
cept GDP and its controversies, see: E. Masood, The Great Invention, The Story of the GDP
and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World, New York: Pegasus Books, 2016.
The increasing use of ‘purchasing power parity’ (PPP) for comparing national economic
difference reflects economies predicated on global value chains. See: P. Schreyer and
F. Koechlin, Purchasing Power Parity – Measurement and Uses, OECD March 2002, No. 3.
[https://www.oecd.org/sdd/prices-ppp/2078177.pdf].
80
M. A. Manahan and M. Kumar, The Great Takeover: Mapping Multistakeholderism in
Global Governance, Amsterdam, 2021.
[https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/the_great_takeover_-_updated_14_
april_2022.pdf].
See also: Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘Captured States: When EU governments are a
channel for corporate interests,’ a report by Corporate Europe Observatory [https://corpo-
rateeurope.org/sites/default/files/ceo-captured-states-final_0.pdf]; a recent study by the
French Senate: ‘McKinseyGate: France’s Shadow Government and the Rise of the Corporate
State,’ 2 April 2022. [https://theparadise.ng/mckinseygate-frances-shadow-government-
and-the-rise-of-the-corporate-state/]; E. Braun and P. De Villepin, ‘How a consultant like
McKinsey took over France,’ Politico, February 8, 2021[https://www.politico.eu/article/
how-consultants-like-mckinsey-accenture-deloitte-took-over-france-bureaucracy-emman-
uel-macron-coronavirus-vaccines/]; New York Times, ‘How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the
Stature of Authoritarian Governments,’ December 15, 2018 [https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china-russia.html].
81
World Economic Forum: ‘The Global Redesign Initiative report, Everybody’s Business:
Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World’ [https://www3.
weforum.org/docs/WEF_GRI_EverybodysBusiness_Report_2010.pdf]. For a ‘readers’
guide’ to the book by Harris Gleckman, see: [https://www.umb.edu/cgs/research/
global_redesign_initiative].
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 255

Some of these WEF recommendations had been implemented well

before 2009, but the GRI initiative centred on promoting multi-­
stakeholder ‘councils’ or groups for a very long list of global issues, includ-
ing education, health, forest and fisheries management, mining, and food
security. The assumption of leadership or governance over these issues is
made outside of discussions with elected constituencies or authorities.
Corporate officials sit with representatives from NGOs, IGOs, and philan-
thropic foundations and discuss with parties and leaders in power to make
decisions that have an impact on large numbers of people, national consti-
tutions, organizations, and the environment. Even the United Nations has
gone a long way to embrace this idea and practice of ‘multi-­stakeholderism,’
and to this end it produced a report in 2021 entitled ‘Our Common
Agenda,’82 which suggested that a ‘partnership with the private sector’ is
the way it sees to confront the many crises facing the world. The GRI and
the UN Report saw the future of global governance not as the state-­
centred multilateralism of the second half of the twentieth century, but
rather the multi-stakeholderism that is advancing in the present era.83
The active members of this new governance system—states, corpora-
tions, NGOs, IGOs, philanthropic foundations, quasi-state organizations
such as the UN and its many associated organizations, and rights groups—
are frequently referred to as ‘actors.’ The use of this term points to the
reduced significance of elected entities or publicly authorized bodies and
levels private and public institutions as if equal in significance. While the
state-centred multilateralist forms of governance are formally elected or
appointed by elected bodies, and so have a line of authority that underlies
their legitimacy, no such authority underpins corporations or NGOs or
other members of the informal multi-stakeholder groups, and yet they
may well have a share in decisions over policy and delivery of state services.
Moreover, in the declining state-centred multilateralist international
arena, there are obligations regarding the rule of law, international law,
and the related responsibilities of elected governments, but this is not the
case with a multi-stakeholder system of informal groupings of different

82
Our Common Agenda – Report from the Secretary General of the United Nations,
2021. [https://www.un.org/en/content/common-agenda-report/assets/pdf/Common_
Agenda_Report_English.pdf].
83
H. Gleckman, “Multi-stakeholder governance: A corporate push for a new form of
global governance,” N. Buxton and D. Eade (eds), State of Power, Fifth Annual Report of the
Transnational Institute (TNI), 2016: 90–106. [https://www.tni.org/en/publication/
state-of-power-2016].
256 G. TEEPLE

‘actors’ who have no obligation to demonstrate the authority by which

they play a role, and who are accountable only to their employers.
The hidden power behind all these changes lies in the power of corpo-
rate private property. Here we point to the small number of giant and
hence powerful corporations that dominate the global economy in the
form of monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels, and their production chains
that cross multiple national jurisdictions. To this control by a small num-
ber of corporations, we can add the notion of a global power elite84 and
the overarching control that accompanies global financial integration of
markets and banks, whose interconnections span the globe in networks
of power.85

Conclusion
This ‘new’ constitutionalism, the restrictions to state power that originate
from the institutions that govern the processes of global capital accumula-
tion, has largely eclipsed, we suggest, the meaning of national constitu-
tional rule and has left the sovereign powers of the nation-state highly
compromised in every arena of state activity. Global capital in the form of
transnational corporations (TNCs) holds sway indirectly over national
governments from the supranational level, through the many agencies and
organizations of the RBIO, demanding uniform policies from govern-
ments and the remaining fragments of national capital by means of trea-
ties, bribery, threats, sanctions, capital strikes, sovereign debt, consultancies,
and so on, without direct concerns about challenges from the unproper-
tied, the working classes.
The ‘old’ constitutionalism still plays a small persisting role in allowing
some room for domestic capital differences to be exercised as changes in
electoral control over state power, albeit now highly circumscribed, but its
role has become more important in keeping the working classes subordi-
nate to capital, divided by region or nation, politically active only in
increasingly impotent administrative state structures, and believing in the
meaningfulness of an elaborate electoral charade.
84
P. Phillips, Giants, The Global Power Elite, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018.
85
S. Vitali, J. B. Glattfelder, S. Battiston, ‘The Network of Global Corporate Control,’ Plos
One, October 26, 2011.
And to assist in the global promotion of these ideas, the WEF created a ‘Young Global
Leaders’ programme, which includes a long list of world politicians and corporate officials as
alumni. [https://www.younggloballeaders.org].
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 257

Constitutional Dictatorship.86 By way of conclusion, there is one more

point about constitutions that is significant for our argument, namely the
question of emergency laws, the constitutional clause that can be used to
override any or all constitutional processes in the event of a crisis, which is
usually vaguely defined. The study of constitutions has generally ignored
the existence and use of emergency laws—not to mention military or
secret police interventions in state affairs—probably because the investiga-
tion into modern constitutions has regularly assumed that an elected gov-
ernment is the norm and it alone holds supreme legitimate power, and
that the rule of the military or police, or corporations, or religious authori-
ties, or civilian dictators is rare and anomalous. Such deviations from con-
stitutional rule are, however, more common than their limited analysis
would suggest, and the widespread inclusion of laws in constitutions that
allow the abrogation of civilian rule begs the question of why there is a
need for and frequent use of emergency clauses.
It is estimated that about 90% of the world’s written constitutions have
an emergency clause, a number that amounted to approximately 171
nations in the early twenty-first century. Moreover, between 1985 and
2014 about 137 nations declared an emergency, state of siege, or martial
law, sometimes more than once.87 In other words, a large majority of
nations, including European liberal democracies, have emergency laws
and have made use of them for reasons deemed necessary by the govern-
ments of the day.
Most constitutions, then, have clauses that allow the government they
define and whose actions they circumscribe to override the constitution,
to use discretionary powers with the authority of the constitution over the
constitution—to suspend the very constitution that gives legal authority
to the emergency law. These clauses provide the legal right to abolish the

86
This concept includes ‘state of siege,’ preventative detention,’ and ‘martial law.’ See:
C. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies,
New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963; K. M. Sullivan, ‘Do We Have an Emergency
Constitution?’ Bulletin of the American Academy, Winter 2006 (30–33); Levinson, S. and
Balkin, J. M., ‘Constitutional dictatorship: its dangers and its design,’ Minnesota Law Review,
94(6), 2010 (1789–1866).
87
C. Bjornskov and S. Voigt, ‘The architecture of emergency constitutions,’ International
Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 16, Issue 1, January 2018: 101 (101–127); C. Bjornskov
and S. Voigt, Why Do Governments Call a State of Emergency? On the Determination of
Using Emergency Constitutions,’
European Journal of Political Economy, 2018–09, Vol.54, (110–123).
258 G. TEEPLE

legality of rights, or the legal right to nullify the constitution. And the
process leading to its declaration is usually left to the judgement of the
executive branch. Most emergency laws have accompanying restraints of
some sort that will specify the extent of the discretionary powers, who can
hold them and for how long, but while such restrictions may mitigate the
unqualified use of such provisions, these laws still negate the principles
that have been declared to be absolute, resting variously on the ‘will of the
people,’ a monarch, or a ‘god.’ What is defined as absolute cannot be
qualified and remain absolute.
Most democratic constitutions provide for their own suspension, and
such clauses point to a constitutional right to suppress the processes of
liberal democracy, without consulting their underlying their authority, the
so-called will of the people, in the interests of something else. That some-
thing else is often referred to as some transcendent notion of the ‘nation’
or is assumed by the military identifying itself as ‘the state within the state.’
But that something else is the real sovereign, the form of prevailing private
property that needs defence.
These emergency laws and their discretionary powers assumed by offi-
cials and overriding the constitution expose the constitution for what it is.
We have argued that the modern liberal democratic constitution spells out
the process for an institutionalized contest over state power of the purse
and policy between those with a stake in the system, while presenting bar-
riers to power by those classes whose interests lie outside a system that
rests on their exploited labour. The ‘noble lie’ that this is democracy serves
to disguise the chronic tension that underlies it, the irresolvable contradic-
tions. The not uncommon use of emergency laws points to these inherent
crises that follow from these contradictions—capital versus capital, and
capital versus labour—and that have required periodic suspensions of the
constitution to address.
Since the late twentieth century, moreover, there has been another level
of contradiction between global capital and its structures and the persist-
ing nation-state representing remnants of national capital and the need to
maintain social order. And this contradiction, the essence of the ‘new con-
stitutionalism,’ between fading national political sovereignty and the
RBIO, military treaties, and other global/national arrangements, increas-
ingly exposes the end of the era of sovereign national constitutions.88

88
M. J. Klarman, ‘Foreword: The Degradation of American Democracy – and the Court,’
Harvard Law Review, Vol. 134, No 1, 2020 (1–164); B. Ackerman, The Decline and Fall of
 6 THE CONSTITUTION 259

But why all these contradictions in constitutions? Because the constitu-

tion itself is a contradiction, it is the embodiment of the whole, the pre-
vailing property relations, abstracted and separated from the parts, the
component elements of civil society. As long as this separation exists, so
too will constitutions as the institutionalization of this open contradiction.
Constitutions exist because the prevailing property relations produce
endemic conflict and their role is to mitigate and manage that conflict.
They exist because of the need to institutionalize the contradictions of the
prevailing property relations.
Can the end of constitutions be imagined? When the conditions that
give rise to them are resolved. When property relations become socialized,
that is, when our rights to a portion of the social product are determined
by human need, when social or class conflict ends because the basis for it
ends, when the people as an integrity become genuinely sovereign.

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 CHAPTER 7

The Executive

In the previous chapter we examined the nature of the constitution,

the fundamental principles which modern liberal democracies have
claimed as foundational. In this chapter, we analyse why these prin-
ciples have largely been cast aside in the practice of liberal democ-
racy. The operation of the political system has always followed the
process of capital accumulation, the need for markets, consequential
wars, and the expansion of arbitrary presidential or prime ministerial
powers. Politics, we contend, is the predicate to the process of capi-
tal accumulation, which as subject is now less national and competi-
tive than it is global and cartelized.

We have argued that constitutions are not standalone legal frameworks;

they are not independent or self-contained political charters. Neither con-
stitutions nor their constituent parts can be understood as unrelated to
civil society. They exist as attempts to mitigate and manage conflict-ridden
civil societies, and their characteristics reflect the nature of the parties to

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 267

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_7
268 G. TEEPLE

the conflict.1 Despite their many differences, however, constitutions share

defining characteristics that allow us to make a generalized analysis of their
modern liberal democratic forms. It is the same with the component parts
of these constitutions, an analysis of which will comprise the remaining
chapters.

Executive Powers and Source of Authority

The executive branch is our starting point because this is the part of gov-
ernment that is concerned with executing or implementing the laws, and
often with playing a large role in initiating the law-making process. But
more importantly, the executive is the only branch that can act in the name
of the whole, in both domestic and foreign relations. Only the executive
can decide how to implement the law and deploy the military at home and
abroad, and generally, it alone can initiate national emergency powers,
suspending the operation of the constitution and giving itself preeminent
powers. In other words, its powers straddle and even override all the other
parts of government. It is the main state actor that has the constitutional
authority and power to take the initiative in the name of the nation, to act
as the prevailing authoritative agent of government, implying representa-
tion of all classes, regions, and sections of the nation. These functions
make the other branches of government, and the constitution itself, in one
way or another subordinate to the executive branch.
To act in the name of the whole implies that the executive is or repre-
sents the one true sovereign—the ultimate source of power and authority.
But the one true embodiment of sovereignty can only ever be the people,
and yet the people in the modern democratic state, as we have argued,
cannot be sovereign because in liberal theory and in actual liberal demo-
cratic constitutional structures they lack integrity, coherence. If the execu-
tive itself cannot be the sovereign, except as the imagined representation
of the people, and cannot truly represent the people because the people
are merely aggregated atomized citizenry, then, what does it represent?
The executive acts on behalf of the whole only with rhetorical or nominal

1
By enshrining the principle of the separation of powers, Schlesinger wrote, “the constitu-
tion thus institutionalized conflict in the very heart of the American polity.” Schlesinger, The
Imperial Presidency, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973, viii. The contradictions in
capitalist societies created the necessity to adopt the principle of the separation of powers in
order to institutionalize the conflict that defines liberal democracy.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 269

reference to the people; it is not the people on whose behalf it is acting but
the prevailing property relations, as embodied in the corporate sector,
from which arises the authority and power of the executive branch in a
social formation defined by the capitalist mode of production.2
The link between the executive and the corporate sector is more obvi-
ous in some countries than in others. The choice of cabinet members in
the United States, for example, is a discretionary matter for the president,
and the choices are often direct secondments from the corporate sector.3
The link is generally not so obvious or direct in parliamentary systems if
the cabinet is drawn from the elected legislators. Nevertheless, the con-
nection is still present and operative if for no other reason than the cabinet
in all modern liberal democracies is the face of the administrative side of
the executive, which from the beginning of bourgeois democracies has
implemented policy in coordination with the corporate sector.4
US presidency as model. Although our argument applies to all liberal
democracies, our point of reference in this analysis of the executive branch

2
The people can be sovereign only if they are the embodiment of collective demands or
communal property relations; otherwise the people as sovereign is a fiction. In a system of
private property, the embodiment of aggregated private property, the prevailing corporate
sector, is sovereign, the ultimate source of authority and power.
3
The question of corporate influence over American state policy has been a defining thread
in the work of G. Wm. Domhoff (see: Who Rules America?, Prentice-Hall, 1967; State
Autonomy or Class Dominance? New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1996, and The Powers That
Be, New York: Vintage Books, 1979). Recent studies in Europe have provided convincing
evidence for the dominance of corporate executives in official state positions, and the “revolv-
ing door” that maintains this relation. See: R. Tansey (ed), Corporate Capture in Europe:
When Big Business Dominates Policy-Making and Threatens Our Rights, https://www.alter-
eu.org/corporate-capture-in-europe.
4
Beginning in the seventeenth century, large parts of the colonial empires of European
states were administered under state charters granted to private corporations. India, for
example, was ruled by a company of merchants (the East India Company) until late in the
eighteenth century and not brought completely under British state rule until the nineteenth
century; and what was to become Canada also began to a large degree as the Hudson’s Bay
Company. See: E. Erikson (ed.), Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States and
Publics, Bingley U.K.: Emerald Group 2015; P. J. Stern, ‘The Company-State: Corporate
Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India,’ Oxford
Scholarship Online, 2011; E. Cavanagh, ‘A Company with Sovereignty and Subjects of Its
Own? The Case of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1763,’ Canadian Journal of Law and
Society/Revu Canadienne Droit et Société, Vol. 26, No. 1 (25–50).
270 G. TEEPLE

is the American presidency,5 and there are several reasons for this. The US
constitution was the first to be free of the vestiges of feudalism and to elect
its president and legislature. Although the idea of “a limited monarchy”
was certainly introduced and briefly debated by the framers as a counter to
the dangers of “democracy,”6 the presidency was in the end given even
more powers than a monarch, a common characteristic of most executives
in liberal democracies. By the early nineteenth century, moreover, the
presidential system initiated by the United States had become an institu-
tional model for many modern governments without a monarch, espe-
cially in Latin America. And after World War II, several of the decolonized
and new postwar nations adopted a presidential system, using the American
constitution as a guide or model for their own. But more importantly,
after the war the power of the American president, as the embodiment of
preeminent American corporate and military power, gradually came to
prevail in the world, providing evidence for the label of “the imperial
presidency.”7 Although US hegemony has long been challenged,

5
We have avoided analysis of constitutional monarchies because they represent the incom-
plete resolution of capitalist social formations into state and civil society. There are 12 such
states in Europe, 7 of them members of NATO. Whatever their remaining constitutional
powers of “royal prerogative,” such discretionary or arbitrary powers violate the principles of
liberal democracy, not to mention provide a royal costume for the absolute power of capital.
6
M. Jensen, The Making of the American Constitution, Princeton: Van Nostrand Company,
1964, 29–31. It should be noted that the Americans had an enormous advantage over other
developing bourgeois nations in that the Thirteen Colonies were born as systems of private
property; private property was the operating principle from the outset, and the revolution
did not need to address the issue of widespread feudal property forms, embracing substantial
sections of society.
7
A. M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1973. This study of the growth of US presidential powers in relation to the history of
American war-making decisively broke with presidential studies taking their cues from
Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power (1960), which offered an account of the presidency
not as the executive institution of the world’s first truly bourgeois nation but as a reflection
of the qualities and personal characteristics of the elected presidents that purportedly
explained their policies. Schlesinger’s last book, War and the American Presidency (2005),
reaffirms and expands his previous position, but it remains descriptive, and the reader is none
the wiser as to why unilateral war-making has been “the oldest doctrine in American history.”
There are some classic works on ‘states of exception’ that treat arbitrary executive powers as
anomalies at times of crisis, but our point is that state arbitrariness is not an aberration but a
necessity, and the main problem is how to disguise it. See: Carl J. Friedrich, Constitutional
Government and Democracy: Theory and Practice in Europe and America, Boston: Little,
Brown, 1941; C. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, New York, Harcourt, Brace, and
World, 1948.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 271

increasingly in the early twenty-first century, the office of US presidency

has continued to embody the fading hegemonic reach of the United States
across the world, with ever-increasing arbitrary powers.
Why greater powers than absolute monarchs? There is a common miscon-
ception that the powers of monarchies before the bourgeois revolutions or
negotiations were absolute, but they were far from it. In the pre-­
revolutionary mercantilist period, the presumed absolute monarchical
powers were progressively circumscribed in the evolution of cabinet gov-
ernment and their gradual devolution into separate spheres, a transforma-
tion that represented a slow succumbing to the demands of marketplace,
money lenders, and new classes and claims to power.8 If the bourgeois
revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries put an end by and
large to what remained of the arbitrariness of feudal rule, the powers and
limited accountability granted to modern liberal democratic presidents
and prime ministers were not any less arbitrary and were often more exten-
sive than what the revolutions abolished. This apparent anomaly has not
gone unnoticed,9 but there has been no attempt to explain why the powers
reserved for presidents and prime ministers have been less accountable or
tempered or circumscribed than the powers of pre-­revolutionary monarchs.
How to explain this apparent inconsistency? Why put an end to the
increasingly circumscribed rule of feudal monarchs only to institutionalize
even greater powers in the hands of the executive branch in liberal
democracies?10 The American literature on executive powers does not
8
J. R. Strayner, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, Princeton: University of
Princeton Press, 1970.
9
Perhaps the first to point this out was De Tocqueville in Democracy in America, Chapter
VI. See also:
C. F. Strong, Modern Political Constitutions, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1958, “The
whole trend of executive power is towards concentration in the hands of one, and a mere
elective system is no guarantee that it will be diffused” (239). J.A.R. Marriott, English
Political Institutions: An Introductory Study, Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1915: “there is
no ambiguity in his [the PM’s] relation to the general machinery of the State. Backed by a
stable and substantial majority in Parliament, his power … is greater than that of the German
Emperor or the American President, “for he can alter the laws, he can impose taxation and
repeal it, and he can direct all the forces of the State” (89). H. J. Laski, The American
Presidency, New York: Harper and Bros., 1940, 11; H. S. Maine, Popular Government,
Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976, 212–216.
10
Maine goes on at some length comparing the powers of the British king and the
American president. Here is a short summary: “The whole Executive power is vested in him
[the President]. He is Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. He makes treaties with
the advice and consent of the Senate, and with the same advice and consent he appoints
272 G. TEEPLE

address this question, and while the post-9/11 literature on the attack on
civil liberties by successive US presidents is clear in its condemnation of
these actions in the US and international arenas, most of it goes no further
than repeated laments for the decline of the rule of law, or the violations
of human rights, or constitutional principles, or the growing arbitrariness
of the US executive.11 The default conclusion of these many studies is a
call for a return to the rule of law or liberal democratic constitutional prin-
ciples or respect for human rights. These appeals, however, are no explana-
tion for the apparent growing executive arbitrariness of liberal democratic
heads of government, one of the most important of which has been the
US president.
The case was made in Chap. 3 that political forms reflect the prevailing
economic relations. The arbitrary powers of feudal monarchs were the
political forms appropriate to the coercive appropriation of surplus for the
purposes of royal consumption: palaces, court life, and dynastic wars, not
to mention the extraction of ecclesiastical rents and tithes. They could not
serve as the political forms for a system of private property that required
laws that treated all as equals, at least nominally—hence, the bourgeois
revolutions, which were about making power responsible to the new sov-
ereign, i.e., prevailing corporate private property. Liberal democracies
have only ever been the political form of capitalist economic systems, and
as capitalism has changed, so too has the nature of this democracy, as we
will argue. Just as absolute monarchies could not serve as the political
form of marketplace societies, liberal democracy cannot serve the interests
of the working class, resulting in the many attempts at socialist revolutions
and the demands for ever-increasing social reform even to the point of
stalling economic growth. Part of the explanation for why executive pow-
ers in liberal democracies are greater than in the preceding monarchies is
simply that feudal powers were shared by a monarch, the church, and the
nobility, and possessed little real or apparent generalization to the popu-
lace, whereas the powers of the modern executive derive from one source

Ambassadors, Ministers, Judges, and all high functionaries. He has a qualified veto on legisla-
tion.” And so on, at greater length. By the late seventeenth century, the English Monarchy
no longer possessed any of these powers absolutely. Maine, Popular Government, 211–213.
Rossiter makes a long and convincing case for the extensive powers of the presidency in
C. Rossiter, The American Presidency, op. cit.
11
R. Alford, Permanent State of Emergency: Unchecked Executive Power and the Demise of
the Rule of Law, Montreal/Kingston, McGill/Queen’s University Press, 2017; E. Cassel,
The War on Civil Liberties, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2004.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 273

alone, the relations of private property that define the system and all its
members. The modern executive speaks for the system and its conse-
quences, while feudal powers spoke mainly for themselves.
The paradox of principle and practice. That the powers of the modern
executive are greater than those of the monarchs of the past points to
another anomaly: the obvious inconsistencies between liberal democratic
principles and practice. The principles of liberal democracy reflect those of
the simple commodity production and exchange that characterized the era
of mercantilism (sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries), but the practice
has had to reflect the changing demands and problems of industrial capi-
talism (late eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries). The principles were
proclaimed to be absolute because the marketplace as such contains no
dynamic for change and is marked by the simple exchange of equal value
for equal value, which persists as the main relations of everyday life and so
appears to be unalterable and universal. The practice, however, has had to
follow developments in the dynamic process of capital accumulation
because capitalist production is defined by production on a “progressively
increasing scale.”12 And this “economic growth” has required ever-­
increasing political powers and intervention to complement it.
The principles and practice of liberal democracy belong to two different
albeit related stages in the development of capital. The principles, as fun-
damental rights in constitutions, retain a certain reality at the level of mar-
ket relations in daily transactions, and they provide the foundation for a
limited sense of morality, based on the ethical standards of simple exchange
in the marketplace. The practice, however, follows the development of a
system of accumulation based on the exploitation of labour.13 There is no
implied need for morality or ethics and little tolerance for so-called non-­
derogable rights.14 Humans and the products of labour have ‘worth’ in
this system only as exchange value, the value they contribute to the accu-
mulation of capital. Otherwise, in the eyes of capital, they are expendable,
non-essential.

12
To paraphrase Marx. See: K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, London: Penguin 1977, 725.
13
The whole point of the system is to increase value, to accumulate, to produce surplus
value that can be reinvested to augment itself.
14
A non-derogable right is defined as a right that is not to be infringed for any reason or
under any circumstance. The prohibition of torture, slavery, imprisonment for debt, retroac-
tive criminal law, and suspension of habeas corpus are among the main absolute rights. On
the late twentieth-century rise of global slavery, see: Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New
Slavery in the Global Economy, University of California Press 2012.
274 G. TEEPLE

To emphasize the point, we can compare the two eras. The age of mer-
cantilism was characterized by “simple circulation or commodity
exchange,” and economic relations were “on the surface” where the
majority were petty commodity producers, defined as persons, free to
exchange the products of their labour, equal in relation to all other owners
as subjects in the exchange, and possessing a stake in the system as small
producers.15 Expropriation of surpluses was also in the open, carried out
by the middle-men comprising the bankers as interest on loans, the mer-
chants by “buying cheap and selling dear,” shippers as transport fees, the
state as taxes for debt servicing and administration and wealth expropria-
tions, and the Catholic Church as rent and tithe extraction. This is the
world of incipient capitalism, dominated by the market that laid our foun-
dational notions of equality, justice, freedom, and the exchange of com-
modities as if these notions and the exchange process represented human
relations and not relations between legal persons.16 The principles gradu-
ally became idealized in the political tracts of the era and reflected in the
political and civil liberties of liberal democratic constitutions. Long imag-
ined as characteristic of all our relations, their acceptance as universal and
natural has allowed its adherents to call for minimal government and indi-
vidual rights.17 These principles are less plausible now because the state
and the civil society they reflect are from a past era.
In the debates surrounding the formation of the bourgeois constitu-
tions, however, we read about the fears of social disorder arising from the
inequalities of the market that accompany private property and the appro-
priation of surplus. And we also read about fears of the rise of the modern
working class that grew with the coming of industrial capitalism, a class
without a stake in the system, that is obliged to fight for the means of its
own reproduction, and that has no escape except to change the system it
has built. This is a class that produces the surplus value that provides the
profits for employers, the capital for expansion, and the tax revenues that
finance the state bureaucracy and that are redistributed to the working
class in the form of ‘public’ programmes and insurance. It is, furthermore,
a class whose economic existence as wages implicitly stands opposed to
15
“Manufacturing” begins in this era, but it is handicraft production centralized by capital,
and it does not represent the majority of commodity producers.
16
K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, London: Penguin 1977, 280.
17
In the capitalist mode of production, individual rights are divided into those of the indi-
vidual restricted mainly to consumption goods, and those of the corporation that embrace
the means of production, not to mention a host of state protections not granted to individuals.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 275

capital accumulation because its exploitation is the source of accumula-

tion. It is the constantly renewed nemesis of the system whose opposition
must be just as constantly addressed by the state and corporate sector by
means of coercion, redistribution, institutionalization, and consciously
promoted ideologies.
The principles, reflecting petty commodity production and the persist-
ing market in consumables, however, are presented as absolute, unchang-
ing. The political significance of this vision of the market, referring to the
need for state intervention, was not extensive in the era of mercantilism
because the majority had a stake in the system as owners of the means of
production and the products of their labour, and so required limited over-
sight. The role of the state was cast as class neutral and minimal, as we see
in early liberal theory, although it has always assisted capital accumulation
by the numerous “chartered” merchant companies that spanned the six-
teenth to nineteenth centuries.18 But while these principles were lodged in
democratic constitutions as fundamental rights, defined as inherently
human or god-given, the coming of the capitalist mode of production
obliged constant challenges to these principles in liberal democratic prac-
tice, placing the practice at odds with the principles.
Predicated on the early accumulation of the mercantilist era, the capi-
talist mode of production introduced an economic system that has had a
comprehensively political significance. Comprehensively political because it
is characterized not by simple exchange and circulation, but by the accu-
mulation of capital, the necessity of “growth,” and the commodification
of all aspects of reproduction, including the productive classes, all of which
implies an ever-increasing role for the state.19 In the accumulation process,
conflicts arise between competing corporations, their different sectors, the
corporate sector and labour, and national configurations of capital. These
are antagonisms that can be mitigated only by means of state intervention
to regulate competing capitals, to modify or suppress the demands of
labour, and to engage in diplomacy or war to settle international disputes.

18
See footnote #4 above.
19
See K.S. Templeton Jr. (ed.), The Politicization of Society, Indianapolis: Liberty Press,
1979. The articles in this edited book reads as a lament for the state as depicted in early social
contract theory, as if that political form at one time had a reality and could suffice for all
systems, and act as a censure of the ever-expanding role of the capitalist state, which has been
necessary because of the constantly growing conflicts in the capitalist mode of production
over the division of the social surplus.
276 G. TEEPLE

These were tasks undertaken by the executive branch in the name of the
whole but defined by the systemic driving force of capital accumulation, a
purpose that recognizes only the monetary value of labour and its prod-
ucts, without regard for moral principles, ethical norms, cultural tradi-
tions, aboriginal rights, or religious beliefs. The role of the modern liberal
democratic state has always been to oversee capital accumulation, making
state or public policy20 broadly coincident with the general interests of the
corporate sector, and obliging an ever-increasing intervention of the state
in the pursuit of this end. It can only pretend to be class neutral or guided
by ethics.

The Growth of Executive Powers: Accumulation

and the Ensuing Conflicts

These structural conflicts have increased with the continuous expansion of

the accumulation process. And the necessity for regulation followed with
the expansion of all arenas of economic activity, which meant an increase
in state intervention and the exercise of executive powers, the only consti-
tutionally defined set of powers for setting and implementing policy. The
need for these expanding powers was greater than for monarchs because
the system itself depends on the state managing the production and appro-
priation of surplus value, processes with constraints forced by organized
labour to improve workplace or living standards, or introduced by corpo-
rations to increase the productivity of their employees, or legislated by the
state to achieve the ends demanded by the process of capital
accumulation.
The expansion of the accumulation process not only created the neces-
sity for increasing interventions by the state, but it also brought a world in
which the limited moral principles and ethical norms of simple commodity
production and exchange were confronted by the non-existence of moral-
ity and ethical standards of industrial capitalism. Here workers are treated
simply as costs of production; products of labour seen as mere
20
The concept of ‘public’ is ambiguous. It can be used as in ‘public policy’ as a synonym
for state policies, with no implication of policies especially favourable to the citizenry. It can
also be employed as a reference to state policies that appear to be directly in the interests of
all, as in public schools, healthcare, pensions, infrastructure, and so on. The main intent of
state investment in any sphere, we suggest, has been to maximize capital accumulation,
directly or indirectly. It can, moreover, be used to describe corporations that are open to
investment in the stock market by the ‘public,’ that is, by anyone with money to invest.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 277

embodiments of value intended for exchange, with unemployment imply-

ing social ostracism; human relations are reduced to contracts; and inter-
national conflicts or war become chronic because they are driven by the
necessity to accumulate in the international arena. The narrow morality
and ethics of petty commodity production and simple exchange, declared
as human absolutes, increasingly became merely part of the ideological
legitimation of a system that is without morality and ethical standards,
which exists only for capital accumulation.21
The key to understanding the powers given to the executive branch in
liberal democracies and the rationale for their continual expansion lies in
the dynamic of accumulation that characterizes the capitalist mode of pro-
duction.22 A brief definition of the concept of accumulation will set the
stage. The nearest analogous concept in mainstream economics is “eco-
nomic growth,” which is often defined descriptively as an increase in real
gross domestic product (GDP), the annual per capita increase in the value
of the national output of goods and services.23 And while the question of
growth has been an abiding issue in economic theory, it does not hold the
central position that it did for Marx. He makes economic growth central
to his critique of the capitalist mode of production as found in the “law of
accumulation,” which is the culmination of his argument in Volume One
of Capital,24 and the reference point for the further development of his
analysis.
The capitalist mode of production possesses a dynamic, he argues, that
is absent in other modes of production. This dynamic is inherent in capi-
tal: value in the form of capital has a competitive drive to augment itself.
The point of the capitalist system is not the satisfaction of human needs,
but the accumulation or augmentation of value, and this “growth”

21
Here lies part of the explanation for why the United States can parade as the defender of
liberal democracy and human rights and yet act as an enemy of democracy and human rights
the world over. See: Wm. Blum, Rogue Nation, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press,
2000; N. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.
22
P. Zaremka, “Accumulation of capital,” in B. Fine and A. Saad-Filho (eds.), The Elgar
Companion to Marxist Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012 (5–8); B. Fine,
“Accumulation,” in T. Bottomore (ed.), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983 (3–4).
23
The GDP is strictly a measure of growth for the capitalist mode of production; it does
not take into account, as noted by many, a host of variables pertinent to life itself, restricted
as it is to measuring value. F. H. Hahn and R.C.O. Matthews, “The Theory of Growth: A
Survey,” in The Economic Journal, Volume 74, Issue 296, 1 December 1964, (779–902).
24
K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, Chapter 25, op. cit.
278 G. TEEPLE

amounts to the appropriation of surplus value and the reinvestment of a

portion of it in the production process. Once established, the accumula-
tion process also takes the form of the gradual concentration of many
small capitals, ultimately creating the large formations of capital needed
for the industrial revolution, after which centralization25 or mergers and
acquisitions produced larger corporate embodiments of value. In other
words, competition leads inexorably to oligopoly, monopoly, and cartel-
ization. The objective and motive of production is the production of sur-
plus value or capital, that is, value to be reinvested to augment itself. The
whole point of the system is to grow, to accumulate, to expand the pro-
duction of capital.26 The expansion of capital and its numerous conflicts
are intrinsic parts of the same process.
Class war between representatives of labour and capital is one expres-
sion of the accumulation process, one of the sets of conflicts that lead to
the continuous expansion of executive powers. This war is over how much
will be appropriated and turned into capital and how much will go to the
reproduction of the working class. It is over the sharing of the total new
value created in the production process;27 it is a conflict over the division
of the GDP28 in which what goes to one side does not go to the other. The
more that can be appropriated by capital as surplus, and therefore added
to the accumulation process, the less goes to the working class, the very
class that produces the value. The role of the state is to assist in this process
as central to the mode of production, but not to the degree that the
squeezing of surplus undermines the well-being of the working class and
so reduce its productive force, or diminishes it as the economic endpoint
in consumption or drives it to rebellion or revolution.

25
K. Marx, Capital, Ibid., 777.
26
K. Marx, Capital, Ibid., 1020ff.
27
To use Marx’s terms, the total new value can be depicted as (v+s), in which ‘v’ stands for
the value of wages and salaries and ‘s’ for the value of the ‘surplus,’ which includes profit. The
struggle over the share of new value (v+s) that goes to v and to s is the heart of class struggle;
the heart of inter-corporate and international war, by contrast, is the conflict over the divi-
sion of s.
28
The use of GDP is appropriate here because it is a measure of monetary value and so
consistent with the capitalist mode of production, but it has come under much criticism for
failing to account for the large number of externalities that have proven destructive of life on
the planet. There are now many ways to measure “human progress” that critically assess this
destruction. See, among many examples, J.K. Boyce, Economics, The Environment, and our
Common Wealth, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 279

The long and continuing struggle over this division has produced sig-
nificant changes to the structure of the state and its executive branch. The
demands of accumulation adversely affect the condition of the working
class, providing the abiding conditions for social unrest, which must be
mitigated by social reforms, which in turn have included the reluctant and
begrudging expansion of voting rights, the legalization of trade unions
and associated rights, and a range of minimal social rights that have ulti-
mately resulted in a relatively comprehensive but disconnected set of social
programmes, disparagingly labelled the welfare state.29 The motive of all
these programmes, it must be stressed, has not been for the good of the
working class, although an improved standard of living cannot be denied
or faulted, but rather for the good of the corporations. Publicly supported
education, healthcare, pensions, unemployment insurance, union rights,
workplace standards, and so on are all designed in relation to the accumu-
lation process—even more so since the 1980s, when privatization or the
corporate ‘capture’ of these public services began in earnest.
The welfare state, that patch-work quilt of variable social reforms, was
established reluctantly over many decades, in part to address chronic
labour unrest. It has been the mechanism that the state has employed to
assist the reproduction of the working class by redistributing tax revenues
and other deductions from wages and salaries to the working class, reduc-
ing the costs of reproduction by minimally ‘socializing’ them. Although
this redistribution function requires wages and salaries sufficiently high to
allow for these deductions, it reduces the effect of the reproduction of the
working class and of maintaining social order on profits. In other words,
it helps to minimize the share going to wages and to maximize the share
going to profits, and in the process mitigates class conflict. With one,
albeit complex, revocable, and extra-constitutional mechanism, the state
can dampen class conflict, optimize the accumulation process, and pro-
mote the legitimacy of the system.
The growth in the size of the working class and its ability to demand
and negotiate higher wages and benefits could be offset with the commen-
surate expansion of the welfare state. This development was realized in the
29
Disparaging because the label implies that the state must supplement the cost of living
of a working class living beyond its means; whereas the welfare state is a redistribution of
wealth generated by the working class, but collected by the state through taxes, fees, and
deferred income, and then apportioned according to the principles of capital accumulation
to the working class to allow for its slightly more equitable reproduction and to prevent
civil unrest.
280 G. TEEPLE

form of increasing state administrative structures, which necessitated the

growth of executive power. This relationship began to break down, how-
ever, in the late twentieth century with the growth of the global economy,
which has meant that accumulation takes place increasingly outside the
national domain in global value chains, decreasing state control, reducing
tax revenues, placing downward pressure on wages, and so undermining
the fiscal foundation of the welfare state. It is at this point that the con-
temporary dilemmas began to arise: the contested retrenchment of the
welfare state, corporate evasion of income tax, the fall in state legitimacy,
extreme income inequality, increasing social unrest, and to cope, expanded
executive prerogative powers.
If social reforms are not forthcoming or proved insufficient to maintain
social order, then, the demand for systemic change appears. After the
Russian Revolution, the conflict between labour and capital also became a
conflict between nations defined by socialized capital and privately owned
corporate capital. The definition of socialism is not important here—suf-
fice it to say that a country that defines itself as socialist usually presents a
barrier to unmitigated further private accumulation. For this reason,
socialist nations have been subjected by capitalist countries to continuous
surreptitious war, sabotage, assassinations, coups d’état, embargoes, sanc-
tions, and even war as in World War II.
Conflict between capitals is another expression of the accumulation pro-
cess.30 The competition between capitals takes place in three arenas, so to
speak. One amounts to competition between individual corporations and
another between economic sectors; and these two conflicts, if within
national jurisdictions, are addressed by means of regulations and other
forms of state intervention, which invariably have benefited some indi-
vidual corporations and some sectors over others. The modern state has
always been partisan: its control of the public purse and policy is won
through political competition between different factions of capital.
The third arena of contestation between capitals is the international,
consisting of competition between states, representative of national con-
figurations of capital, which is addressed through economic pressure, dip-
lomatic measures, or war. The demands of accumulation in the international

30
Whatever the outcome of this conflict, the share of surplus appropriated by capital
remains on the side of capital. By contrast, the outcome of the conflict between labour and
capital produces a greater or lesser share of total new value for one side at the expense of
the other.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 281

sphere have long been associated with recurring wars, and war is one of
the alternatives to negotiations over trade. War between nations is over the
surplus and human and material resources appropriated by nationally
defined corporate sectors in competition. And war and foreign affairs have
typically been the policy preserve of presidents and prime ministers. As
international accumulation grew, so too the necessary corresponding
expansion of executive powers.
Competition between capitals in all three arenas is inherent in the sys-
tem, but in the aftermath of World War II, it has gradually been moder-
ated, on the one hand, by the expansion of global monopolies, oligopolies,
and cartels, plus US economic and military preeminence, and on the other
hand, by the systematic development of ‘a global enabling framework’
that increasingly set generalized policies and implemented them at the
global level. These conflicts have not been resolved, however, so much as
moved to another plane of concentrated capital where the cartels operate
and a small number of their remaining state representatives vie for domi-
nance. The state, nevertheless, persists particularly in the form of the exec-
utive branch as the national political mechanism for facilitating the
accumulation process and suppressing workers’ demands at the national
level in concert with the global framework.31
But war between nations is more than merely the competition between
national capitals over the jurisdiction for accumulation. It has also been
itself one of the most important methods of accumulation. The costs of
war are usually generously financed by the state, which marshals massive
capital funds, labour, and material resources made readily available for cor-
porate use, and the source of high profits in the name of the national inter-
est, which is in effect corporate interest, corporations being the essence of
the nation and the net beneficiary of war. State financing for arms, cloth-
ing, food, fuel, accommodation, and means of transport, in short, all the
materiel necessary for war is usually provided on very favourable terms due
to the exigencies of war, producing extraordinary profits. The state also
promotes scientific and technological innovation with substantial

31
This is a reference to the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, NATO, and
associated agencies that were established at the end of World War II. Increasing regulation at
the global level has meant less at the national level and the relative decline of the historic role
of the state.
282 G. TEEPLE

subsidization of university and corporate research for the war effort.32 In

the end, however, these wars are financed by taxes and state indebtedness,
ultimately paid for through taxes levied across the whole of society, thereby
affecting the working class the most. War itself carries the promise to elim-
inate foreign competition for victorious nations, not to mention access to
new labour and material resources. Profits from war are abnormally high
and so desirable from the corporate perspective, making even a losing war
worth prolonging as long as possible.33
For these reasons, wars are very beneficial to the corporate sector. They
provide periods of accelerated accumulation for all sectors of corporate
activity, a point that goes far to explain why American history is one of
almost continuous war. From 1787 well into the twenty-first century,
there have been very few years that the United States has not been engaged
in wars to promote its commerce, expand its own land mass, override
indigenous land claims, extend its control to overseas territories, prevent
national movements for socialism or nationalism that restrict capital invest-
ment, and force direct US investment on the economies of other nations.
War has been a great stimulus for the rise of the United States as the
world’s preeminent economic and political power—until the twenty-first

32
J. St. Clair, Grand Theft Pentagon, Tales of Corruption and the Profiteering in the War on
Terror, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2005; A. Jacobsen, The Pentagon’s Brain:
An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency, Little
Brown and Company, 2015.
33
How else to account for the long losing American wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria,
Afghanistan, among other extended wars around the world fought by the United States, not
to mention President Biden’s answer in 2022 to the question: how long the war in Ukraine?—
“As long as it takes.” This became a mantra for Western politicians of all stripes, even though
the war has never been anything other than a losing war for NATO. S. Melman, Pentagon
Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.
Wars in Africa are a case in point. An African Development Bank report claimed: “Since
the years of independence, Africa has experienced more than 200 military coups d’etat, both
successful and failed … attempts.” Habiba Ben Barka and Mthuli Ncube, ‘Political Fragility
in Africa: Are Coups d’Etat a Never-Ending Phenomenon?’ in African Development Bank,
September 2012. In most cases, the United States and/or the former European colonial
powers are behind these military operations. [https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/
afdb/Documents/Publications/Economic%20Brief%20-%20Political%20Fragility%20in%20
Africa%20Ar e%20Militar y%20Coups%20d’Etat%20a%20Never%20Ending%20
Phenomenon.pdf].
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 283

century.34 That the capitalist mode of production is characterized by

chronic war is another reason, we suggest, that liberal democracies usually
give their premiers near-absolute power over the military as
“commander-in-chief.”
Throughout the history of liberal democracies, both international war
and class war have been continuous. Sometimes they are contained by
treaties or contracts, and sometimes they break into open conflict as war
or as strikes, lockouts, and extra-legal or extra-parliamentary demonstra-
tions. As long as this mode of production prevails, so too will these wars
persist, coming to an end only when the underlying rationale, namely, the
process of private corporate accumulation, has been transformed. They are
chronic and have made militarism as a social and political response one of
the defining characteristics of the preeminent liberal democracy, the
United States.35
Commodification of all. Aside from the growth of the welfare state and
the military impact of two world wars and other drawn-out wars, there was
another major stimulus to the expansion of presidential powers. After
1945, wartime mass production was turned to the remaking of the whole
of society by commodifying the satisfaction of every need, and thereby
subordinating social reproduction to private corporations and the

34
The overarching motive of these wars, we argue, is the goal of global unrestricted accu-
mulation, but the lack of any serious planning for any of them suggests that the immediate
motive has been the war itself as rationale for war profits and political profiteering. The same
reason for massive costs of the war in Iraq can be seen in the 20 years of the US war in
Afghanistan (2001–2021) and in 2022 in Ukraine, that is, no accounting, no oversight, no
end goal, private contractors, corruption, waste, and so on. See: J. E. Stiglitz and L. J. Bilmes,
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, New York: W.W. Norton,
2008; S. D. Brandes, Warhogs: A History of War Profits in America, University of Kentucky
Press, 1997. The estimated cost of the war in Afghanistan is 2.3 trillion dollars. The Costs of
War Project, Brown University, [https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/
human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022]; M. A. Berstein and
M. R. Wilson, “New Perspectives on the History of the Military-Industrial Complex,” in
Enterprise and Society, Vol. 12, Issue 1, March 2011 (1–9).
35
C. Lutz, ‘Warmaking as the American Way of Life,’ in H. Gusterson, C. Basteman (eds.),
The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It, University of
California Press, 2009 (45–62); Tom Engelhardt, The American Way of War: How Bush’s
Wars Became Obama’s, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010.
284 G. TEEPLE

accumulation process.36 The war economy of cooperation between the

state and private corporations changed after the war from largely war-
based accumulation to its expansion in the remaking of civilian society: the
techniques of mass production developed for the war were applied to the
transformation of civilian society, all in the interests of capital accumula-
tion. The use of Keynesian policies, begun in the 1930s and extended
during the war, was continued into the postwar era as both military and
welfare Keynesianism.
The entire infrastructure as the foundation of a national economy was
revamped: construction methods for housing, offices, and factories were
transformed; transportation was revolutionized; food production was
mechanized; clothing became mass produced; and the collaboration of
war industries with the universities carried on, expanding into civilian
goods and services. Everything that could be subjected to mass produc-
tion was and, in the process, also commodified, institutionalized, corpora-
tized, and regulated. And for these developments, the state was needed
and so came the expansion of administrative executive powers. This expan-
sion came in the form of additions to administrative law, which embraced
industrial relations, commissions, agencies, and departments, and, it fol-
lowed, the growth of state bureaucracies. Here was the third source of
expanded US presidential powers, the expansion of administration.
Conflict between corporations, national configurations of capital, the
ever-present class war, and the commodification of social reproduction
have been the main reasons for the expansion of executive powers across
all liberal democratic governments. In other words, if accumulation is the
main purpose of the state and the rationale of the system, then, the expan-
sion of accumulation necessitates the expansion of executive powers in the
prosecution of international war, class war, and corporatized social repro-
duction.37 After World War II, it could be said that main agenda was set
and the postwar presidents, with possible minor exceptions,38 simply fol-
lowed the policies that arose from the process of accumulation in the era

36
D. Albrecht (ed.), World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building
Changed a Nation, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995.
37
Although he does not mention the welfare state, Schlesinger writes in the Foreword to
his War and the American President that ‘war customarily expands presidential powers.’
38
Eisenhower understood the problem and warned in his farewell speech about the new
locus of power in the military-industrial complex, but Kennedy, who followed Eisenhower as
president, did not understand and naively acted as if sovereign power and discretion still
resided in the office of the president.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 285

of decolonization and socialist revolutions. The expansion of executive

power through administrative law and state agencies/institutions after
World War II was a necessary response to the pursuit of international wars,
which created the warfare state, the controlled reproduction of social
classes, which gave rise to the welfare state, and the commodification of all
reproduction, which required the administrative state.39
Many of the studies on executive power confine themselves largely to
debates over whether the expanding war powers of US presidents have
been lawful or wise. Consequently, many also amount to a lament for vio-
lations of the Constitution,40 or a defence of actions deemed necessary in
the interests of the nation. Their perspective, moreover, rarely stands out-
side the confines of a strictly American frame. In other words, these wars
and the expansion of presidential powers are not considered in relation to
international law: they possess a broad assumption of American exception-
alism and superiority to any international constraint on US actions. They
do not question the rationale of these wars, the spread of covert or secret
wars, the length and number of engagements, or their effects on humans
and the environment. Furthermore, they do not examine the relation
39
On the relation between the welfare and warfare state, see: J. Mittelstadt, The Rise of the
Military Welfare State, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015; J. Mittlestadt, ‘For
America, Welfare is Essential for Warfare,’ May 2, 2018 [https://warontherocks.
com/2018/05/for-america-welfare-is-essential-for-warfare/]; J. Mittlestadt, ‘Reimagining
the Welfare State,’ Jacobin, 7.23.2015 [https://jacobin.com/2015/07/
fdr-social-security-gi-bill/].
40
The controversies around conflicting constitutional powers of the US presidency and
legislature were raised by Arthur Schlesinger in his The Imperial Presidency (1973) and War
and the American Presidency (2004) and carried on by others (see: A. Rudalevige, The New
Imperial Presidency, University of Michigan Press (2005)), but aside from now infrequent
laments about violations of the constitution, that conflict has largely resolved itself in the
common interest of the executive and legislature to promote the warfare state and corporate
cartelization.
The conflict between the elected and unelected executive branches was examined by
Richard Nathan in his The Administrative Presidency (1983), which, despite its lack of the-
ory, produced an interesting debate (see: B. A. Rockman, ‘Introduction to the Symposium
on ‘The Administrative Presidency’ in Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 39, No. 1 (1–4);
and A. Rudalevige, ‘The Administrative Presidency and Bureaucratic Control: Implementing
a Research Agenda,’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1 (10–24). But this conflict,
too, has been resolved in the usurpation of both branches of the executive by the cartelized
corporate sector. See: A. Katz, The Influence Machine: The US Chamber of Commerce and
the Corporate Capture of American Life, New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015; R. W. Behan,
“Degenerate Democracy: The Neoliberal and Corporate Capture of America’s Agenda,”
Public Lands and Resources Law Review, Vol. 24, Jan.1, 2004 (1–7).
286 G. TEEPLE

between the growth of war-making executive powers to the extension of

permanent standing military forces, the escalating use of mercenary
forces,41 the negative budgetary impact on the programmes for social
reproduction, the military role in formulating foreign policy, or the reason
why these wars punctuate or even define every period of American histo-
ry.42 And above all, they do not explore the relation between war, the
growth of American capital, and the “military-industrial-academic-­
congressional complex”43 as the general framework of the history of the
American political process and class struggle.

Capitalism Confronts Socialism

Presidential powers were also increased due to the threat to international
accumulation presented by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917.
With this event, socialism and capitalism, or one might say the interests of
labour and capital, met on the world stage in the form of a conflict between
national states. By 1921, when Western military intervention in the civil
war following the revolution had failed,44 opposition became covert, a
prolonged effort of subterfuge to stifle this first attempt to establish social-
ism across an entire nation. The Bolshevik victory also provided an

41
J. Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, New York:
Nation Books, 2007; P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of Privatized Military
Industry, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
42
See, for example, J. K. Javits, Who Makes War: The President versus Congress, New York:
William Morrow and Company, 1973; A. D. Sofaer, War, Foreign Affairs and Constitutional
Power, The Origins, Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1976; H. B. Cox,
War, Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power: 1829–1901. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger
Publishing Company, 1984; T. F. Eagleton, War and Presidential Power: A Chronicle of
Congressional Surrender, New York: Liveright, 1974; A. M Schlesinger, War and the
American Presidency, New York: Norton and Company, 2004; M. J. Carley, Silent Conflict:
A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations, Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.
43
This wording arose to capture the high degree of interconnection of these four influen-
tial spheres of American society, all prospering from state revenue.
44
No sooner did World War I end than the West, urged on by London, pushed for a
renewed war but now against the newly proclaimed USSR. See: L. C. Gardner, Safe For
Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913–1923, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984, 5. See also: D. S. Foglesong, America’s secret war against Bolshevism:
U. S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920, Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995; Clifford Kinvig, Churchill’s Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia,
1918–1920, Hambledon Continuum, 2006; B. Isitt, From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s
Siberian Expedition, 1917–1920, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 287

unprecedented stimulus the world over for the struggles of oppressed

peoples, which included not only the working classes of the industrial
nations but also the populations of colonial countries where the majority
of the world’s population lived. From the perspective of capital accumula-
tion, this revolution could only be understood as a potential existential
threat. The contradiction created by industrial capitalism between labour
and capital had reared its head in the international sphere, and now began
to grow within and between nations.
The Cold War. The Cold War, then, began in the 1920s, although not
labelled as such. After World War II and the Soviet defeat of German
armed forces across Eastern Europe, however, the United States not only
had to re-establish the capitalist order in devastated Western Europe,45 but
also had to stifle the world-wide spread of working-class interest in social-
ism.46 The extension of Soviet control over Eastern Europe and numerous
wars in the colonial nations for socialism or bourgeois nationalism made it
clear to the United States that for capital accumulation to expand in the
aftermath of the war, a much bigger campaign against socialism than that
before the war had to be mounted. The Cold War began shortly after,
almost as if the German invasion of the Soviet Union was being contin-
ued, albeit off the battlefield. From enemies to allies, Germany, Italy, and
Japan changed places with the Soviet Union in less than 12 months.47 The
crimes committed by the German and Japanese armies were condemned
and a few leaders put on trial, and some executed for war crimes, but

45
The Truman government introduced the Marshall Plan, the Truman Plan, and increased
executive powers with the NSA-NSS, and promoted Keynesian policies at home and abroad,
all within the first few years after the war.
46
R. L. Filippelli, American Labor and Postwar Italy, 1943–1953, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989; P. Agee and L. Wolf (eds.), Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe,
1978; R. Radosh, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, New York: Random
House, 1969.
47
Calculated from the death of F.D. Roosevelt in April 1945, or the end of World War II
in Europe in May 1945 to Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ of February 1946 and Churchill’s
‘Iron Curtain Speech’ in March 1946.
If the death of FDR in April 1945 was controversial, it was also convenient. His attitude
towards the USSR was marked by the collaborative war effort; and this accommodative atti-
tude was not compatible with what was being planned for the postwar era. A strain from his
inaugural speech in 1933 probably continued to echo until the war’s end: “The money
changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We now restore that
temple to the ancient truths.”
288 G. TEEPLE

within a very few years most of the wartime officials were reinstalled in
their former government, military, and corporate positions.48
If the war was about ending the arbitrary rule, territorial expansion,
and closed markets of the Axis powers, their defeat was marked by freeing
their conquered nations, opening their domestic markets, and changing
their forms of governance. Although their constitutions were rewritten as
liberal democracies,49 the corporate, government, judicial, educational, and
military officials who had overseen these regimes remained for the most
part in place. With some structural changes, the nature of their economies
remained capitalist as before, and the war went underground.50 Despite
the nominal alliance with the USSR during the war, the United States and
United Kingdom now saw their erstwhile ally as a growing barrier to fur-
ther accumulation over a large part of Europe and as an undesirable inspi-
ration to workers’ struggles everywhere. Access to labour and industrial
resources in Eastern Europe that capital had before the war was now more
difficult for corporations in the West.

48
Unsettling ties (03/03/2012) ‘Civil servants with ties to the Nazi Party were the rule
rather than the exception after World War II. [https://www.dw.com/en/nazi-ties-unbro-
ken-in-post-war-government/a-15785235]; see also: F. Taylor, Exorcising Hitler: The
Occupation and Denazification of Germany, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011;
E. Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men,
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2014; A. Hoover, ‘Report: Germany’s post-World
War II government was full of Nazis,’ [https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/1011/
Report-Germany-s-post-World-War-II-government-was-full-of-Nazis]. K. Wiegrefe, ‘Nazi
Veterans Created Illegal Army,’ Spiegel International, 14 May 2014, [https://www.spiegel.
de/international/germany/wehrmacht-veterans-created-a-secret-army-in-west-germany-
a-969015.html]; M. Dobbs, ‘Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration,’
Washington Post, 30 November 1998, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/
national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm]; See also: a survey of articles on the wide-ranging
corporate support for the Nazi regime, Trade with the Third Reich Bibliography, [https://
www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/bibliographies/trade-with-third-reich.html].
49
Nazi legal terms remained in the German Basic Law until finally addressed in 2023 when
Germany had begun to rearm itself in preparation for war with Russia via Ukraine. [Berliner
Morgenpost, 02/21/2023, “Justice Minister Buschmann wants to erase Nazi language from
laws.”] The democracies of Europe were reluctant to see democracy in their colonies and
were seemingly untroubled by dictatorships in Europe in Portugal and Spain until the adop-
tion of their new constitutions in 1976 and 1978 respectively. The constitutions of the colo-
nial regimes of Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal took many years
of war after 1945 to achieve. Such is liberal democracy.
50
D. Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe,
New York: Frank Cass, 2005; P. Williams, Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the
Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia, New York: Prometheus Books, 2018.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 289

The Warfare State

If the Cold War was a continuation of the prewar antagonism shown
towards the Soviet Union and the spread of socialism, it had an additional
purpose in the postwar era. Between 1940 and 1945, the United States
had mobilized on a scale that transformed its entire social formation: every
component of society had been marshalled for the war effort—the entire
economy, educational institutions, transportation, finance, infrastructure,
and political structure. But more, this massive restructuring obliged the
integration of the activities of bureaucrats, corporate officials, military per-
sonnel, scientists and academics, trade union leaders, workers, and politi-
cians—the incorporation of all aspects of society with the single purpose of
war, largely dependent on state financing.51 By the end of the war, the
transformation amounted to the creation of a “warfare state,” at the cen-
tre of which stood the military-industrial complex,52 a world-wide set of
military bases, and a much-expanded executive branch that was necessary
to manage the vast array of administrative demands required for this mobi-
lization. If the origin of the Cold War was to counter a successful socialist
revolution, its postwar continuation by the United States and the United
Kingdom can be attributed not only to the wide postwar interest in and
expansion of socialism, but also to the postwar need for a rationale for the
continuation of this extensive institutionalization of social, political, and
economic forces forged by the war effort. At war’s end, the maintenance
of US military and economic preeminence over the capitalist nations
required a new justification, and this the Cold War provided.53
If the Cold War amounted to a series of multifaceted covert wars pur-
sued over decades to check and undermine the spread of socialism and
nationalism—involving sanctions, sabotage, threats, propaganda, espio-
nage, coups, assassinations, and invasions—it can be understood as the

51
D. Albrecht (ed.), World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building
Changed a Nation, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995; T. D. Morgan, ‘The Industrial
Mobilization of World War II: America Goes to War, Army History, No. 30, 1994 (31–35);
M. Klein, A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Bloomsbury, 2013;
P.A.C. Koistinen, Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare,
1940–1945, University Press of Kansas, 2004.
52
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, 1961, warning of the threat of the
‘military-industrial complex.’ [https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-
dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address].
53
D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins 1917–1960, Volume Two: 1950–1960,
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961.
290 G. TEEPLE

programmatic face of the extensive warfare state that was built up during
World War II, that is, the huge expansion of institutional structures within
the executive branch, designed to manage and support the war effort. The
bureaucracies running the armed forces had grown to become the most
important part of government, overseeing the marshalling of much of the
entire system for war. They had, moreover, developed extensive links with
the corporations that had been converted for the war effort; war had been
good for business and for the military officers. Many officers later found
lucrative positions in the corporations of the military-industrial complex, a
relation that remains to this day,54 placing the military and related indus-
trial corporations in a position that provided significant control over pub-
lic policy and corporate contracts.55 American military bases established in
the course of the war stretched across the world, creating a standing army
and bases of unprecedented size and extent, and, in the case of the defeated
Axis powers, the US military participated directly in the postwar structure
of governance. The military, then, by dint of size and power and chain of
command was influential in the actual governing of several states, espe-
cially in the formation and execution of US foreign policy, and its imple-
mentation through this world-wide set of bases.56
Postwar expansion of the executive branch. This enormous war-related
state bureaucracy was vastly bigger than all the state machinery that had
grown around the agencies spawned by the New Deal (1933–1934,
1935–1938). Within a decade of the end of the war, there were thousands
of former military officers in positions of authority in many of the new
civilian state agencies, not to mention high in corporate offices. And unlike
the earlier rise of the administrative state after World War I, this

54
R. Summers, “The Pentagon’s Revolving Door Keeps Spinning: 2021 in Review,”
Project on Government Oversight, January 20, 2022, https://www.pogo.org/analysis/the-
pentagons-revolving-door-keeps-spinning-2021-in-review; W. Hartung and D. Fisher,
“When 80% of US generals go to work for arms makers,” Responsible Statecraft, October 5,
2023. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-revolving-door/.
55
“If the military did not gain full control of the economy during the war—mostly because
of Roosevelt’s resistance—it did ensconce itself in key positions and it formed a permanent
alliance with big business that endures to this day.” S. Lens, Permanent War: The
Militarization of America, New York: Schocken Books, 1987, 15. The American military
retains a large presence in Japan and Germany and has remained in South Korea since 1953.
56
C. Lutz, The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S Military Posts, London:
Pluto Press, 2008.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 291

military-­industrial-­academic-labour union-congressional complex57 was

too profitable and too central to American economic and military preemi-
nence in the world to dismantle.58
Amidst the sudden anti-Soviet shift in American foreign policy in the
immediate postwar years, the US Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act
in 1946, giving the president increased power over the development of
atomic energy: the bomb and accompanying foreign policy. And about a
year later, Congress authorized the National Security Act (NSA) in 1947,
which laid the foundation of what has been called the “permanent national
security state.”59 Despite the numerous laments about the increasing pow-
ers of the presidency to make war and the loss of that power for Congress,60
these two acts were supported by Congress, and granted the president the
foundations of new powers that would go far in giving all future presidents
the ability to maintain a state of permanent war and an economy defined
by military-industrial-academic-congressional linkages.
The National Security Act was probably the most significant piece of
legislation to enhance the powers of the US president, until changes to
nuclear weapons deployment in the 1970s culminated in the 1980
Presidential Directive 59, signed by President Carter, giving US presidents
far more power in the execution of nuclear war.61 The events of 2001 and
the Patriot Act added to these powers.62 The NSA, however, is what marks
the formal expansion of presidential powers. It had three main compo-
nents, which noticeably focused existing executive powers: the creation of
the Department of Defense (DoD), which established an umbrella

57
These groupings of economic and political sub-units are not uncommon is contempo-
rary American commentaries on the military-industrial complex. D. F. Fleming, “Will
Militarism Destroy the United States,” in M. B. Hickman (ed.), The Military and American
Society, Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press, 1971: 15 (13–25); W. F. Fulbright, “The Military-
Industrial-Academic Complex,” in M. B. Hickman (ed.), The Military and American Society,
Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press, 1971 (130–143).
58
J. T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II, Americans and the age of big government,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, 243–244.
59
J. E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security – From World War
II to the War on Terrorism, New York: Basic Books, 2009, 2.
60
For a comprehensive review of this position, see: R. Alford, Permanent State of
Emergency: unchecked executive power and the demise of the rule of law, Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.
61
‘Jimmy Carter’s Controversial Nuclear Targeting Directive PD-59 Declassified,’
National Security Archive 2012. [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb390].
62
N. Chang, Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September Anti-Terrorism Measures
Threaten Civil Liberties. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.
292 G. TEEPLE

bureaucracy for the army, navy, and air force, housed in the then newly
built Pentagon; the formation of the National Security Council (NSC),
which was to be advisory to the president, providing an assemblage of
intelligence reports from domestic and foreign sources; and the establish-
ment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which brought together
several separately evolved espionage and surveillance organizations in the
military and civilian state apparatus.
The NSA, then, was both an acknowledgement of existing bureaucra-
cies and a prompt for even greater expansion of discretionary executive
powers at all levels of administration. From the beginning, the principles
of liberal democratic government—particularly, popular sovereignty, the
rule of law, and the separation of powers—had been circumvented by
executive powers assuming priority over the other branches of govern-
ment, but now these powers were consolidated and enhanced in institu-
tional forms. The NSC, it was said, came to serve as a ‘second’ cabinet,
albeit a cabinet of secret information. Amendments to the NSA in 1949
gave full powers over the entire armed forces to the Secretary of Defense,
centralizing these powers and giving them executive-level status. This
immense postwar institutional structure at the disposal of the president,
and approved by Congress, provided a sort of ‘living proof’ that the office
had ‘inherent powers’ to act arbitrarily, even to committing the nation to
lengthy wars without legislative approval. In short, the NSA gave birth to
the national security state (NSS).63
By 1950, all the elements of this warfare state that were to characterize
the United States to the present day were in place. At its centre was the
permanent war economy: the union of its industrial corporations, the
AFL-CIO bureaucracy,64 university research, enormous public financing,

63
Congress had not so much ‘surrendered’ its powers to the executive branch in this con-
centration of power as taken an active part in this development. The reason, we suggest, lay
in the outcome of the war, the assertion of US economic and military preeminence, and the
tacit if not open grasp by all branches of government of the need for a single voice vis-à-vis
the world. Given the strategic geographical situation of the many industries of the military-
industrial complex within the United States, members of Congress benefited financially from
arms production for permanent war.
64
J, Schuhrke, “Reckoning With the AFL-CIO’s Imperialist History,” Jacobin https://
jacobin.com/2020/01/afl-cio-cold-war-imperialism-solidarity; A. Battista, “Unions and
Cold War Foreign Policy in the 1980s,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 26, Issue 3, July 2002
(419–451).
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 293

the Department of Defense, and constant war or its threat.65 This military-­
industrial complex was necessary to support the enormous number of
standing armed forces in many hundreds of bases across the world, con-
stant conflict—wars, coups, covert operations—and extensive training of
the armed forces in those nations whose democratic aspirations were being
suppressed.66 The economic ‘health’ of thousands of American cities and
towns depended on the arms industries and the supply of consumer goods
to hundreds of foreign bases, hundreds of thousands of workers benefited
from the jobs directly and indirectly, and trade union bureaucrats found an
assurance of steady union dues. Hundreds of millions of dollars have con-
tinued to go to university research centres,67 and the careers and wealth of
many politicians have rested on promoting these linkages.68 And to keep
the American mind in check and bring the international intelligentsia into
line, there were extensive resources dedicated to the “cultural cold war.”69
The imperative of the accumulation process, accompanied by the
expansion of markets and the military, necessitated the growth of presi-
dential war powers. But this growth might be better seen as the increasing
formalization of presidential initiatives as opposed to Congress reining in
arbitrary presidential actions. Postwar military engagements were largely
marked by secrecy on the part of the Pentagon, the CIA, and presidents.

65
I. Hossein-zadeh, The Political Economy of U. S. Militarism, New York: Palgrave, 2006;
S. Melman, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1970; S. Melman, The Permanent War Economy, American Capitalism in Decline, New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1974.
66
The list of wars, covert operations, coups d’etat, assassination, renditions, and so on is
too long to present here. But there are several book-length studies of these military interven-
tions, see: Blum, Rogue State.
67
R. M. Abrams, ‘The U. S. Military and Higher Education: A Brief History,’ The Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Mar.1989, Vol. 502, (15–28).
68
J. Raymond, ‘Growing Threat of our Military-Industrial-Complex,’ in Hickman (ed.),
The Military and American Society, op. cit., 68–83.
69
F. S. Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters,
New York and London: The New Press, 2015; S. Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of
Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1983; J. Skolnik, ‘Hollywood and the Pentagon are cheating on the American
public,’ Monthly Review online, June 3, 2020: https://mronline.org/2020/07/03/holly-
wood-and-the-pentagon-are-cheating-on-the-american-public/; D. Swanson, ‘Theatres of
War: How the Pentagon and the CIA Took Hollywood,’ World Beyond War, January 5,
2022: https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-pentagon-and-cia-have-shaped-thousands-of-
hollywood-movies-into-super-effective-propaganda/.
294 G. TEEPLE

That is, until 1973, with the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam,
when the Congress passed the “War Powers Resolution,” which obliged
the president “to terminate” unauthorized engagements within certain
time limits. Nixon, however, formally challenged these constraints, and all
subsequent presidents sought to find ways around these congressional
limits to their arbitrary assertion of war powers.70
September 11, 2001, changed the ineffectual and limited objections by
Congress to presidential contempt of its constitutional power over war-­
making. This 9/11 act of terror became the rationale for a presidential
declaration of a “war on terror.”71 And within days Congress passed a new
law, Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), allowing the presi-
dent to take whatever actions were necessary to pursue the purported per-
petrators, without geographic or time limits. President Bush quickly
interpreted this new law as allowing him to pursue alleged terrorists any-
where in the world without limit.72 He expanded CIA powers to wage
covert wars, and Congress also soon augmented the law to engage with
other military forces in this “war.” The president, Congress, the Pentagon,
and the CIA found common cause to pursue covert wars without account-
ability wherever it served American interests. About a month after passing
the AUMF, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which compromised the
entire range of civil rights of American citizens.73
Between 2001 and 2020, the Pentagon and CIA engaged in military
operations in about 85 countries, in “joint military exercises” or “train-
ing” and “assistance,” or direct attacks. A long series of added Congressional
authorizations marked this period, which enabled increasing arbitrary war
powers by the president, but which were assumed and implemented by the
unelected branches of the executive.74

70
K. Y. Ebright, ‘Secret War: How the U.S. Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage
War Under the Radar.’ Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law,
November 3, 2022, 5–6.
71
For a review of the context and use of this declaration, see: G. Teeple, The Riddle of
Human Rights, Chapter VIII, Toronto: Garamond Press, 2005, 167–211.
72
S. Savell, ‘The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force: A Comprehensive Look at
Where and How It has Been Used,’ Cost of War Project, Watson Institute, Brown University,
December 1, 2021.
73
ACLU, ‘Surveillance Under the Patriot Act’ [https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-
security/privacy-and-surveillance/surveillance-under-patriot-act].
74
See: K. Y. Ebright, ‘Secret War…’ op. cit., and S. Savell, ‘The 2001 Authorization…’ op.cit.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 295

The use of American troops in actual combat began to drop off by

2018 because the United States formalized a policy for more secretive
operations and greater use of mercenaries, which could be “plausibly
denied.” Here is a paragraph from the 2018 National Defense Authorization
Act (NDAA), which defined the new approach: “to provide support to
foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in support-
ing or facilitating ongoing and authorized irregular warfare operations by
the United States Special Operations Forces.”75 Early in the twenty-first
century, then, the preeminent military forces in the world were engaged in
multiple conflicts across the world, wars defined as ‘irregular’ meaning
outside the boundaries of international law or without limits, fought by
proxy forces trained, armed, and overseen by US Special Op forces. They
have been financed with unaccountable budgets and initiated by unac-
countable leaders.

Militarism
The military became the most important aid to capital accumulation early
in the history of the capitalist state. It has performed this role in several
ways. It was used to conquer new markets, expand access to labour and
material resources, exterminate or isolate indigenous peoples, and sup-
press workers’ strikes. It has served as an important stimulus to economic
growth in its demands for armaments and maintenance of a standing army
at home and abroad, while these costs were off-loaded to the taxpayers,
visible in the growth of the military share of the national budget.
Accumulation by taxation in the name of national defence could be
argued.76

75
Cited in K. Y. Ebright, ‘Secret War…’ op. cit., p. 21.
76
See M. Hudson, Super Imperialism, the Economic Strategy of American Imperialism,
Dresden: ISLER-Verlag, 2021. For a long list of US military interventions, see: Blum, Rogue
State, … For a recent accounting of the sheer numbers of such American interventions since
1789 (about 400, half of which after 1945), see: S. Kushi and M. D. Toft, “Introducing the
Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019,” in
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2023, Vol.67, No. 4 (752–779). For a broader examination
of state support of the early economic development of the United States, see: H. W. Broude,
“The Role of the State in American Economic Development, 1820–1890,” H. N. Scheiber
(ed.), United States Economic History: Selected Readings, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1964:125.
296 G. TEEPLE

For most of the imperial nations, the military came to define the bound-
aries of foreign policy, which the world has long equated with “gun-boat
diplomacy,”77 pointing to the relation between the accumulation process
and the military: the latter enforcing the former. This duality of the mili-
tary and capital, moreover, disguised as the national interest, conveniently
left ill-defined, provides a certain mystique to the military, encouraging its
reverence as the embodiment of the spirit of the nation.78 The existence of
standing armies, the wearing of a uniform, militarized patriotic songs, and
the large network of veterans associations have long been used to under-
mine critical and working-class consciousness.79 Militarism is the ethos of
capital accumulation in uniform or, we might say, the “national interest”
on parade or at war or in preparation for it.80

77
J. Cable, Gunboat diplomacy 1919–1979: Political Applications of Limited Naval Forces,
London 1981; R. Mandel, ‘The Effectiveness of Gunboat Diplomacy,’ International Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1986 (59–76); All the imperial powers defined as liberal democra-
cies have practised “gunboat diplomacy,” the use or threat of war to secure advantageous
terms of trade or forms of military or commercial occupation. The many hundreds of military
bases that the United States maintains around the world, not to mention its direct command
over NATO and numerous proxy forces, can be understood as permanent forms of gunboat
diplomacy. Their very existence contradicts the notion that the United States is a representa-
tive or defender of democracy.
78
K. Liebknecht, Militarism and Anti-Militarism, New York: Dover Publishing, 1972
(1917): 39. Over a century old, this book remains a model for surveys of the use of the mili-
tary to suppress the working class.
It is not for no reason that in constitutional monarchies, the royals continue to appear in
military dress on ceremonial occasions. While the royals are mostly symbolic, the military is
the ultimate enforcer of the accumulation process; together they represent ultimate state
authority notwithstanding democratic constitutions.
79
K. Liebknecht, Militarism…, Ibid. Throughout Liebknecht’s text there are many refer-
ences to the use of the military to counter working-class consciousness. The military rank and
file, the working class, which would normally be anti-establishment, are taught to obey
orders and respect authority.
To this we can add that academics, who might be expected to display a certain scepticism
about things, are often silenced by research funds from and collaborative work with the mili-
tary, or by threats and intimidation by state or university administrations. See: R. M. Abrams,
‘The U. S. Military and Higher Education: A Brief History,’ The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, Mar.1989, Vol. 502, (15–28); M. Weinreich, Hitler’s
Professors, The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People, New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1999 (1946); E. W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, McCarthyism and the
Universities, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
80
Veterans’ groups across the country provide a venue to romanticize war, foster national-
ism, confront anti-war sentiments, and counter working-class consciousness.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 297

The use of the concept of militarism here is a reference to the principles

and practices of the military in industrial capitalism, and their diffusion
throughout the entire system. They may be summed up in a phrase, the
end justifies the means. The goal of military action is the maintenance and
advance of the accumulation process; and the means, as Machiavelli would
have it, is anything necessary to achieve this goal. Neither the means nor
the end here implies anything related to morality or ethics; rather, the only
implication is that the drive for accumulation and related militarism
amount to the suspension of morality and ethics. This suspension is orga-
nized as a hierarchy of command over armed men and women who are
obliged to act as ordered even in violation of international law and per-
sonal conscience.
In short, the capitalist nation-state has been the main political form for
national capital accumulation. The military is essential to this process, and
the executive branch has increasingly assumed exclusive power over the
use of the military. Militarism is the faith that in the military the ultimate
guarantee is found that accumulation would be maintained and expanded
at home and abroad.
Implicit in these growing executive powers over the military has been
the notion of the ‘inherent powers’ of the president or prime minister, but
this can only be a reference to powers derived from capital. Democracy
recognizes inherent powers only as found in the people as a collectivity;
supreme powers representing capital belie those that democracy recog-
nizes. Militarism reflects an authoritarian hierarchical command structure,
which does not admit of the principles of democracy: it promotes the
national interest as the interest of capital and so provides a counter to
working-class consciousness that makes up its rank and file; and it dehu-
manizes by justifying and rationalizing destruction, killing, and following
orders as if in the defence of the ‘nation.’
The principles of liberal democracy remain mainly as rhetorical devices,
widely and convincingly used, but the practice of liberal democracy is
framed by hostilities to ensure the on-going accumulation process and the
militarism and necessity of armed conflict that follow.81 In other words,
the formal political structures persist, but the practice must follow the
demands of globalized capital.

81
A reference to the policies of assassination, torture, rendition programmes, summary
executions, covert wars, undeclared wars, death squads, immunity from prosecution for mili-
tary personnel, and so on, all violations of non-derogable rights and the treaties that enforce
them and, in a word, the suspension of the rule of law. The practice cannot comply with the
principles of liberal democracy.
298 G. TEEPLE

The Executive as Dual Body: The Elected

and Unelected or the Temporary and the Permanent

The office of a president or prime minister has never existed as a singular

entity.82 The executive branch has always been an arena of shared power,
and in liberal democracies that division has been between the elected and
unelected or the temporary and the permanent. The permanent executive
is a reference to the civil service or government bureaucracy or administra-
tion that comprises the practical working departments of government,
which conducts or manages the everyday activity of government. The
duality lies in the division of power between one side that holds predomi-
nant authoritative power to determine priorities and the other side that
possesses degrees of derivative powers to implement or execute political
policy and enforce laws.
The concept of permanent highlights the distinction between the civil
service and the elected executive. The elected and partisan temporary side
of government goes in and out of office; it is unusual for elected officials
to hold any office for longer than a few years. Even if a political party is
returned to office over several elections, the chief ministers of state are
usually changed. Elected governments have always been birds of passage,
acting as temporary premiers and heads in charge of government depart-
ments. The supposedly non-partisan part of the executive is usually taken
as representative of the general interest. Such interest, however, can be
nothing but the prevailing property relations, as we have argued, and so
the civil service can appear to be neutral, not politically partisan, even
though it must uphold this general frame of corporate private property,
which is the source of social inequality and conflicting interests and the
limits of social reform. But appearance is the important factor here: the
permanence of the civil service provides the continuity of the principles of
private property and furnishes legitimacy for a political system that permits
only temporary partisan heads of government departments to exist, and
that gives the illusion of change. Such a system would not be credible
otherwise. In other words, a permanent unelected civil service is essential
for a time-limited elected government because it maintains the relations of

82
This is the case even in medieval monarchies because chronic war and the debt that fol-
lowed produced a need for record-keeping, tax-collecting, and standing armies. See Strayner,
op. cit., p. 71 on early medieval bureaucracies—and the power of bureaucracies even then.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 299

private property in general that allow for political changes to be strictly

partisan while defining their boundaries.
A brief examination of this duality of the executive points to several
questions about liberal democracy. If different political parties can be
elected in succession, or even if no party is elected,83 what is it that is con-
tinuous? Can the bureaucracy be merely a passive instrument for imple-
menting the policies of an elected government? How is it that a partisan
elected government can have its policies implemented by an ostensibly
neutral civil service? If bureaucracies are unelected and yet obliged to
implement partisan politics, how can they pretend to be neutral? We can
begin to answer these questions in the following short survey of the key
principles of bureaucracy.
The existence of a permanent executive assumes that the civil servant is
politically neutral, non-partisan, in contrast to the elected executive, which
is always politically partisan. It follows that it has been possible to say that
the civil service is the only part of the executive that embodies the general
interest, the broad principles of private property that define civil society,
over extended periods of time. In this sense, it is possible to see it as the
true representative of civil society, above partisan and particular interests.
For this reason, it has stood in contrast to the political executive, which
has always represented the interests of only one part of civil society, even
though electoral victory has allowed it to rule in the name of the whole.
The duality of the executive branch, then, contains a conflict between
the elected head of government and the civil service. The civil service, on
the one hand, is the only part of the executive that can be taken as non-­
partisan; and on the other hand, its task is to implement the partisan poli-
cies arising from the legislature and elected executive. It cannot be what it
purports to be. Another conflict lies in the ‘line function,’ all those pro-
grammes and policies that the bureaucracy carries out with the authority
derived from statutes or rules and regulations, not directly from elected
branches. Hundreds of agencies and commissions employing millions of
civil servants, far beyond the close control of the elected executive, hold
varying degrees of derivative executive power, against which there is little

83
‘Belgium breaks own record for longest period without government’ https://www.brus-
selstimes.com/, and ‘Belgium agrees on government nearly two years after previous one fell’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/30/belgium-agrees-on-government-
nearly-two-years-after-previous-one-fell.
300 G. TEEPLE

recourse for appealing these discretionary decisions, and which is there-

fore largely unaccountable.
For these reasons, there have arisen certain principles and justificatory
arguments, which have been developed ostensibly to assure the neutrality,
objectivity, non-partisanship, representativeness, and stability of civil ser-
vice personnel, and these fall into three categories, namely selection, ten-
ure, and hierarchy.
Selection Principles. The first point to make here is that the selection
principles are supposed to guarantee that the civil service is representative
of the whole of civil society. In other words, these are principles intended
to select some citizens to represent the whole citizenry. There are two
problems here. First, however representative of society the selection may
be, the tasks the civil service is charged to carry out will always be partisan.
Second, those tasks, the ostensible ‘affairs of all,’ are separated from the
whole of the citizenry and placed in the hands of selected but unelected
representatives. The functions of administrators are partisan tasks, posed
as if in the general interest, performed by unelected representatives, and
outside any direct determining role by civil society.
The actual selection process has two routes: by nomination and appoint-
ment by government, and by examination.
Nomination and Appointment. Many new appointments to govern-
ment departments, agencies, commissions, and public corporations are
made after each election by a new government. Given that the executive
making such appointments is by nature partisan, it follows that the
appointments will also be partisan or at the very least seen to be.84 In gen-
eral, such selections, especially at the senior levels, means that a certain
number of civil servants will represent particular interests in civil society.
For the most part, the rationale of these appointments will be favouritism,
cronyism, nepotism, patronage, corruption, bribery, or the ‘revolving
door’ with strategic business placements, or rewards to the party faithful.85
Given that in a capitalist society the whole is the system of private property
relations, those who embody these relations most significantly (i.e.,

84
It is not inconceivable that a partisan executive can appoint in a non-partisan manner,
but the appointed will always be tainted by the process and very likely sympathetic to the
government making the appointment.
85
S. Cocciasecca, G. Grossi, A. Sancino, “Public appointments as a tool for public gover-
nance: a systematic literature review”, International Journal of Public Sector Management,
Vol. 34 No. 2, (171–188).
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 301

corporate officials) will be seen to be the natural choice to represent the

system in the civil service.86
Such appointments constitute a contradiction in the civil service; they
are particular interests appointed to represent the whole or particular
interests in a position to oppose the ‘general interest’ of society, which in
a capitalist society amounts to the complete range of conflicting interests.
This contradiction of interests is supposedly resolved by placing the assets
of the appointed civil servants in trusteeships to avoid personal benefits
from a position of public trust. This may allow for the avoidance of direct
personal conflicts of interest, but it does not avoid the bigger conflict in
that the appointment may be for certain larger partisan but not directly
personal interests that the appointee may be serving.
Examination. The chief means of selecting civil servants is by examina-
tion, and it constitutes the most common mechanism for rising in a
bureaucratic hierarchy. But what does the examination mean? It means
that the civil service is chosen by a selection process that separates some
individuals from mere membership in civil society. It is an examination to
determine the degree of knowledge of general or political affairs.
What this means is that a selection process is put into place to deter-
mine who should be given a position to make decisions or to speak on
behalf of the whole. But this begs the question: why is an examination
necessary to determine the kind of knowledge that every citizen should
have, not just a select few? A genuine democracy would provide all with a
broad knowledge about public affairs. An examination to determine who
does and does not have this knowledge, and the degree of knowledge as
criteria of a position in the hierarchy, is an admission that such knowledge
is confined to a select few and that most of the electorate is not in a posi-
tion to understand the issues at stake. The examination points to a certain
deficiency in the practice of democracy.
The civil service exam, then, is “nothing but the bureaucratic baptism
of knowledge,”87 the official recognition of the transformation of

86
Bloomberg Press, August 11, 2022. “Larry Fink’s $8.5 trillion investing giant has been
gaining clout in Washington as the Biden administration has stocked its ranks with ex-Black-
Rock executives. That means the company is now seen as one of Wall Street’s key conduits
to the power center in Washington—a tag that was more closely associated with Goldman
Sachs Group Inc. through prior administrations.” (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/
biden-ties-to-blackrock-deepen-with-latest-treasury-hire-1.1804709).
87
The quotations here are from Karl Marx. See my discussion of Marx on bureaucracy in
G. Teeple, Marx’s Critique of Politics 1842–1847, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
302 G. TEEPLE

“profane into sacred knowledge”—the admission ticket to an elite stratum

of government. Citizenship in a genuine democracy would assume a gen-
eralized and thorough understanding of public affairs and a role in its
functioning.
If it is countered that every citizen has the right to take the exam and
therefore could be admitted to the bureaucracy, then, this “opportunity”
points to the fact that there is no immediate necessary link between the
members of society and their public affairs. It is an admission that the
people are not in charge of their own affairs. The link between an indi-
vidual member and public affairs is only established after having succeeded
in an examination. The opportunity is the chance to acquire the privilege
of participating in the affairs of all, a privilege that proves that the com-
mon members of civil society possess no right to participate.
These representatives of civil society in the bureaucracy or civil service,
then, actually “stand over and against” civil society, separate from civil
society, and acting as the organizational or administrative force of the civil
service. The organs of government marked by bureaucracy—the police,
the judiciary, the military, and the vast administrative apparatus for hun-
dreds if not thousands of programmes—are not to be seen as agencies of
civil society through which citizens administer their own affairs. They are
derivative organs of the state, and the state is the embodiment of the
abstracted prevailing property relations and always partisan in the repre-
sentation of the content of political relations, of some sector of corporate
interests.
As a guarantee of this privileged position, as demonstration of the sepa-
ration of the bureaucracy from civil society, there is an oath of secrecy or
oath of loyalty that most civil service positions demand. These oaths for the
civil service point to the private and particular nature of what is called
‘public affairs’ or ‘affairs of state.’ Secrecy and loyalty oaths are for the
protection of the content of governance in a system of private property
where there are no genuinely public interests, only private interests.88

1984, pp. 61–64.

88
The civil service ‘oath of secrecy’ can produce many conflicts with, e.g., a personal con-
science or moral code, truthful testimony in a court of law, police investigations, legislative
inquiries, obligations to those affected by secret information, and, for our argument, the
principles of liberal democracy. But here is the dilemma: secrecy is essential to liberal democ-
racy because it is a form of government of a system of private interests, while it parades as a
political system giving voice to the general interest. See: E. A. Shils, The Torment of Secrecy,
Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks 1996 (1956). The torment Shils is referring to is precisely this
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 303

Liberal democratic governments cannot be what they purport to be and so

the necessity of the oath of secrecy.
Tenure. Tenure, another key characteristic of bureaucracy, refers to the
security of one’s employment position.89 Generally, tenure accompanies a
position in the civil service, along with a living income and pension plan
and other benefits that are now often the result of union action.
Tenure, however, is granted to those who conform with expectations
and regulations during (and after) a period of probation. ‘Good’ behav-
iour amounts to being supportive of the status quo and to the efficient and
unquestioned carrying out of duties. For those, however, who question
the bureaucratic status quo, tenure or permanency of position is not

dilemma that he discovers in his study of McCarthy’s ‘House Committee on Un-American

Activities.’ He offers no solution because in a competitive capitalist system governed by lib-
eral democracy, state security requires state secrecy, while state secrecy contradicts democ-
racy. See also: A. Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency, op. cit., Chapter 10, “The Secret
System.’ In 1958, the US Congress passed the ‘Code of Ethics for Government Service,’
which stated: ‘Any person in government service should put loyalty to the highest moral
principles and to the Country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department.’
The operative word is ‘should,’ which could mean obligation, but equally it could convey
merely advice; this ambiguous directive, coupled with the undefined ‘highest moral princi-
ples,’ leaves the oath of secrecy safely unchallenged. See: D. Ellsberg, ‘Secrecy Oaths: A
License to Lie?’ Harvard International Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, Summer 2004 (16–19).
‘Freedom of information’ (FOI) laws were widely adopted in liberal democracies in the early
decades of the twenty-first century (currently over 80 nations have such laws) ostensibly to
address the issue of state secrecy in a capitalist system. They represent the other side of
secrecy/loyalty oaths, i.e., the means to uncover secrets and make government action trans-
parent. But state secrecy is essential to a system defined by irresolvable contradictions; and
so, FOI laws could only ever be restricted and largely a pretence. They do not, moreover,
address the near corporate monopoly of the mass media and news agencies (what good is the
truth if it cannot be disseminated?), or why FOI laws have had to be introduced in what are
called democracies, and why requested files are often redacted, missing, lost, or destroyed.
These are not arguments against FOI laws but to point to their limitations and what they
implicitly reveal about democracy. J. M. Ackerman and I. E. Sandoval-Ballesteros, ‘The
Global Explosion of Freedom of Information Laws,’ Administrative Law Review, 58, 2006.
89
In the twenty-first century, many government employees in the industrial nations are
unionized and have security of employment through their labour contracts. Such security,
however, is missing for most non-unionized employees in the private sector. This insecurity
provides a major means of control by management over the labour force; the possibility of
unemployment is a significant source of chronic terror for the working class in a capitalist
system. Melvin W. Reder, “The Rise and Fall of Unions: The Public Sector and the Private.”
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2 (2):1988, 89–110; G. Wm., Domhoff, “The Rise and Fall
of Labor Unions in the U.S.,” https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/history_of_labor_
unions.html_.
304 G. TEEPLE

usually granted. Tenure in the civil service is largely dependent on follow-

ing orders, doing what is asked without question. In other words, when
job security, security of livelihood, is dependent on following orders,
orders are followed even if they conflict with one’s moral code and ethical
behaviour.
The following of orders without question, then, becomes a central
characteristic or principle of bureaucracy. It is so widely present in modern
society and accepted as normal that a common defence of German and
Japanese officials charged at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials (1945–1948)
was that they were ‘following orders.’ Such was one of the main argu-
ments for their ‘absence of guilt’ and appeals based on claimed diminished
or qualified personal responsibility for their actions that resulted in the
unspeakable treatment and systematic, planned deaths of millions.
If it is true that employment in a bureaucracy reduces or eliminates
personal responsibility for one’s actions, it is the price that the bureaucrat
pays for security of position: to become a mere cog in a hierarchy, largely
subservient to decisions made at higher levels. This price includes the sup-
pression of critical thinking, creative aspirations, and democracy in favour
of income certainty, perhaps an understandable trade-off in a marketplace
society, but it is not compatible with human development or genuine
democratic process.
From this status, it could be argued, comes the consequence of a cer-
tain bureaucratic characteristic: servility to those above and officiousness
to those below. If most employees in modern nations work in government
departments, educational institutions, the military, or private corpora-
tions, they will share elements of this characteristic. When one’s livelihood
is guaranteed by compliant behaviour, then, it becomes normal to be sub-
servient and/or domineering. It could even be said that, given the hierar-
chies that define government departments, the military, and the corporate
sector, this bureaucratic characteristic comes to be generalized across the
industrial world.90
In part, it is this employment guarantee that distinguishes the civil ser-
vant and member of the military from the rest, from all others whose
existence is lived out in civil society with security relative to the vagaries of

90
As the world’s nations become increasingly subordinated to capital, the bureaucracies of
the state, corporations, and military come to define the working world. The characteristics of
the employee as bureaucrat gradually become universalized. H. Jacoby, The Bureaucratization
of the World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976,
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 305

the marketplace and unionization. This guarantee, which sets the official
state employee off from the others, is also one of the roots of stability in a
modern liberal democracy, part of the foundation of the permanent execu-
tive, sealed with an oath of loyalty. Given this role, the oath is also in part
a guarantee of the political status quo.
Hierarchy. By hierarchy, we mean a layered system of command of
superiors and subordinates, a structured organization of control with
sequential degrees of power and authority emanating from successively
higher levels. If we accept that the state civil service is the non-partisan
embodiment of the whole, the prevailing property relations, structured as
a hierarchy and separate from the people as atomized individuals, there is
here an argument that is mounted in defence of bureaucracy. It is that
ordinary citizens are protected against the abuse of power by government
officialdom by the hierarchical structure itself. In other words, the hierar-
chical structure prevents the intrusion of subjective or arbitrary wills
within bureaucracy from wielding abusive power because hierarchy con-
tains the principle of ‘answerability’: that is, lower levels are answerable to
higher levels and ultimately to the executive of the state, and these rela-
tions are alleged to be a form of control over abuse directed at civil society.
But hierarchical control so described constitutes the internal con-
straints of bureaucracy and therefore leaves open the question of protec-
tion against the hierarchy. The real problem is the hierarchy itself; it is the
hierarchy that defines bureaucracy and protects it against civil society. If
the individual bureaucrat wrongs the hierarchy, he/she is punished by
dismissal or demotion or other disciplinary action. If the hierarchy offends
civil society through an official, that official receives the protection of the
hierarchy, the provision of degrees of legal immunity for selected state
agents, for instance. Moreover, the hierarchy is not easily convinced of the
transgressions of its members when the accusations come from outside the
hierarchy,91 as the path of advancement, security of position, and its stabil-
ity rest, after all, on loyalty to the hierarchy.
It is these characteristics of bureaucracy—privileged knowledge, ten-
ure, and hierarchy—and their extension to the institutions of the whole of
civil society in some measure that give rise to the generalization of the
common modern social characteristics of sycophancy, on the one hand,

91
This argument is a paraphrasing of Marx. See: Teeple, Marx’s Critique…op. cit.
pp. 62–4.
306 G. TEEPLE

and authoritarianism, on the other. Both are detrimental to what it means

to be human and to the development of working-class consciousness.92

Why Bureaucracy
The executive branches of liberal democracies have always been a duality,
the elected and unelected or the temporary and permanent, the latter
being concerned with policy implementation. The reason usually given for
the existence of bureaucracy is that the complexity and the number of rela-
tions in a system of exclusive property demand an administrative entity of
commensurate size, and separate from the partisan conflicts of civil life.
The obviousness of the answer seems to preclude any further consider-
ation. But the complexity or rather social conflict that characterizes civil
society is what explains the separation of the state from civil society; it does
not explain the duality of the executive branch as policy determination and
implementation.
The reason for the duality rests in the fact that the elected executive is
always temporary and partisan, always representing particular interests,
whereas, the permanent executive is supposedly non-partisan, upholding the
general interest as the rules and regulations that reflect the overarching pre-
vailing property relations. In this duality, one side becomes representative of
the particular as if general (an elected partisan government rules in the name
of the whole), and the other side represents the general as a particular (the
bureaucracy oversees the whole as the rules and regulations for corporate
private property). In advocating a particular interest, the elected executive
must act within this established general interest, i.e., generalized private
property. If the elected and unelected executive were together to become
absolute, to represent a particular as the sole interest, the elected would no
longer be temporary because there would no longer be a need for alternating
rule by different particular interests, and liberal democracy would be at an
end. Given the large number of corporate mergers and acquisitions in the
twenty-first century, this point is not merely academic.
When the sphere of production and reproduction is characterized by
antagonistic relations, when exclusive forms of property constitute the
prevailing property relations, and when the social order is divided between
the state and civil society, then, the administration of those relations must
be carried out by a hierarchy that stands over and above civil society. The

92
In the face of bureaucracy, and its security of employment, comes its accompanying fear
of authority and a diminished class consciousness.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 307

regulation of these relations requires a distinct objective embodiment

because a truly generalized embodiment of antagonistic relations is not
possible. Bureaucracy is the institutionalized administration of a system of
competing particular embodiments of exclusive property forms.93
Bureaucracy exists because the members of society cannot be involved
in the ‘affairs of all,’ and they cannot because these ‘affairs’ amount to the
rules and regulations that police the exclusive, antagonistic interests,
which are incapable of genuine collective expression. Once civil society or
marketplace society appears in history, defined by exclusive property rela-
tions, the ‘affairs of all,’ the prevailing property relations, provide the rai-
son d’etre of the state. The content of bureaucracy is comprised of the
‘affairs of all’ as institutionalized rules regulating economic conflicts
between contending and stratified interests.
In modern democratic governments, the existence of the executive as a
duality is grounded in the fundamental contradiction of the modern
nation, the separation of the whole and the parts, which in turn is predi-
cated on the complex division of labour in civil society and a property
framework reflecting exclusive property relations. The bureaucracy, then,
presupposes this separation and, moreover, presupposes the organization
of civil society as an aggregation of contending individuals and conflicting
interest groups and classes.
If, however, civil society comprised only a single common or coopera-
tive interest for all individuals that interest would be ipso facto a truly
general one, and the separation of the whole and the parts would be no
more. In simple social formations, for example, with a limited division of

93
The bureaucracies found in corporations, religious organizations, and the military have
the same rationale as state bureaucracies, the separation of control from the atomized people
controlled. Private corporations are defined by exclusive ownership/management with con-
trol over employees and consumers; religious organizations are marked by a structure of
control over the ‘mysteries’ of ‘spirit’ versus the individualized believers or laity; and the mili-
tary is characterized by control by an officer class in a command structure confronting the
rank and file and the perceived enemy. The existence of bureaucracies in trade unions, how-
ever, has a different rationale because trade unions are in essence an instrument of the work-
ing class that circumscribes the accumulation process. They have had to be legally structured
to restrict and control their activities; they were institutionalized and legalized to regulate
their recognition, their rights to bargain and strike, the collection of dues, payment of taxes,
and so on. And all these activities required an administration, which was paid from member
dues, while union members were paid by wages extracted from employers. Union bureau-
crats and employers have had, then, a common interest in keeping the workers working
despite pay rates and working conditions.
308 G. TEEPLE

labour, there are tradition-defined common rights to most of the social

product. The coming of the marketplace, however, brings the competition
that characterizes civil society and frustrates or denies the formation of
common interests and so gives rise to the need for an executive bureau-
cracy to define and preside over the ‘general interest,’ referring now to the
generalization of the rules of interaction between individual and corporate
exclusive rights, whose only ‘commonality’ is their definition as competing
antagonistic embodiments of private rights. This ‘general’ or ‘national’
interest is an abstraction because the only thing that connects the particu-
lar interests of capitalist societies is the formalized property relations that
regulate them as an external force.
The executive, including the bureaucracy, it follows, has no content of
its own, other than the preservation of its formal privileges and power. It
is simply the formalism of a content that lies outside of it; it is the rules and
regulations necessary to control the conflicting and contradictory particu-
lar interests. The form of executive branch activity is the regulatory frame-
work required to manage and control its content, civil society; the elected
executive branch introduces particular interests as the content of its poli-
cies, while the bureaucracy supposedly implements these policies within
the broad regulatory, i.e., legal, framework defined by the principles of
private property. Bureaucrats hold most of the cards, so to speak: as those
knowledgeable of past practice and policy, they advise cabinet ministers
who are hindered by limited knowledge and experience during their short
stay in office.
Bureaucracy Versus Civil Society. If the existence of bureaucracy presup-
poses the separation of the whole and the parts, which in turn presupposes
contradictory relations in civil society, then, the bureaucracy must attempt
to maintain that separation as its precondition. In practical terms, this
means resisting the unification of particular interests into more or less
general interests since its monopoly of power over civil society exists only
because competition prevents the establishment of monopoly in and by
civil society. If competing particular interests were to become united, bureau-
cracy would lose its presupposition, its foundation. For this reason, it works
to maintain competition amongst the parts, be they individuals, strata,
classes, or corporations.
The two most important sets of interests in civil society are those of
capital and labour, although organized religion has also been a powerful
interest and continues to be in some nations. When any of these threaten
to achieve a degree of unity in civil society that would threaten the
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 309

monopoly of the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy moves to suppress that

unity. The state or bureaucracy can monopolize the ‘general interest,’
rules of private property, only so long as the particular interests in civil
society are kept divided, competitive.94 The abolition of bureaucracy is
possible when there is only one common interest, which in turn is possible
only when a certain particular actually becomes the general interest, and
this is possible only if the power of the organized majority, the working
class, were to become dominant.95
With respect to organized religion, a principle of the modern liberal
democratic state is to proclaim its secular status, deny religious privileges,
ensure freedom of religion, and consign religion to the sphere of competi-
tion, civil society, and so prevent an official role for religion in politics.
Religious practice is made a matter of individual choice. There are, how-
ever, many states in which some of the fundamentals of liberal democracy
are practised, along with a privileged religion that plays a role in national
politics. In these cases, two bureaucracies, the secular and the religious,
stand in an uneasy relation to each other, the secular using the religious to
help maintain divisions in civil society, and the religious using the secular
as a source of authority, power, and revenue.96
As for capital, it is its nature to strive to end competition because it
drives profits down. As a result, the corporate sector has always attempted
to limit or eliminate competition with the formation of monopolies or
cartels, as well as by means of unethical, predatory, questionable, or illegal
practices. To counter these efforts and maintain its foundation, the state
has attempted to promote competition through anti-trust legislation.97 If

94
With respect to the corporate sector, the example of the promulgation of anti-trust or
anti-combines laws in the United States and Canada in the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth centuries, respectively, points to just such an action by the state executive. While the
United States and Canada have more or less given up on anti-trust laws, the EU has contin-
ued to attempt maintain degrees of competition in economic sectors where monopo-
lies appear.
95
The working class is not just the overwhelming majority, but also the source of all value;
its reproduction is based on the contest over the division of wages/salaries and surplus, not
over the division of surplus, and in this it finds its common cause because its ultimate success
would mean power over the division of the whole of the social product.
96
In many countries with no constitutionally privileged religion, the state still often pro-
vides religions with privileges in the forms of tax concessions and access to educational fund-
ing (see Chap. 13).
97
Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 in the United States and the 1889 Anti-Combines Act
in Canada were early attempts to constrain the formation of corporate monopolies and car-
310 G. TEEPLE

organized capital were to become singular or dominant, however, state

bureaucracies might still be needed to regulate corporate monopolies, or
state and corporate bureaucracies could become one and the same, remain-
ing in existence to control the persisting conflicts with labour and foreign
governments that present barriers to unbounded capital accumulation.
It is also in the nature of trade unions to try to eliminate or moderate
competition amongst workers. For this reason, for as long as productive
classes have tried to organize, the state has worked to prevent or frustrate
any collective action that has helped to coalesce workers’ interests and to
diminish their competition. When the demand for the right to strike,
organize, and bargain collectively grew with the size of the working class,
these rights, among others, were institutionalized, circumscribed by law,
to allow for their limited and legal exercise within boundaries set and over-
seen by the state. When workers’ strikes take place outside these legal
restrictions or in violation of them, as in general strikes, the state must act
to oppose them with all means possible, including use of the police, mili-
tary, judiciary, and appeals to union bureaucracies and left-wing political
parties, to end large-scale work stoppages.98 It is at these times that the
truth of the system is on display.
The Noble Lie. Such open conflicts require a ‘lie’ to justify their suppres-
sion and to maintain the legitimacy of the political system. In Plato’s
Republic, as mentioned, there is a short passage on the ‘noble’ or ‘royal
lie,’ the justification of structural inequalities as the foundation of the sys-
tem, which is especially important when they become unbarred clashes. In
liberal democracies this necessity of lies has always existed and for the same
reason. To maintain its position, the bureaucracy (or permanent execu-
tive) must “protect the imaginary generality of the particular interests,”
the notion that all interests are particular, individualistic, and selfish. In
turn, this illusion is necessary “to protect the imaginary particularity of the
general interest,” the notion that bureaucracy as a separate power and
entity can actually embody the general.99 The necessity for lies about

tels. In the 1950s, Germany created the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) to curb the
growth of monopolies. It was in the long run a losing battle because it is in the nature of
competition move towards its opposite, monopoly.
98
The state has always been opposed to general strikes. A good example is the “Operation
Solidarity” in British Columbia. See: B. Palmer, Solidarity: The Rise and Fall of an Opposition
in British Columbia, Vancouver: New Star Books, 1987.
99
These quotations are Marx’s words. See: Teeple, Marx’s Critique of Politics… op. cit.
pp. 63–5.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 311

liberal democracy in the twenty-first century is more important than ever

to maintain its legitimacy.

Conclusion: The Market, the Military, Executive

Powers, and Liberal Democracy
Liberal democracy, we have argued, has been the political form that grew
as a complement to the dynamic of capital accumulation and its attendant
irresolvable conflicts between classes (labour and capital), between capital
formations (individual corporations, sectors, nations), and between capital
and indigenous peoples. Its most significant role, it follows, has been to
oversee the accumulation process and the legitimacy of the system. The
former has required the continuous expansion of the market, accompa-
nied by changes to military and executive powers, and the latter as a corol-
lary of the former has entailed the promotion of the legitimacy of
democracy.
We have also argued that the main active subject in these relations is the
accumulation of capital, which has framed the corresponding develop-
ment of these four interrelated factors.100 Each of them, however, appears
in different theories as the main subject in this development, producing no
consensus on just which is the main driver. But in the now growing litera-
ture on these relations, the ‘military-industrial complex’ seems to be giv-
ing way to the ‘national security state’ as the favoured starting point.101
These concepts, however, are rarely provided with precise definitions or
explanations of their assumed motive force. By way of concluding, let us
examine these links.
Expansion of Markets. Economic growth in a capitalist mode of produc-
tion, following Marx, appears as capital accumulation, the expansion of
capital, which is driven by competition with other capitals. Theoretically,
each expansion takes place after the value in the commodities produced is
realized in the marketplace, transformed into money, and then reinvested
in the production process for another cycle. The increase in the productive
100
Not to deny each certain degrees of agency, but ‘in the final analysis’ they are all depen-
dent on the process of capital accumulation.
101
For one of the classic discussions of the significance of war for industrial development,
see: John U. Nef, War and Human Progress: an essay on the rise of industrial civilization,
New York: The Norton Library, 1963 (1950). However pertinent the literature from the
1950s and 1960s is, developments in the twenty-first century have given rise to a new body
of work on war in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
312 G. TEEPLE

power of capital and in products from each new cycle, accordingly, requires
an expanding market for their realization and, as a consequence, intensi-
fied competition.
In the short history of industrial capitalism, the markets have evolved
through three identifiable stages102 in which the market, military, execu-
tive powers, and liberal democracy all change in concert with the accumu-
lation process, but not as independent variables, rather in necessary
interrelations with one another. The first stage was the creation of the
domestic market, which was often marked by civil wars, constitutional
struggles, the temporary assumption of arbitrary state powers, the forced
unification of laws, currencies, weights and measures, languages, and the
determination of national boundaries—in a word, ‘nation-building.’103
The second stage was marked by the shift of the focus of accumulation to
the world market, international trade and commerce, partly in the shape of
colonial empires, overseen by the governments of industrial nations, and
expanded and protected by their growing military forces.104 World War II
marked the beginning of the end of this period of national capital accu-
mulation in domestic and the world markets. The postwar transnational
institutions and conditions—the Bretton Woods agreements, the United
Nations, and NATO and the Cold War—laid the ground for the third
stage, the global market—capital accumulation outside national
jurisdictions.
It could be argued that the two world wars were the product of a world
market stalled in its development by the relatively closed European colo-
nial empires. In other words, however large the colonial markets, taken
individually, they could not absorb the increasing surpluses of the ‘mother’
countries; and, largely closed to each other, they frustrated the

102
For lack of a better term, ‘stage’ is employed here to covey a period in the development
of industrial nations in which the four factors we are discussing developed in commensurate
complementary ways. The ‘stages’ are not necessarily discrete and sequential, but they point
to definable periods in the history of trade and commerce.
103
Barry Supple, ‘The State and the Industrial Revolution 1700–1914’ in C. M. Cipolla
(ed.), The Fontana Economic History of Europe, The Industrial Revolution, London: Collins/
Fontana Books, 1973, xx-xx. This article brings most of these factors together to describe
the ‘nation-building’ that resulted from the French Revolution. Our use of the concept is not
to be confused with the contemporary conceit of interventionist powers presuming to ‘build’
a nation on the ashes of one they destroyed. See: A. K. Talentino, ‘Intervention as Nation-
building: Illusion or Possibility?’ in Security Dialogue, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2002 (27–43).
104
E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, The Pelican Economic History of Britain,
Volume 3. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 313

development of capital striving for the global market. Neither war solved
these problems, but the aftermath of the second war did—for a time.
In asserting itself as the preeminent power after World War II, the
United States was simply exercising the advantages it held: it was the lead-
ing creditor nation, possessed the most powerful corporate sector and the
largest military with bases across the world, its productive industries were
the most modern, its territory free of war destruction, and its currency
adopted as the universal measure of wealth. At the same time, it was doing
what capital accumulation in general was obliging the capitalist world to
do: to free the international market from colonial restrictions, to maximize
open markets. It might be more accurate to see the postwar role of the
United States as the voice of capital in general—it was not, after all, only
American capital that grew after the war.
Nevertheless, the United States certainly made use of its leading edge
in postwar developments. The Bretton Woods institutions made the
American dollar the principal global currency, the UN was used for decol-
onization leading to liberal democratic states (socialist aspirations led to
war or coups or assassinations), and NATO and other military agreements
with the United States meant American dominance over the militaries of
the capitalist world. This commanding position has led successive American
leaders to believe that the United States was an ‘indispensable’ nation as if
anointed to ensure the capitalist development of the rest of the world. It
was, however, an accident of the history of capital accumulation that the
United States found itself in this position; its political, economic, and mili-
tary ascendency has been nothing more than the general movement that
capital accumulation has had to take, the rise of a single advocate for car-
telized global capital.
Expansion of the Military. Accumulation has pushed the expansion of
the markets through these three stages, and at every step competition has
increased on a grander scale—ever greater monopolies, oligopolies, and
cartels—and commensurate with this growth, resistance and conflict have
followed. As a result, the market and the military have grown in tandem;
they have a deep-rooted link. The market has always belonged to a politi-
cal jurisdiction and needs protection from capitals belonging to other
jurisdictions, not to mention from demands voiced by subordinate classes
for a more equitable distribution, and subordinate nations for a more
equitable international system. Its expansion usually has meant the asser-
tion of control over resources and labour, and ultimately resistance. It
follows that the development of the military has gone hand in hand with
314 G. TEEPLE

the geographic expansion of the market. War has been a constant in the
history of the market and liberal democracy.105
The military, moreover, has never served only the functions of con-
quest, defence, and enforcement of the market; it has also been an eco-
nomic driver of sorts in its own right. It has always played a role in
increasing economic activity, given its constant presence and continuous
demand for war materiel of all sorts, particularly arms, food, clothing,
housing, and transport, and for labour. But its impact on the history of
states stretches wider to include scientific research, technological develop-
ment, infrastructure expansion, managerial and operational skills,
and so on.106
By the end of the twentieth century, the general advance of the produc-
tive powers of industry had satiated the spheres of consumption and capi-
tal goods, as they have continued to do, which gave rise to the problem of
continuous capital accumulation in the face of declining opportunities for
investment. One of the ‘solutions’ fell to the main agent of accumulation,
namely the state, in the form of its procurement of military goods; war
materiel could be sold to the state providing a ‘market’ for goods destined
not for the open market but for destruction.
In other words, these goods were not produced for a market in which
surplus value would be realized and then in part reinvested in the next
cycle for augmented production. The surplus value from the sale of mili-
tary goods to the state comes from not only wage-labour, but also the
generous contracts made with governments, which are funded from state
revenues whose source is direct and indirect taxes on the working class,
state debt, inflationary policies, retrenchment of the welfare state, and in
the case of the United States, the ‘exorbitant privilege’ in the use of the

105
See footnotes 36, 37, and 76.
106
J. U. Nef, War and Human Progress: an essay on the rise of industrial civilization,
New York: The Norton Library, 1963 (1950). Tilly (‘war makes states’) and others have
written histories in which war is the independent variable, but war is rarely if ever made for
its own sake. However significant a role it has had in state formation, it is a means to an end
and not an end in itself. Even when it helps to create markets for arms and conflicts for their
use to advance its immediate interests, the military is an agent dependent on the accumula-
tion process. For the notion of war as agent, see: C. Tilly, Coercion, capital, and European
States, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1990; S. D. Pollack, War, revenue, and state building:
Financing the development of the American state, Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell University Press,
2009; P. A. C. Koistinen, State of war: The political economy of American warfare 1945–2011,
Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press 2012.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 315

USD.107 Most of these sources can be classified as the ‘shifting’ or redis-

tributing of income from one sector of society to another, or from one
state to another, to create a military ‘market’ in the form of the state.
Since World War II, this relation between the military and state redis-
tribution has been formalized in several ways. One can be labelled ‘mili-
tary Keynesianism,’ state policies that earmark a part of annual budgets to
produce armaments, and ostensibly to produce ‘multiplier effects,’ a range
of related subsidiary goods and services, thereby boosting demand to
stimulate the economy more generally.108 But the effect of these policies
for the United States, and all war-related economies, since about 1980,
has been a general decline in state redistribution or the welfare state, the
neglect of civilian infrastructure, a steady loss of technological advantage,
and a decline in manufacturing plants.109 There are, moreover, fiscal limits
to this ‘market’ as ‘military Keynesianism’: state revenues are deductions
from existing value, and so expenditures are limited to what can be
extracted without causing social unrest and borrowed without exceeding
lenders’ perceived risk.
This warfare state has also pointed to the necessity to maintain a certain
level of physical fitness and education required for military service. While
a general issue in industrial nations,110 it is especially evident in the United
States: the physical well-being of its population and the quality of its edu-
cational system have been perennial problems for recruitment to its armed
forces.111 For some time, the necessity of maintaining the American ‘war-
fare state’ was taken as the rationale for its ‘welfare state,’ but since the late
twentieth century, the increasing privatization of the military and techno-
logical changes, among other reasons, have lessened the need for main-
taining such a relation.

107
B.J. Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: the rise and fall of the dollar and the future of the
international monetary system, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
108
J. M. Cypher, ‘The Origin and Evolution of military Keynesianism in the United States,’
Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Volume 38, Issue 3, 2015 (449–476).
109
R. DeGrasse, Military Expansion Economic Decline: The Impact of Military Spending on
U.S. Economic Performance, Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1983, 153–160.
110
H. Obinger and C. Schmitt, ‘World war and welfare legislation in western countries,’
Journal of European Social Policy, Vol. 30 (3) 2020, 261–274; H. Obinger, K. Pertersen,
P. Starke (eds.), Warfare and Welfare: Military Conflict and Welfare State Development in
Western Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018; J. Klausen, War and Welfare:
Europe and the United States, 1945 to the Present, New York: Palgrave, 2001.
111
See fn #44
316 G. TEEPLE

The importance of the US military for economic stimulus and global

market dominance has, moreover, led to the gradual creation of a state of
‘permanent war.’ The Cold War (1946–1991) can be understood in this
light as fostering chronic tension, accompanied by a series of small con-
tained hot wars to maintain the rationale for large defence budgets. While
the United States has provoked and fought many wars since World War II,
in 2001, the executive branch under President Bush announced a formal
strategic military policy that amounted to the declaration of permanent
war, ‘the war on terror’—a ‘war’ conveniently without a specifically defined
enemy. It became part of the rationale for the use of war as permanent
state stimulus for the US economy, the assertion of US preeminence in the
global economy, and the increasing assertion of American executive
arbitrariness.112
The relation between military production and the state has produced a
global market of sorts for military goods. It is not an ordinary market but
one that depends on the revenue streams of states as buyers—a significant
source of impoverishment in the Global South. Because the market for
military goods and services is the state, or states, the profits of its produc-
ers need not be recycled in the production process; the annual state bud-
get becomes the source of new capital and new cycle of production. The
profits from generous state contracts, which are inflated by waste, corrup-
tion, unaudited use, and exaggerated prices, find their way into a variety of
uses that are not usually productive or beneficial to the world.
The global arms market, which has seen steady growth over many
decades, and which has come to comprise a sizeable section of the econo-
mies of most of the industrial nations, has some special features. This com-
modity group finds its market as the state, but its goods and services are
designed for destruction not reproduction, and so, one of its unusual
characteristics is that while profits realized need not be recycled, govern-
ments need to be convinced of this annual budget necessity. Another fea-
ture is that, while the state is the market, the need for these goods is
defined by conflict and war. Here is a good example of a market in which
supply really does produce its own demand, or more directly put, the
nations that supply might be inclined to foster conflict as demand, or an
over-supply of arms might encourage demand as war or its threat. It is not
for no reason that many conflicts seem to lack a rationale except as a

112
R. U Thorpe, The American warfare state: The domestic politics of military spending,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014, 158.
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 317

demand created for the sale of arms.113 Another feature of this market, if
military tensions are maintained and open conflict contained, is that it is
more or less a guaranteed market—the indisputable goal of all
corporations.
The Expansion of Executive Powers. The expansion of the executive
branch has to a large degree amounted to the gradual assumption of arbi-
trary war powers. This slow arrogation of military power over many years
has taken place as the shift of authority from Congress to the Presidency,
and as the shift of authority from the Presidency to the Pentagon or more
broadly the National Security State (NSS), in which we include the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), NSA, CIA, FBI, and other
state security agencies. These shifts can be seen as the simultaneous trans-
fer of nominal power from the legislative to the executive branch, and real
power from the elected to the unelected executive.
This change can be presented more graphically. In a world in which
money is power, the size of a budget is significant. The military share of
the discretionary expenditures in the annual American budget now absorbs
more than half of the total, an amount that is greater than the military
budgets of the rest of the world put together. This size is meaningful
because it points to the costs of maintaining the Keynesian military state
at home, and abroad of acting as guardian of the accumulation of capital
by American or other Western corporations. But it also points to the trans-
ference of associated powers to the largest branch of the permanent or
unelected branch of the executive—the national security state.
But size is not everything, as they say. What is significant for democracy
is that the spending of this budget is largely unaccountable. The number,
location, and size of US military bases and conflicts are not all known, at
least not to the electorate, Congress, or the President, and there is little or
no oversight by Congress or the President’s office of expenditures in these
branches of the NSS. In other words, it is the command structures of the
Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security that determine and imple-
ment military and related security policies, which include foreign and
many domestic issues, without complete or verifiable accountability to the
elected branches of government. These shifts of authority, then, have

113
There are, of course, a host of conflicts that serve more than one purpose, the sale of
weapons being only one. But some of the more obvious examples of ‘wars for sales’ are the
Iraq-Iran war (1980–1988), the invasions of Iraq (1991 and 2003), ME terror groups that
change names with regularity.
318 G. TEEPLE

made these unelected branches of the executive into bastions of power

unto themselves.
Independent power in the unelected ‘executive’ branch is also found in
the two other major branches of government, namely the central bank (for
the United States the Federal Reserve) and the supreme court. Although
central banks do not usually appear in constitutions, and supreme courts
are assigned an adjudicative and review role, both can and do make deci-
sions in the name of the whole and have the power to act on them. The
central bank can be considered one of the most powerful branches of
government that determines policy affecting every aspect of life and stands
as the ‘lender of last resort.’ And while its chief officer and sometimes
other bank officials are appointed by the elected head of state, once
appointed and ratified by a legislature, they have a high degree of indepen-
dence for the length of their terms. Similarly, the members of the supreme
court are appointed, ratified, and then given an independent power that is
ultimately final. The supreme court also embodies enormous power in act-
ing as the interpreter or ‘adjudicator of last resort’ over all legislation and
its interpretation.
In other words, the development of governing structures in an ostensi-
bly democratic system has produced three non-elected ‘executive’ branches
of governance—the permanent executive (particularly in the military and
secret service), the central bank, and the supreme court—which are cen-
tres of independent power run by unelected and largely unaccountable
officials. To clarify, these are powers concentrated in unelected executive
branches separated from the elected branches of government, but they are
not powers that are completely independent. They have no content of
their own. No doubt, degrees of self-serving power may be exercised by
some officials, but state agencies do not hold power for its own sake; these
agencies have a purpose in governance derived from civil society.
Defined by the imperative of capital accumulation and its consequent
demand for expanding markets and resources, the growth of the military
is central to realize these necessities. The central bank reflects the priorities
of the financial sector, more particularly, the private banks that influence
or sit on its board of directors and determine the broad policies that frame
economic activity; and the supreme court holds a power that usually
reflects the partisan politics of the head of state that made the appoint-
ment, which can have profound implications for the political process as we
 7 THE EXECUTIVE 319

see in the US case of Citizens United v. FEC.114 It is true that the elected
side of the executive branch rules, but in the face of the unelected side
comprising the NSA, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Supreme Court,
which are much more powerful, more stable, more captured than the
eclectic and transient elected side, there can be little doubt about the con-
tent of executive rule.

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 CHAPTER 8

The Legislature

The legislature is that part of government to which representatives of civil

society are elected or appointed and who ostensibly embody the different
interests that mark the body politic. Its central tasks can be summarized as
deliberation over public affairs, criticism of executive actions, approval of
budgets, and the making and amending of laws, but it does all this through
partisan debates whose result is declared in the name of the whole.

The Struggle for the Legislature

Its history is the development of an institution that has represented the
voice of the ‘people’ as defined by the property relations of the day; it is
these relations that determine the stakeholders in the system. Under feu-
dalism, they would have included the monarch as suzerain, and subordi-
nate classes and strata of nobility, clergy, and landed gentry. In the
mercantilist era, the growing importance of private property gradually
brought to the fore new stakeholders and their claims for a voice, namely,
merchants, financiers, artisans, gentry, free farmers, and, later, wage work-
ers. Overlapping this period, the bourgeois revolutions signalled the asser-
tion of private property as the main or even sole property form, which
encouraged the demand and struggle for representation by all classes and
strata defined by these relations as members of the system.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 325

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_8
326 G. TEEPLE

In Europe, some of today’s parliaments find their roots in the eleventh

century in councils or convocations called by monarchs or forced on them
by aggrieved stakeholders of the era. For the most part, these would
include members of the nobility and the Catholic Church, with a ‘stake’
measurable by size and control of certain assets. The result of one of the
first of these assemblages in England was the Magna Carta of 1215, which
spelled out the demands forced on King John, who reigned from
1199–1216. These were intended to reassert the feudal rights of the bar-
ons and church officials that the King had violated over many years to
garner resources for his long and losing war in France. It was largely a
feudal document; the demands made and the parties involved bore little
resemblance to the parties and principles of modern parliaments. Its his-
torical importance rests on its formalization of feudal rights meant to
restrain unmitigated executive power. It was the quasi-institutionalization
of voice and vote over monarchical arbitrariness in the collection and dis-
position of tax revenues and determination of public policy by those whose
assets were being seized, plundered, and even lost in war by the King.1
The Magna Carta was a portent of the long decline of feudalism, the
slow demise that became more visible by the end of the thirteenth century
with the continuing need for increased resources to fight the Crusades and
other ongoing wars. To finance them, Edward I, who ruled from
1272–1307, had to levy larger and new taxes on property, exports, and
church holdings, and to gain consent he summoned a convocation in
1295 of those whose assets were affected. It comprised a much wider rep-
resentation than only the ‘estates,’ and included those with political privi-
lege but outside the church and nobility and with assets of a certain size.
Each county, borough, and town was represented, largely by lesser nobil-
ity and local members of the bourgeoisie. While they agreed on taxes as a
set percentage of income for the monarch in the pursuit of wars, the par-
liament also became a venue for voicing grievances against the king. The
practice of drawing representatives from the estates, with ‘commoners’
elected, all representing assets of a certain kind and amount, to oversee the
taxation powers of the monarchy and to voice objections to continuing
1
K. Worcester, ‘Editor’s Introduction: The Meaning and Legacy of the Magna Carta,’
Political Science and Politics, Vol. 43. No. 3, July 2010, 451–455; P. Linebaugh, The Magna
Carta Manifesto, University of California Press, 2008. A similar argument can be made
about the Charter of the Forest of 1217 in which feudal rights of common property held by
peasants and farmers were reclaimed. See: A. Million, “The Forest Charter and the Scribe:
Remembering a History of Disafforestation and How Magna Carta Got its Name,” Legal
Information Management, 18, 2018, (4–9).
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 327

discretionary powers came to be called the ‘Model Parliament.’2 It was a

model of political representation for its time that continued to develop
over the next several hundred years.
Parliaments like this, not to mention independent town councils, grew
across Europe throughout the late Middle Ages as feudal absolutism was
increasingly challenged by the ascending power of private property in the
form of merchant capital and by the peasants whose revolts against the
expropriation of their land and privatization of customary rights swept
across much of Europe during these centuries.3 Once the benefits of col-
laboration with monarchies had reached their limits, merchant capital
began to assert its growing economic pre-eminence in the political
domain—the era of the bourgeois revolutions marked the next several
hundred years from the late sixteenth to early twentieth century.
The bourgeois revolutions represented the assertion of private property
as the single dominant form of property. It defined citizens as equal in the
possession of the rights of private property. Citizens existed by virtue of
being an embodiment of private property, but political participation was
possible only for those in possession of a certain amount of accumulated
capital as a demonstration of a meaningful ‘stake,’ that is, a property quali-
fication for the right to vote and stand for election.
The democracy introduced by the bourgeois revolutions, then, was the
democracy of private property, government that was inclusive in theory as
implied in the widely used phrase, the ‘rights of man and citizen.’ While
2
There were many such parliaments across Europe from the eleventh to fifteenth century
that included not only nobility but also those of ‘lesser rank.’ See: A. Marongiu, Medieval
Parliaments: A Comparative Study, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968, 29; A. R. Myers,
Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789, London: Thames and Hudson, 1975. The origin
of parliamentary democracy is much debated, and while pertinent to our argument it is not
central; to the many questions that the ‘origin’ raises—when did assemblies become neces-
sary, what powers defined them, what was their degree of autonomy, and so on—we accept
the argument by Myers that the origin lies in the rise of sources of power independent of the
monarch, which we have argued are mainly found as merchant capital, commerce and bank-
ing. These are the sources that mark the difference between pre-parliamentary and parlia-
mentary assemblies, which for the English might mark the difference between the Magna
Carta and the Model Parliament.
3
The Jacquerie in France in 1357–58; the Wat Tyler revolt in England in 1381; and peas-
ant wars in Germany in the 1520s were notable, but there was no part of Europe that was
free of these wars. See: R. H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and
the English Rising of 1381, London: Routledge, 2003; J. Barker, 1381: The Year of the
Peasants’ Revolt, Harvard University Press, 2014; S.K. Cohn Jr., Popular Protest in late-
medieval Europe: Italy, France, and Flanders, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
328 G. TEEPLE

the rights attached to private property were cast as equal, in practice,

women, servants, workers, slaves, and others were excluded, and only the
rights attached to certain amounts of accumulated assets were deemed
politically meaningful, those that carried the power of accumulated wealth
to act. Nevertheless, by defining all as equal, the rights of private property
opened the door to an idea: if equal property rights why not equal political
rights? To be free as private property, free from feudal forms of bondage,
but not free to participate politically presented an obvious contradiction
between equal abstract property rights and unequal political rights. At the
outset of the nineteenth century, then, the combination of the Industrial
Revolution, new bourgeois political systems based on private property,
and the rise of the working class brought a new systemic problem to light.
The working class, faced with untempered exploitation in the work-
place and the absence of a theoretical understanding of its place in capital-
ist society, could do little else than demand social reforms and the right
to participate in the existing government. Here was a class whose mem-
bers were defined as embodiments of private property, soon to be a
majority, essential to the creation of wealth, and required to sell its labour-
power, but without a political voice. The problem and its implications
were well understood by the mid-nineteenth century: a growing working
class without state protection was demanding a say in policy-making,
which implied a degree of control over public policy or the transforma-
tion of the system.
The publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 by Marx and
Engels presented the working class with an analysis of its place in the sys-
tem, the idea of its ‘historical mission,’ and an outline of a programme for
its immediate political goals. The goals were not just for political participa-
tion in a system in which it could never have an actual stake as a genuine
beneficiary and not be merely a class to be exploited, but participation in
a future system of its own making in which it as all would determine all.
The coming of universal male suffrage in the 1860s and1870s in the
industrial nations, and then the increasing demand for female suffrage,4
comprised the electoral changes that made liberal democracy, the political
compromise necessary for capitalism by which part of the stratified and
divided working class was persuaded that this was democracy pure and
simple. The winning of the franchise obscured the long history during

4
R. S. Neale, ‘Working-Class Women and Women’s Suffrage,’ in Labour History, No. 12,
May 1967 (16–34)
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 329

which the majority had to fight for the right to vote, while capital and the
state fought against the reduction of the property qualification, giving in
only reluctantly and slowly.5
The property qualification was the measure of the stake in society that
entitled citizens to the right to a vote and voice in the legislature. With
universal suffrage, it was finally reduced to property in one’s ‘person,’
labour-power as private property. Women, servants, indigenous popula-
tions, and ‘colonials’ were the last to get the vote usually because they had
not been defined in law as persons, or suffered ongoing colonialization
late into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the struggle for the franchise
was not the struggle that we find in the bourgeois revolutions, which
achieved control of both legislative and executive power. The workers’
struggle for the franchise was largely restricted to a battle for legislative
power, which meant a struggle for social reform, not a change in property
relations, not a democracy in the interests of the majority working class
resting on collective property.6
In principle, nevertheless, the struggle for the franchise by the mid-­
nineteenth century implied a revolutionary struggle for a workers’ govern-
ment. The revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 stand as
good examples, as does the 1905 revolution in Russia.7 In these cases, we
see the attempted seizure of legislative and executive powers by the work-
ers and attempts to create new and unfamiliar governing structures that
represented the will of workers and the means to act on their own behalf,
as the embodiment of collective property relations, not private property.
Political change in the name of the working class succeeded with the
Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the capture of legislative and executive
functions combined in the formation of the ‘soviets,’ that is, workers’
councils, a product of the 1905 revolution. Their significance lay in the
representation of both the will of the people and the ability of the people
to act in their own name. The soviets were governing units that included

5
H. Mitchell and P. N. Stearns, The European Labor Movement, the Working Classes and the
Origins of Social Democracy 1890–1914. Itasca, Illinois, F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1971.
6
A. Przeworski, ‘Conquered or Granted? A History of Suffrage Extensions,’ British
Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2009 (291–321).
7
H. Draper (ed.), Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels: Writings on the Paris Commune,
New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971; A. Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in
Disarray, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
330 G. TEEPLE

the right of recall and the ‘imperative mandate’8 as insurance against

undue influence from classes and strata representing the diverse powers or
interests of capital. The fate of the soviets and the Soviet Union does not
concern us here; suffice to say for our purposes that they represented the
first albeit temporary example of workers transforming a property form
along with its method of decision-making. For a time at least, prevailing
corporate private property and its accompanying political system were
abolished, replaced by a system of common or shared property and a form
of decision-making representing all producers and allowing them to act in
their own name.

The Predicament
The existence of a workers’ state, at least in name, pointed to the central
predicament of modern liberal democracy. It is a form of governance that
is designed to uphold the prevailing relations of corporate private property
that do not benefit the majority of citizens and actually work against their
broad interests. To put it another way, the working class is the source of
wealth, but it is obliged to fight for a share of the wealth it has created in
order to reproduce itself. In short, in a capitalist society, workers are ‘per-
sons’ defined as individual embodiments of private property, but they are
without the power of collective private property represented by the corpo-
rate sector that lives by their exploitation. They are an essential part of the
system, yet not part of it, necessary but not beneficiaries. This paradoxical
position points to the political expression of their interests, whether
reformist or revolutionary, as inherently opposed to corporate interests.
After winning the universal franchise, the legislature provided a venue
for the political voice of the majority as the working class, but this majority
could not be allowed the possibility of controlling the executive branch on
its own behalf. There had been no such predicament as long as the fran-
chise was defined by a substantial property qualification because this quali-
fied vote led to broad agreement on public policy; and the struggles in the
legislature and elections were over which sector of capital would benefit

8
M. Qvortrup, ‘The Political Theory of the Recall, A Study in the History of the Idea,’ in
Y. Welp, I. Whitehead (eds.), The Politics of Recall Elections, London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2020 (36–42).
https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1007/978-3-030-37610-9; M. Tomba, ‘Who’s
Afraid of the Imperative Mandate?’ Critical Times, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2018.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 331

most by controlling public policy. The issue was never one of corporate
private or people’s collective property, but rather which corporate sector
would dominate for a period of time.
The initial rationale for the separation of the legislature and the execu-
tive had to do with allowing competitive capitals a place to debate their
differences and an alternating chance for different sectors to rule on their
own behalf, within a regime of corporate private property. Originally, there
was a rough equation of the people, as possessors of substantial assets, as
the sovereign underlying the constitution and controlling the executive,
and of those assets represented in the legislature. With universal suffrage,
however, the equation gave way to the majority of the people as the
unpropertied, nominally the underlying authority of the constitution,
with their interests seemingly represented in the legislature.
The winning of universal male suffrage and the continuing expansion of
the franchise to include the unpropertied majority raised the question of
the unpropertied gaining legislative and executive power and ending the
exploitation and insecurities accompanying corporate private property.
The unpropertied could find themselves in possession of the power to
change the constitution and its premise as private property.
How then to prevent those ‘without,’ the unpropertied, from gaining
power in the legislature and changing the constitution to reflect their
interests? What elements in the structure of liberal democracy, and the
legislature in particular, prevent the working class from assuming execu-
tive power?

The Implicit Contradiction

This predicament appears as a contradiction that is found in all modern
democratic governments. The legislature possesses the power to change
the constitution, but it derives this power from the constitution, while the
constitution itself rests on an authority that arises ostensibly from outside
itself, namely, the people as sovereign. The constitution is a system of laws
whose ultimate sanction and legitimacy lies beyond the legislature, while
at the same time it is only the legislature that is empowered to extend,
formulate, develop, or amend these basic laws. In short, the legislative
power contradicts constitutional authority. The subject is the constitution
and the predicate is the legislature, but in modern liberal democratic con-
stitutions, the predicate is empowered to change the subject. The tail wags
the dog, as the expression goes.
332 G. TEEPLE

This contradiction exists because the actual sovereign is the prevailing

set of property relations represented by a certain class. In a capitalist mode
of production, private property is the preeminent form of property, but
there are two forms of private property, the individual and the corporate,
and the latter prevails at the expense of the former. For the sake of legiti-
mation, however, not to mention maintaining the market in consumables,
the demands of individual property (as labour-power) for voice and vote
have to be addressed, which they are via the right to elect and be elected
to the legislature. But for the sake of accumulation, the point of the sys-
tem, only representatives of corporate private property can be allowed to
rule, which is done via control of the executive and judicial branches and
the purchase, bribery, or intimidation of legislative members.9
This political positioning is maintained in a number of ways. One is
ideological, namely, the prevailing assumption that all forms of private
property are the same: that corporate property, which is a form of collec-
tive power and which controls the means of production, carries no greater
power than individual private property, which isolates workers and fosters
competition between them. Another is the set of legislative difficulties laid
out in the constitution surrounding the process of changing it. The
Supreme Court, moreover, is an appointed branch that is generally given
by the constitution the role of ‘appeal of last resort.’ Furthermore, the
executive branch possesses degrees of veto power, the means of ‘checking’
the results of legislative activity. And the executive is, in addition, rarely
directly elected: the candidates up for election have always been chosen by
party selection processes, and in the United States, there is the ‘electoral
college’ that ultimately chooses the president. In the European Union,
officials are chosen by committees that are appointed. In short, there are
few if any heads of liberal democratic governments who are selected and
elected by popular vote, and the remaining members of the executive
branch, the cabinet and senior bureaucrats, are generally appointed, or the
product of processes unrelated to popular democracy.
The only way around this contradiction between constitutional author-
ity and legislative power is to make the subject what it really is, namely, the
people, but not the people as a mere multiplicity of embodiments of indi-
vidual private property, but rather as representative of collective property

9
J.M Snyder, “On Buying Legislatures,” in Economics and Politics, Vol. 3, Issue 2, July
1991 (93–109). J. Mearsheimer and S. Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books,
Vol. 28, No. 6, 23 March 2006 (3–12).
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 333

with genuine responsibility to constituencies. In this way, the real author-

ity that is outside and prior to the constitution becomes the active subject
and the constitution the predicate. In other words, the people would be
the participating sovereign, fully engaged in all matters of policy, formu-
lating and realizing it, as representative of collective or social property.
With the collective people as the subject and the constitution as predicate,
then, the principles of the constitution are no longer considered authorita-
tive and settled and taken as the starting point of political relations, but
rather the constitution becomes the statement of change itself reflecting
the people and their development and not the basic law as absolute. The
people can then act as a coherent collective and change the constitution
and laws as they themselves change. Debate becomes not political debate,
that is, over conflicting private interests, but debate over the common
future of rights in which the communal rights of all are at the centre. The
constitution as the predicate becomes the living declaration of the princi-
ple of the people’s control over their own lives.
This change in property form, however, is not possible if liberal democ-
racy and the capitalist mode of production are to be maintained. The two
forms of private property are intrinsic to the system: one lives and grows
at the expense of the other, and the compromise between them takes the
political and obscurantist form of liberal democracy.
It will be objected, however, that in liberal democracy the people whose
authority underlies the constitution are represented through elections to
the legislature, as stated in many constitutions; and if the legislature is
empowered to change the constitution, the contradiction does not arise.
To dissolve the contradiction this way, however, is to dissolve liberal
democracy. This is the historical significance of the political experiments
with workers’ control in which the people as a collective body directly
control their own affairs as social property.

Representation
The question of representation is key to understanding the role of the
legislature in modern liberal democracies.10 The rationale of the legislature
is to provide a venue for the representation of the will of the people, a

10
This point may seem obvious, given the number of books and articles on the question,
but the points made here are seldom included in the discussion. See, for example, H. F. Pitkin,
Representation, New York: Atherton Press, 1969; J. R. Pennock, Representation, London:
334 G. TEEPLE

location for the voicing of the interests of the citizenry. The definition of
political representation is framed by three main questions: its meaning, the
role of political parties, and the concept of the people. We examine them
separately and briefly because they are also dealt with in other chapters.
Meaning. The main point here is that representation itself means that
the people are cut off from a direct relation to governing structures and
policy determination. Representation is the admission of the separation of
the people from an active, direct participation in public affairs. In modern
liberal democracies the people are only able to express their point of view,
directly, by extra-parliamentary or extra-legal means, that is, by actions
outside formal legal processes.
This argument may be countered by claiming representatives in the
legislature are the voice of the people, but in turn, it must be pointed out
that rarely in modern democracies is there an obligation for representa-
tives to consult with or represent their constituencies. All European states
in the European Union, and by default represented in the European
Parliament, for instance, are obliged to disallow the ‘imperative mandate,’
the principle that representatives must represent their electors. In some
countries, representatives are obliged to follow the positions of their party
affiliations, but by party decree and not by constitutional obligation. Party
loyalty and the freedom to change party membership do not affect the lack
of obligation to the constituency. In the EU, all members of the European
Parliament are not only defined by a ‘free mandate,’ meaning no obliga-
tion to their constituencies, but also they are expressly prohibited from
acting as representatives of their constituency.
The formal prohibition of the imperative mandate in the EU has been
made into a central marker of liberal democracy.11 The conclusion to a
report by a European Commission asserts that “the principle of a free and
independent mandate” is fundamental to liberal democracy; it states that
“the basic constitutional principle which prohibits imperative mandate or
any other form of politically depriving representatives of their mandates

Taylor and Francis, 2017. Feminist political scientists have plumbed this question more than
others, for good reason, but again they do not address the main issues raised here. For an
overview of feminist positions, see: S. Childs, ‘Representation,’ in G. Blakeley and V. Bryson
(eds.), The impact of feminism on political concepts and debates, Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2007 (73–91).
11
M. Tomba, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Imperative Mandate?’ Critical Times, Volume 1,
Issue 1.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 335

must prevail as a cornerstone of European democratic constitutionalism.”12

The operative phrase here is “their mandates,” in other words, representa-
tives possess their own mandates, but of course in doing so, they can no
longer pass as representatives of their electors. No matter that their man-
dates are called “free and independent,” this so-called principle relieves
representatives from being representatives and makes them agents of their
own interests or that of external influences. But more, the prohibition of
the ‘imperative mandate’ would seem to be a negation of the theory and
practice of representative democracy.
The solution to this predicament comes as a sleight of hand. If we can
trace the logic of the authors of the EC Report, it runs something like this:
if liberal democratic theory defines the “people” as sovereign, it follows
that the “nation” can also be understood as the people representing a
“will” superior to a mere local constituency. The “nation” is cast as con-
sisting of a single interest, comprising the “general good.” And it is this
ill-defined “nation” that is made into the abstract, vaguely sociological,
superficially philosophical notion that frames the mandate of elected rep-
resentatives. They must be elected by their constituencies, but upon elec-
tion, they cannot represent their constituencies. After election,
representatives of local constituencies find that they represent the nation,
the meaning of which is left indeterminate.13
In a system of private property, however, in which interests are
broadly divided between labour and capital, and in which these interests
stand in a contradictory relation to each other, no single interest is possi-
ble. There is no nation as such, that is, no one interest that can pass as a
genuinely national interest. Nevertheless, what does act as the national
interest is the prevailing corporate private property, the heart of the sys-
tem. And it is this fact that in practice constitutes the concept of the
nation, as a capitalist social formation, that takes the place of an electoral
constituency, and that allows the European Union to portray the impera-
tive mandate as “incompatible with democracy.”14
There is no argument provided for this statement, it is a mere assertion,
an absurdity paraded and accepted as if a reasoned position by the
12
European Commission for Democracy Through Law, Report on the Imperative Mandate
and Similar Practices [https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.
aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2009)027-e], p. 14.
13
If the electorate were told of this result of their vote, would they come out to vote?
14
“European Commission for Democracy Through Law,” ibid., p. 3. See this report for a
review of the many national variations on the practice of mandated representation.
336 G. TEEPLE

electorate and elected alike. What this political ploy evades is the practical
significance of the imperative mandate. The mandate means that the rep-
resentatives cannot be influenced or controlled by forces or entities other
than their local constituencies. And in a capitalist society, the majority are
largely members of the working class whose interests run counter to capi-
tal. The prohibition of imperative mandate, then, prevents the representa-
tion of the people as constituents, as the working class, and opens the door
to corporate influence over the representatives who have the “free and
independent” mandate to represent themselves or the nation. Whether this
nation is a reference to the EU or to a member state is unclear, but then
this is not germane to the question because the concept of nation is not
defined. It is clear to many critics, however, just what constitutes the EU.15
The assumption in liberal democracy is that the people are the subjects
expressing their political preferences via elections of representatives. If,
however, representatives are prohibited from representing their constitu-
encies, and if they are the only constitutional link between the people and
the state, then the people are not subjects but predicates and representa-
tives are the subjects. They are representative subjects who are not repre-
sentative of the people who elected them but magically, by virtue of being
elected by the people, become representative of the indeterminate nation.
And in this position, they are able to exercise whatever power they may
have as self-seeking members of the legislature. The electorate has become
a means to an end, an end which is not and cannot be the expression of
their interests.
If the imperative mandate is prohibited, as it is in European states and
the EU, non-existent in North America, and rare across the world, what
does this mean for representation in modern liberal democracies? What is
a constituency doing when voting for its representatives if its representa-
tives are not mandated to represent their constituencies? What does it
mean for representatives to be elected and unable or not required to rep-
resent the people who elected them?
One of the results of representation without the imperative mandate is
that representatives are placed in the position of having to convince their

15
Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘How much money have the biggest corporations spent
on lobbying in the last 7 years?’ [https://www.corporateeurope.org/en/2022/09/rank-
ing-lobbying-activities-who-spends-most] 20.09.2022; see also: Bursting the Brussels Bubble:
the battle to expose corporate lobbying at the heart of the EU [https://www.alter-eu.org/sites/
default/files/documents/bursting-the-brussels-bubble.pdf] 2010.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 337

constituencies that their will is being carried out, an act that is constitu-
tionally forbidden or unnecessary. This is a duplicitous task that obliges
varying degrees of dishonesty that politicians have been associated with for
centuries.16 The representation of an electorate, which is defined as so
many atoms of private property, is not possible; and this is the case in all
marketplace societies.
These problems with political representation can only be dissolved if
the people, the constituency, are made the subjects and the representative
the predicate, that is, if the people are empowered to determine their own
fate directly, or if a representative to higher bodies is made continuously
responsible to the constituency and subject to recall.17
But for this to be possible, the constituency must have integrity; it must
be an embodiment of shared or collective property, not an aggregation of
private interests.
There are two assumptions underlying the principle of recall in liberal
democracies: one is that there is an obligation for the representative to
represent the constituency, and the other is that the constituency speaks
with a single voice, that it possesses a unified political will. Neither is true
in liberal democracies, but that begs the question of why the long history
of recall. And the answer is found in the long history of the frustration of
the electorate over their purported political representation in the politics
of marketplace societies.
Political parties. Here we shall make only a few points because political
parties will be considered at length in a later chapter. In modern democra-
cies, the so-called will of the people is framed and represented almost
exclusively within the policy boundaries set by political parties.
Representation is confined to representation of the views of the existing
parties, or to put it another way, the expression of the will of the people is
limited to a narrow range of pre-determined alternatives, almost all of

16
D. della Porta, ‘Political Corruption,’ in E. Amenta, K. Nash, A. Scott (eds.), The Wiley-
Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology, 2016; D. Nelken and M. Levi, ‘The Corruption
of Politics and the Politics of Corruption: An Overview,’ in Journal of Law and Society, Vol.
23, No.1, March 1996 (1–17); D. della Porta, A. Pizzorno, J. Donaldson, ‘The Business
Politicians: Reflections from a Study of Political Corruption,’ Journal of Law and Society,
Vol. 23, No.1, March 1996.
17
Y. Welp, L. Whitehead (eds.), The Politics of Recall Elections, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2020.
https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1007/978-3-030-37610-9.
338 G. TEEPLE

which are supportive of the status quo. Representation in liberal democra-

cies becomes representation of and by the political parties.
Some political parties, however, have not been supportive of the main
principles of the system and for that they have often been banned or made
illegal. In most of the industrial nations of Europe and North America,
there have been decades of anti-socialist laws,18 and such laws have left
little or no room for political parties to represent workers’ interests. The
absence of parties, by reason of law or financing, is as restrictive as their
presence. For the most part, the main parties have represented certain
entrenched interests and supported the existing system in its essentials and
not necessarily the interests of the majority. It is entirely possible that the
interests of most of the electorate may not find representation in any exist-
ing and legal political party.
Political parties, then, restrict representation in several ways, namely, to
a certain number of parties, to implicit support of the system, to entrenched
interests, to some issues and not others, to the platform of the party
machine, and so on. The legislature is their arena of action, to amend,
make, and debate, but the legislature, it must be stressed, does not act or
speak in the name of the whole.
It is parties, alone or in collaboration with others, with their precon-
ceived platforms and particular interests that form governments, the exec-
utive branch, not the electorate and its interests. Governments, then, can
only be party governments restricted by party platforms. It follows that
party-defined governments can only be a misrepresentation of democracy
because whatever political party is elected to the executive, the state
becomes its expression, making it a partisan state. If only parties can be
elected to rule, and parties are restricted embodiments of certain particu-
lar interests, rule can only be similarly narrowly defined.
In the Introduction we began with the definition of democracy as rule
by, for, and of the people, but now we see it defined as, in part, the choice
of political party. Democracy as a choice, as alternating parties in power, is
to make a restricted set of parties, interests, and platforms, even represent-
ing only a small minority, into the ruling power. If there are no parties that
18
V. L. Lidtke, The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany 1878–1890, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966; Mitchell and Stearns, Workers and Protest: The European
Labor Movement, the Working Classes and the Origins of Social Democracy 1890–1914, Itasca,
Illinois: Peacock Publishers, 1971. p. 78; for a brief review of US laws against the Communist
Party, see: P. R. Haerle, ‘Constitutional Law: Federal Anti-Subversive Legislation: The
Communist Control Act of 1954,’ Michigan Law Review, Vol. 53, No. 8, June 1955.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 339

represent the interests of labour as contradictory to those of capital, then,

there is no real choice for labour, the majority.
It may be contended that the narrowness of party platforms is coun-
tered by the structure of many contemporary parties as ‘umbrella,’ ‘all-in,’
‘catch-all,’ or ‘brokerage’ parties, designed to represent a certain array of
conflicting interests. But a party that permits a large range of diverse views
is no longer a party, it is merely the pretence of a party, whose policies are
interchangeable with other similar parties and whose existence is main-
tained in part to provide the illusion of choice, albeit without specifically
defined partisan significance.19 It becomes something closer to an empty
vessel, for which there is a reason and a purpose in a world of political
illusions.
The concept of the people. The function of the legislature is to address
public affairs by means of deliberation, criticism, making and amending
the law, budgetary approval, and purportedly representing the people in
carrying out these tasks. There are two issues here: what comprises public
affairs and what is the people.
The concept of public affairs in a capitalist society is defined by the
broad arenas of property relations that characterize the system, and these
relations divide largely into three forms of private property: individual,
corporate, and state. Given that the accumulation of capital is the central
principle of the system and the rationale of the corporate sector, it follows
that corporate private property is the dominant form, which means that
public affairs are by default corporate interests, a conclusion that does not
entirely negate other interests but makes them subordinate.
It has been argued that public affairs refer to those state programmes
and regulations that redistribute part of the total social product, but these
are, for the most part, programmatic and regulatory minimums to main-
tain an average rate of profit for the corporate sector and to provide for
social control of the productive classes. The welfare state is a set of mini-
mum standards whose main purpose is to underwrite corporate

19
K. Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972,
p. 445–6. “A party tolerating all possible opinions in its ranks ceases to be a party. But the
state, when it prosecutes certain views, itself becomes a party. Democracy must demand not
that parties cease to be parties, but that the state cease to be a party.” Kautsky could have
continued: liberal democratic governments that are not party-based are no longer liberal
democratic governments. In other words, there can only be partisan governments in liberal
democracy; they can only pretend to act in the name of all.
340 G. TEEPLE

accumulation, not to attend to the well-being of the working classes except

in basic ways.
In political treatises, the concept of the people or the electorate is not
often dealt with at length, but when defined, it is usually characterized as
a mass of disconnected individuals or a set of variables, such as gender,
age, occupation, ethnicity, and religion, that alone or in combination may
point to voting preferences. This vision of the people rarely contains the
quality of cohesion, the idea of a collective interest, because marketplace
society defines its members as a mere conglomeration of varying and con-
flicting interests and dissonant ideas. The associated political systems,
moreover, define the people by personhood, as atomized legal entities,
which means that their formal political participation can only be as indi-
viduals, conforming to the assumed inviolable principle of ‘one person one
vote.’ They cannot formally participate as a unity or some coherent body.
Even if the concept of the electorate is narrowed to smaller constituencies,
the problem remains the same: all voters can only vote as individuals, they
cannot vote as a cohesive body representing collective interests.20
The existence and political participation of the people, then, appears as
a mass of separate, individual, and even conflicting interests. The people as
a coherent entity have no place in the formal processes of liberal democ-
racy. References to the people as if a unified body in modern constitutions
are a mere invention, albeit a convenient one. People in liberal theory as
the electorate are a sum of the parts, so to speak, a reference to a multiplic-
ity, a simple aggregated mass of individuals without continuity.
Given this, political parties and elected representatives in the legislature
cannot lay claim to be representing the people, or even a sub-sector,
because the people as an implied collectivity do not exist in the theory or
practice of liberal democratic politics; they exist only as atoms with certain
external common interests. The principle of ‘one person one vote’ and the
exercise of voting as individuals produces a mere plurality of voices, hence
the necessity for political parties to create a coherency out of differences

20
In liberal democracy, the principle of ‘one person one vote’ pertains to an electorate
defined as so many atoms of private property; this political principle and practice reflects the
economic reality of individuals in a marketplace society. But the individual as such is not the
only embodiment of property relations in such a society; the corporation is also defined as a
person in law. And while it does not vote, it certainly exercises influence in the political realm
as the raison d’être of the system and as the power of collective private property. The atom-
ized voter, the plurality that constitutes the electorate, whose ‘will’ is represented by a nar-
row range of political parties, is no match for the collective power of the corporation.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 341

that becomes, on winning an election, the proclaimed mandate to rule in

the name of all.
This argument, it should be pointed out, extends only to the formalities
of the liberal democratic process and not to the possibility of the coher-
ency of the working class outside the sphere of formal politics. In the
realm of formal political rules, there can be no unified people, and this is
the level on which mainstream political party activity and elections of rep-
resentatives to the legislature take place. But outside of formal political
expression, there are very definite unified class interests that regularly
make their appearance in the form of trade unions, social movements,
mass demonstrations, general strikes, and popular protests. The difference
is between formal legal individual existence as persons and the essential
class position with respect to the ownership of the means of production.
Liberal democracy obliges the electorate to participate politically as atom-
ized individuals and prevents it from participating as classes.
Implicit in the legal status of the person and the political formality of
‘one person one vote’ is the premise that underlies liberal democracy: the
personification of a competitive isolated self-seeking atom of private prop-
erty that requires the political party to provide a degree of coherency to
the political process. This coherency is a set of party policies that can only
represent coalesced interests as determined by parties or the prevailing
property relations. To maintain this structure of ruling, the atomization
and internal divisions of the electorate must be maintained, and this is a
hidden function of political parties and the formalities of liberal demo-
cratic procedures.
Implicit in this function is the idea that if there is movement towards
some sort of unity in civil society, it needs to be undermined in case that
unity weakens or compromises the foundation of the system that repre-
sents private property, as competition between different interests, under
the umbrella of the prevailing corporate sector.

The Second Chamber

Most contemporary constitutions, about 111, define the legislature as a
single chamber, while a substantial minority, about 79, has two chambers,
a ‘lower’ and an ‘upper’ house. Where the second chamber or upper house
exists, its members are chosen in a wide variety of ways, but in most cases,
they are indirectly elected, ex-officio positions, or appointed, as in the
342 G. TEEPLE

United Kingdom and Canada.21 In other words, their positions with few
exceptions are not a part of any direct democratic process. Their powers
are limited but extend to a sort of surveillance of the legislation passed by
the lower house, hence the monikers: ‘house of review’ or ‘chamber of
second sober thought.’
This apparently undemocratic element in what is supposed to be a
democracy, however, opens the door to questions about why it persists as
part of what is supposedly a democracy. If it is not directly elected, what
does this second chamber represent, and how should its purpose and func-
tion be understood? There is a dearth of theories about why the second
chamber exists. One explanation, however, is to point to federal states
with large populations in which multiple sub-national jurisdictions and
complex entrenched interests need some form of representation. Another
argument for an upper chamber suggests the need for a review of legisla-
tion from the elected lower chamber. But such explanations suggest that
governance by, for, and of the people needs to be checked in some way.
Just who or what will check the checkers is a question not often raised.
Why do second chambers persist at all in a democracy, regardless of
their circumscribed powers, when they appear to be an openly undemo-
cratic element in a purported democracy?
The easiest approach to an answer is a short review of the origin of their
modern role. The right to vote and be elected was, until the late nine-
teenth century, always associated with the possession of wealth, which
implied support for the system. With the coming of universal suffrage, citi-
zenship, and one-person-one-vote, followed by the rise of the modern
working class and demands for social reform, the tradition and practice of
relating representation to a property qualification came into question and
under attack. The establishment of a single elected chamber and the spread
of universal enfranchisement meant that this elected chamber could come
to represent the people as a whole, at least theoretically. It could come to
embody the interests of those who did not own the means of production
or any substantial wealth that might make their class interests those of
the system.
If modern constitutions embody the legal defence of private property
and if these relations are inherently unequal, producing a structured

21
If indirectly elected (as in the United States) it represents the jurisdiction and not the
constituency, that is to say, property relations and their dominant embodiment, the corpo-
rate sector in particular states.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 343

inequality between individual and corporate property, then, there is a

problem, a systemic contradiction: an electoral system that allows those
without property the ability to gain power in the legislature and so the
power to change the constitution. To put it another way, an economic
system defined by the unequal distribution of wealth is confronted by a
political system defined by the equal distribution of political rights22—two
forms of power always implicitly and often explicitly at odds with
each other.
Here the central dilemma of modern liberal democracy can be seen: its
foundation lies in a system of private property that leads to ever-increasing
economic and social inequality, but whose governing structure allows for
the unpropertied to gain political power and the ability to change the
constitution to benefit the majority. The role of the second chamber,
whose members represent the status quo, the prevailing property rela-
tions, is to confront this possibility with its powers of oversight.
The second chamber, it can be said, acts as a bastion, a defence against
the theoretical possibility of the lower house, the elected part of the legis-
lature, coming to represent the majority, the citizenry, the working class as
those without a stake in the system. The second chamber plays the role of
overseer over the ‘democratic process,’ the protector of the prevailing
property relations, against the possibility of challenge from those who do
not benefit from private property.
What is it about the members of the second chamber that allows them
to play this important role as protectors? If they were appointed, it is usu-
ally a reward for favours to party or system. If the position is inherited, it
is those with wealth that inherited it. If ex-officio, they have been part of
the status quo and have benefited from it. If indirectly elected (as in the
United States), they represent not a constituency but a jurisdiction, the
sub-national state, whose interests are its dominant property relations and
their embodiment in corporations. However politicians arrive in the sec-
ond chamber, their ‘free mandate’ acts as an invitation to the revolving
door, bribery, or intimidation, which are ever-present and temptations
that few apparently can resist.23
22
This was the dilemma addressed in the Trilateral Commission report by M. Crozier,
S. P. Huntington, J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on The Governability of
Democracies, 1975.
23
Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘Revolving Doors: From public officials to Big Tech
Lobbyists’ [https://corporateeurope.org/en/2022/09/revolving-door-public-officials-
big-tech-lobbyists] 20.9.2022; Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘European Commission:
344 G. TEEPLE

The second chamber, then, is structured to represent the status quo,

the prevailing property forms. It can be seen as the privilege of corporate
private property maintaining a position of power over the exercise of the
rights of private property. It makes private property and commitment to
the status quo into an independent power, a real power over legislation: it
provides private property with power over itself.24 Here the truth of mod-
ern democracy can be seen: a legislative chamber that acts as a bastion, a
defence against the theoretical possibility of the lower house coming to
represent the people as a genuine whole, a coherent body.

Conclusion
This analysis of the legislature began by pointing to its central contradic-
tion: the legislature is empowered to change the constitution, yet this
power is given to the legislature by the constitution. The ‘tail can wag the
dog’ as long as the tail and dog both represent interests compatible with a
system of private property; and for this reason, in the early history of bour-
geois democracy, this inverted relation was not an issue. But the achieve-
ment of universal male suffrage in the nineteenth century created the
possibility of the working class gaining control of the legislature, which in
theory at least meant that the private property relations underlying the
constitution could be challenged.
Here lay the abiding predicament of liberal or representative democ-
racy. Political rights, fought for and extended to the majority working class
as non-beneficiaries of the system, presented a chronic problem of poten-
tial legislative revolts. Put another way, the equal political rights extended
to the majority have presented a constant potential danger confronting the
unequal wealth of the corporate sector, the very source of social and eco-
nomic power in a capitalist society.
It has been this predicament that points to the significance of what is
called representative democracy, the political form that is structured to
keep the electorate disengaged from any direct control over the legisla-
ture, not to mention all the other branches of government. The very
meaning of representation refers to the structured disconnect of the elec-
torate from direct involvement in their own political affairs. And to be

Take action to stop revolving doors. An Open Letter.’ [https://corporateeurope.org/

en/2020/10/european-commission-take-action-stop-revolving-doors] 01.10.2020.
24
See: G. Teeple, Marx’s Critique of Politics … op. cit., 63.
 8 THE LEGISLATURE 345

certain about this detachment, very few constitutions provide for the prin-
ciple of the imperative mandate, and the European Parliament and the EU
member nations are expressly prohibited from allowing it.
Political parties add another dimension to the meaning of representa-
tion in liberal democracies. Parties are, by and large, the main means
through which the electorate can find representation; it is parties that rep-
resent and promote the different policies and programmes that are voiced
in the legislature and ultimately carried into law and practice by the party-­
defined executive branch. There are, however, few controls over the num-
ber of parties, their political platforms, the choice of representative, the
selection of the leader, and so on.25
The third issue related to representation is the question of the people,
the electorate. In a system of private property, it appears that the electorate
are merely an aggregation of so many individuals. The reality of rights
exclusive to the individual in the political domain objectified in the prin-
ciple and practice of ‘one person one vote’ strengthens this notion. Despite
the divisiveness of private property, there is a contrary reality in that the
working-class majority does have common interests in relation to the cor-
porate sector, just as the corporate sector has in relation to the working
class. This contradiction between labour and capital, however, is very dif-
ficult to bring into the political domain because of the seemingly inviolate
principle of ‘one person one vote’ for the electorate—a principle that has
never stood in the way of corporate political activity.
There is another way in which the possibility of control of the legisla-
ture by the electorate is frustrated. A large majority of the industrial
nations have a bicameral, not a unicameral, legislature. This second cham-
ber is usually indirectly elected or appointed, its members representing the
status quo, and their function is to monitor the proceedings of the lower
chamber with powers to counter prospective legislation considered
problematic.
There are yet other forms of oversight that are informal and out of
sight. Here we will simply mention them because they will be examined in
later chapters. The private financial corporations that are the creditors of
the public debt wield enormous powers over public policy by merely

25
In some countries, there are few if any legal or constitutional controls, but across Europe
such controls are often employed. See I. Van Biezen, ‘Constitutionalizing Party Democracy:
The Constitutive Codification of Political Parties in Post-war Europe,’ in The British Journal
of Political Science, Vol. 42, 2011 (187–212).
346 G. TEEPLE

threatening to raise interest rates or reduce loans; the private corporate

credit rating agencies have a similar influence with a simple change in gov-
ernment rating26; numerous corporate lobbies have powers that extend to
approving of legislation, if not having a hand in writing it27; and manage-
ment consultancies are now so influential and pervasive that a new word
has entered the lexicon of governance: “consultocracy.”28
The idea that the legislature represents the voice of the people is more
a well-guarded illusion than a reality.

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 CHAPTER 9

The Law and Judiciary

The study of law and adjudication has its own disciplinary arena: jurispru-
dence. Here are grouped the attempts to define the nature of law and the
meaning of justice, crime, and punishment, and to analyse judicial pro-
cesses and the operation of the institutions and organizations necessary to
making and practicing the law. These components of law, however, are not
merely the subject of jurisprudence; they are also constituent elements of
the legal existence of the state.1
The law is at once dependent on and central to all three branches of
modern liberal democratic government. In short, the executive acts in the
name of the law and defends it, the legislature makes and amends it, and
the judiciary interprets and adjudicates it. The state and the law can be
understood as form and content: the state is the form or the institutional
existence of the law and the law is the content composed of the formalized
abstracted property relations that define a society. Neither exists in any
developed sense without the other.2

1
This is our working definition of jurisprudence. As with other academic disciplines, juris-
prudence has no single agreed-upon definition. It is central to our argument that the treat-
ment of the law and the state strictly within their respective disciplines, jurisprudence and
political science, makes explanation impossible for both, as does the pursuit of explanation
within the confines of any single discipline.
2
Even the early development of common law in thirteenth-century England depended on
the involvement of the Crown. See: A. R. Hogue, Origins of Common Law, Indianapolis:
University of Indiana Press, 1966, 12–28. D. Kairys writes in “Legal Reasoning” that “Law

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 349

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_9
350 G. TEEPLE

Although law is fundamental to state activities, this self-evident asser-

tion does not explain what law is. Its contested meaning is a perennial
problem that lies at the heart of jurisprudence, a dilemma that is usually
accompanied by other questions about the nature of justice, equity, natu-
ral law, and social contract theories. For over 2000 years these questions
have been debated, yet it cannot be said that there is a consensus view on
any of them. As with the concept of politics, however, the lack of agree-
ment on meaning leaves the door open to more attempts to define these
key notions.
One of the abiding barriers to defining law is the attempt to grasp it in
and of itself, as autonomous, or natural, without past or present connec-
tions. This is the same dilemma faced by Aristotle when he defined humans
as political animals, assuming Greek city-states to be the natural state of
human affairs. If the law and the state arise at the same time and are
assumed to be natural, then the explanation of law ends where it begins,
as human nature. Such a position is obviously not an adequate definition
of either. The case that nature is the origin of socio-political structures has
yet to be made. All relations and things can be explained only by reference
to something external to what is to be understood.
The law and state as a structured whole arise together as a product of a
civil society characterized by exclusive forms of property and attendant
social conflict and inequalities.3 They are the embodiments of formal
authority necessary to uphold these disparities, defining them as normal
and justified. Although they appear to be the source of stability and order,
they exist to contain and mediate the conflicts inherent in the system that
produced them, not to resolve the underlying contradictions. Given that
law appears to be something that it is not, its explanation is not
self-evident.
As a result, two main theories have marked generations of legal philoso-
phy to explain the rise and nature of the state and law. Natural law

is simply politics by other means.” in D. Kairys (ed.), The Politics of Law, New York: Pantheon
Books, 1982, p.17.
3
These many reviews of the origins of the state consistently point to this general conclu-
sion. See: Fried, M.H., The Evolution of Political Society, 1967; Service, E.R., Origins of the
State and Civilization, 1975; Classen and Skalnick (eds.), The Study of the State, 1981;
Classen and Skalnick (eds.), The Early State, 1978; Service, E.R., Origins of the State and
Civilization, 1975; Wright, H.T., “Recent Research on the Origin of the State,” American
Sociological Review, 1977, 6:379–97; Cohen, R. and E.R. Service (eds.), Origins of the
State, 1978.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 351

theories4 attempt to attribute some sort of divine origin to law or to find

some inherent human quality that suffices for explanation of the ‘good’ of
law. And social contract theories5 point to some imagined earlier way of
life responsible for the advent of the state, law, and contract. Although
these theories continue to be fodder for academic debates, none of them
stands up to the empirical analyses of modern anthropology.

Original Sources of Law and the State

What constitutes original sources has long been a matter of debate.6 The
case was made in Chap. 3 that all social formations are defined by their
property relations and that these fundamental relations as rights, claims,
and entitlements to aspects of the social product can be classified along a
spectrum of relations from the communal to the exclusive. As communal
forms of property, they are manifest as implicit customs and traditions, but
as exclusive forms of property, they are expressed formally and objectively
as law and the state.7
The concept of law as the formal expression of property relations is
associated with the state and is distinct from custom and tradition.8
Although custom is sometimes argued by certain social scientists to be
synonymous with or a predecessor of law, such an elision of concepts
ignores the qualitative differences between the two. The rights belonging
to custom-based social relations are informal, subjectively held, and

4
J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford University Press, 2011 (1980);
E. Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.
5
J. W. Gough, The Social Contract, A Critical Study of Its Development, London: Oxford
University Press, 1963; one of the most recent of such theories is the work of John Rawls, A
Theory of Justice, Belknap Press, 1971.
6
It is difficult to find a concept that captures the idea of original intended here; non-
derivative or initial catch some of the meaning needed. Original contrasted with proximate,
or primary versus secondary helps to clarify.
7
Although customary systems are never expressed as law, the practice of formal legal sys-
tems involves a significant element of custom, but custom as meaning conventional interpre-
tation, not custom as a societal set of informal rights. Custom in the former sense has played
a role in international law, but mainly because of the absence of institutionalized formal law
in the regulation of trade and commerce. But in this arena, it was always about private prop-
erty in a lawless domain, which latterly has been transformed by international treaties and
institutional rule-making.
8
S. Diamond, ‘The Rule of Law versus the Order of Custom,’ Social Research, Vol. 38,
No. 1, Spring 1971, 42–72.
352 G. TEEPLE

c­omprise collective or communal forms of property, while the rights

defined by law belong to relations that are formal, objective, contractual,
and comprise exclusive forms of property. The exercise of these two prop-
erty forms, it is widely agreed, is distinguished, respectively, by ‘status’ and
‘contract.’9 What they share is that both are expressions of property rela-
tions, that is, rights, claims, and entitlements, but this is also what distin-
guishes them. They reflect qualitatively different, in fact, antagonistic and
incompatible forms of property: private property expands in part by
destroying the communal.10
As long as the division of labour remains relatively simple, property
remains more or less cooperative or communal, and the rules of social
interaction remain informal and shared subjectively by all: the whole and
the parts comprise more or less a unity. The more that the division of
labour separates individual, family, clan, or other interests from each other,
the more the whole and the parts no longer adhere as one in each com-
munity member. As a result, the rules of interaction can no longer remain
informal or communal because they have become the rules of interaction
between different competing group and individual interests. Increasingly,
the common interest dissipates in the face of antithetical and unequal par-
ticular interests. The community gradually becomes nothing more than
the prevailing, but now objectified, exclusive property relations within
which its members exist as mutually antagonistic interests based on a com-
plex division of labour.
There remains an interdependence amongst the members, but it is an
interdependence resting on the division of labour, “reciprocity in estrange-
ment,” as Marx put it. These property relations, no longer subjectively
held, must therefore be asserted in an objective form, outside the indi-
vidual members, externally embodied. They are incorporated as a formal
authority whose form takes the shape of the state and whose content takes
the shape of law, as the estranged general interest, as constitutions, codes,

9
H. Maine, Ancient Law, Dorset Press, 1986 (1861)
10
Once law and the state were firmly established as a product of marketplace society, they
have waged ruthless battles against customary systems. History has many examples: the
‘enclosures’ across Europe, the Black Acts in England, the peasant wars in Germany, the
Indian wars in the United States, the colonial holocausts across Africa, Latin American, and
Asia, and so on. For a good overview of these ‘enclosures’ and continuing modern forms,
see: The Ecologist, Whose Common Future: Reclaiming the Commons, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1994.
See also: N. L. Peluso, ‘Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act, by E. P. Thompson,’
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44: 1, 2017, 309–321.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 353

statutes, and common law. The state and law are the manifestations of the
exclusive property relations or the defining rules and regulations of soci-
ety, a community divided against itself, composed of competing units of
exclusive rights, and linked by economic necessity.
In other words, competitive particular interests militate against any
common interest as common interest and make it necessary that these
defining property relations be established as a formal authority in the
objective form of the state, and in the expression of themselves as the law.
It follows that all the associated agencies and institutions, the courts,
judges, lawyers, police, punishments, and prisons, come into existence as
essential adjuncts. The form and content of the state and law are framed
by or reflect the prevailing property relations in civil society, and as these
relations change, so too do the state and law.11 The state is legality incar-
nate, and the law is politics by another name.12
This relationship, however, is not unilinear or simple, and its two poles
(state/law and civil society) only ever bear a tentative correspondence.
Civil society is the sphere of class conflict among other forms of discord,
which together comprise a multifaceted arena of contestation. And the
state and the law have their own institutional interests, not to mention
internal divisions. The balance of contested power in any sector of civil
society at a given time is usually reflected in the contentious character of
the law. At the same time, the state and the law, if for no other reason than
they embody and protect the prevailing relations of power, provide and
enforce the framework for the inherent discord that defines civil society.
Hence, a reciprocal effect. The form and content of law and the state are
both susceptible and resistant to change: from the many faceted antago-
nisms in civil society, from the ongoing alterations in the structure of capi-
tal, and from institutional revisions to state and legal practice.

11
The concepts of determine and reflect represent the attempt to capture the fact that the
state and law are not stand-alone phenomena; the law is the objective, yet abstracted,
embodiment of real, concrete relations found in civil society. Although law has an indepen-
dent existence as law, it cannot be other than what it is, namely, a reasonably accurately
abstracted representation of the nature of these relations. It is, however, always an interpreta-
tion of them, an abstract rendering of existing relations, defined by layers of lawyers, politi-
cians, judges, bureaucrats, and market participants, and for these reasons the legal system has
degrees of relative autonomy from the actual sources of law.
12
All law is the product of partisan governments. Its advocates may pretend to be neutral,
but law cannot escape its origin in the political sphere.
354 G. TEEPLE

These conflicting relations are in constant flux and act as motive forces
for social change, mainly through different forms of class conflict. The
state and judicial system are institutional structures whose form and con-
tent are derived largely from these sources. The rationale for their exis-
tence lies in the conflicts that define civil society.

Law, Private Property, and Commodity Exchange

This definition of law as objectified relations with its primal source in
market-­driven competitive private property relations distinguishes it from
custom and tradition. The law appears in history only where the state and
civil society have separated largely into their own spheres, where civil soci-
ety is defined by exclusive forms of property (and usually commodity pro-
duction), and where social conflict is endemic. In this general sense, we
can discuss law abstractly, but if we move from the generalities to the
particularities of law, we are confronted with a different set of problems.
Conflicts arise from the contradictions in exclusive property relations.
Private property, for example, implies continual friction over the ‘bound-
aries’ of exclusive rights. It does not appear, moreover, only as exclusive
individual rights but exists in modern society in three fundamental forms,
namely, individual, corporate, and state. The first two are not compatible:
individual private property as independent entrepreneurs competes with
itself and with corporate capital for a share of the market; and as individual
ownership of labour-power, it competes with itself and with capital for a
share of the surplus product, wages being inversely related to profits.
Corporate capitals, moreover, compete amongst themselves for ever larger
shares of the market. These are the main sources of conflict in civil society.
The third form of private property, state forms, is often referred to as pub-
lic property, an allusion to the idea that governments represent the citizens
and so their exclusive rights are deemed public. Although citizens have the
right to use some aspects of state or public infrastructure, it is a right to
use at the discretion of the state, and the state in the final analysis has the
exclusive right to limit use and dispose of public assets as it sees fit, without
the least consideration of its citizenry.13
But these divisions are merely descriptive and simply point to the basis
of the major sub-categories of law. To understand these, we turn to the

13
A major part of neoliberal policies introduced in the 1980s throughout the world was
the privatization of public assets, which were sold to the corporate sector at give-away prices.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 355

marketplace, or better its complete development in the form of capitalist

society in which every aspect of production, circulation, distribution, and
consumption has been commodified or turned into one or another stage
in the production of capital. Here, the principles of the market have been
extended to all aspects of societal reproduction.
All goods and services are produced for exchange, making them com-
modities, that is, goods and services defined by exclusive rights. They are
sent to market by their owners, who the state defines as legal persons, be
they individuals or corporations, as possessors of private rights. The work-
ers who produced these commodities are also defined as persons and
accordingly sell their labour-power as a commodity to which they hold
exclusive rights until sold, exchanged for rights to wages. When the major-
ity of the population become owners of capital or labour-power, the state
moves to define all individuals of a certain age and competence as legal
persons, incarnations of private property. Those who are underage or
deemed incompetent in some way are classified as legal ‘wards’ of the
state, parents, or guardians. Similarly, corporations as collective capital,
trade unions as combined labour-power, religious institutions as aggre-
gated rent-money, among other sub-societal units, are defined as legal
entities. No member or organization of civil society as defined by the mar-
ket escapes definition by the state as the personification of a certain relation
to exclusive rights.
In the marketplace, the exchange of goods and services as commodities
appears to be an exchange of the goods and services themselves, but what
is exchanged is the exclusive right to things deemed to be of equal value.14
In pre-market social formations, exchanges of products were between tacit
owners, implicitly equal values or gifts, and the presumed honesty and
honour of each side; with commodity production, the state intervenes to
legalize owners as persons, to calculate ‘worth’ or value with officially cali-
brated weights and measures and denominated money, and to sanction
the exchange as a legal contract.15

14
As Marx argues, commodities are so many units of abstract labour, produced in order to
sell as exclusive rights possessed by the owner; the exchange is a right for a right to ostensibly
equal values.
15
For reflections on transitional economies, see: P. Carrasco, ‘Some theoretical consider-
ations about the role of the market in ancient Mexico,’ (67–82); and F. F. Berdan, ‘The
reconstruction of ancient economies: perspectives from archaeology and ethnohistory,’
(83–95), in S. Ortiz (ed.), Economic Anthropology, New York: University Press of
America, 1983.
356 G. TEEPLE

Every aspect of the exchange becomes formalized, defined in law as a

reflection of private rights interacting through contracts, the swopping of
exclusive rights. Most human relations in marketplace societies, then, take
on this distinctive juridic appearance, which by implication becomes the
imagined form even for most non-market relations, such as marriage, love,
friendship, pregnancy, parenting, and so on. In marketplace societies, rela-
tions between commodities become reflected in these legal forms as legis-
lated by the state, the institutional embodiment of the prevailing property
or economic relations.16
Marketplace society, in which all essential relations are defined by pri-
vate property, becomes a social formation defined by legalities. That is, a
society in which all relations significant to its reproduction are deemed to
conform to a law or to have a legal definition. Unlike a social formation
defined by informal customs and traditions, marketplace societies are
defined by objective formal laws, subject to logical analysis, designed as
specific formulations, open to the possibility of violation, and requiring
the rise of the judiciary, lawyers, police, punishments, and prisons.

Social Power, Class, and the Law

The nature and origins of social power in modern societies are abiding
questions in the social sciences. Although the issue was discussed in Chap.
3, the definition of social power in modern society requires it to be linked
to law. If all social formations are defined by their property relations, then
legitimate social power comes through the exercise of the associated
rights, claims, and entitlements, whether shared or not. Whatever the
form of property, moreover, the exercise of rights is always unequal
because all individual needs and all contributions to the social product are
unequal. But there is an important difference between the exercise of
communal rights and private rights. With the former, there is no incentive
to accumulate assets because there is no significance to having more when
all is shared according to custom or tradition or need. With the latter,
however, there is a material and social motive to accumulate because the
more private assets possessed, the greater the associated exclusive social
power, and this relation between the growth of exclusive rights to assets

16
The following argument draws from the work of E. Pashukanis, Law and Marxism: A
General Theory, London: Pluto Press, 1989.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 357

and related power becomes the dynamic underlying ever-increasing dis-

parities in wealth and political influence in marketplace societies.
It may be objected that the declaration of rights in liberal democratic
constitutions proclaims the equality of rights, implying that everyone has
an equal chance to exercise these rights and to accumulate assets and
power. This trumpeted idea of equal rights has provided a powerful means
to rationalize the continuous growth of economic and social inequalities,
but a brief analysis will help to grasp the paradox.
It is true that these rights and entitlements are extended equally in lib-
eral democracies, but only to legal persons and only as abstract rights.
Although all persons are accorded equal abstract rights, the exercise of
them is another question. In a system of private property, it is possible to
employ these rights only if they are attached to private possessions, to
commodities, and the greater these assets the greater the social power. If
there are no such assets, the rights are mere abstractions, meaningless to
their possessor; they cannot be brought into play. Hence, the well-known
sardonic remark by Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, for-
bids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and
to steal loaves of bread.” Everyone is equally forbidden to commit these
acts; if, however, you have no home, no income, and no food, in order to
live you have no choice but to violate the law. Abstract equal rights are
unrealizable rights for those without any means. For the poor, the law is
their nemesis, the unavoidable, ubiquitous, and invisible barrier to the
necessities of life itself and to human dignity. For all the rest, abstract
rights are always unequal in practice because they are realizable only in
accord with the assets possessed.17
This is a reference not only to the value of the assets but also to the
nature of the assets.
The exercise of rights is broadly prescribed by the character of the com-
modities, whose exchange takes the form of contracts, the exchange of
rights to these commodities. If a person’s main or only asset is labour-­
power, the ability to exercise the right attached to it is far more circum-
scribed than the ownership of the means of production. In both cases,

17
In the attempt to rectify or address chronic inequalities arising from the proclaimed
abstract equal rights, liberal democracy has legislated certain unequal rights, that is, rights
that favour categories of citizens who face negative systemic or structural discrimination. See:
G. E. Curry (ed.), The Affirmative Action Debate, Reading, M.A.: Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, 1996.
358 G. TEEPLE

rights can only be exercised by legal entities, and the extent of associated
power is determined by the nature and size of the asset. Humans need
not apply.
Because some own the means of production and others only their
labour-power, the inequality between these two embodiments of private
property inevitably grows. And competition being the presiding ethic of
the marketplace hastens the expansion of disparities. With the ever-greater
concentration of assets for those possessing the means of production,
moreover, comes ever-greater social power in the exercise of their rights.
The ability to exercise unequal private rights, then, is to possess unequal,
albeit legitimate, social power and to be the beneficiary of continuous
growth of disparities in wealth and power. Because the law is the authori-
tative objectification of property relations, it will by implication under-
write and uphold the unequal power relations and disparities in wealth
that develop. Social power increases as assets increase, and even more so if
the assets include the means of production, the means to increase assets.
As unequal exclusive rights to accumulated assets grow, they confer
increases in social power that allow for informal privileges in exercising
rights, and that ultimately force corresponding formal changes to the law
and the state.18
The development of the law, it follows, is accompanied by the growth
of unequal social power that arises from the stages of concentration of
privately held assets in their various changing institutional forms. These
changes take place over a long period, moving from the first isolated
exchanges of goods and services between communities to worldwide
chains of production and distribution of commodities run by transnational
corporations.
Irregular and informal commodity exchange had a long history in the
ancient world before it was institutionalized as barter and the marketplace,
and the market itself had a history before it has reduced communities to
societies, arenas of contractual relations between buyers and sellers.
Markets come to be the venue and mechanism for the general social allo-
cation of resources. As they expand, money makes its appearance, provid-
ing a convenient means for measuring the value of commodities and their
associated rights and a powerful mechanism for facilitating exchange.

18
A.R. Hogue, Origins of Common Law, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966,
p. 26. The social power of money could buy influence in medieval courts and lead to formal
legal protection.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 359

Commodities are transformed into money and the drive to accumulate

commodities is recast as the accumulation of money, but both accumula-
tions amount to the growth of associated social power. With the develop-
ment of money came the expansion of credit and debt, which further
divided society and became the basis of the class struggle between creditor
and debtor in the ancient world.19
The arrival of money and the market, Marx argues, also brings the phe-
nomenon of ‘commodity fetishism,’20 by which in part he means the trans-
formation of human relations into representations or personifications of
the relations of commodities. The principles of the movement of com-
modities and money in the marketplace become the principles ensconced
in law and assumed as the main principles of human behaviour. From this
point in history, the active subject becomes this movement, the exchange
and accumulation of embodiments of value, and the predicate becomes
their human owners. What is considered as human life becomes the life of
personified commodities.
The division of the marketplace society into different forms of com-
modities also produces their personified social representatives: distinct
social strata and classes. The conflicting interests of these different forms
of commodities find a ‘voice,’ that is, the social grouping of their owners
who contend with each other for shares of the total social product with the
powers according to the size and significance of their class assets.
The accumulation of money gives rise to capital, defined simply as
money invested to augment itself. Money is an independent commodity
and accumulated for its social power that is assumed by its owner, but in
the form of capital, it becomes an independent commodity with a new
dynamic, an inherent drive to augment itself.21
In the form of capital, private property continues to grow in increas-
ingly aggregated forms with corresponding social power, moving through
different manifestations, including family wealth, chartered companies,
incorporated joint-stock firms, trusts or cartels, oligopolies and monopo-
lies, holding companies, and so on. And with every development, new
incarnations of private property in accumulated forms have produced new

19
M. Hudson, … and forgive them their debts: Lending, foreclosure and redemption from
Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year, Dresden: ISLET-Verlag, 2018.
20
K. Marx, Capital, Volume One, London: 163–164
21
K. Marx Capital, Volume One, op. cit. p. 247–249.
360 G. TEEPLE

sources of social power commensurate with their size and economic posi-
tion and new legal and political forms.22
This relation between the growing accumulation of capital—producing
new corporate forms of exclusive rights demanding continual changes to
the law—and the state comes to mark the development of the liberal dem-
ocratic state from the early nineteenth century to the present day. By the
mid-twentieth century, international corporate entities were superseding
the national states that were once the venue and necessity for their growth.
Expanding collective corporate forms of capital continued to overstep the
confines of national jurisdictions and develop their own international insti-
tutions and laws and regulations without any pretence of democratic
accountability.
By the end of the twentieth century, capital had become global, on
account of continuous accumulation, integrating national markets across
the world. To facilitate this expansion, international laws and treaties and
quasi-state institutions were created to regulate global commodity pro-
duction, distribution, and quality, communications,23 finance, tourism,24
health,25 in short, every aspect of the global reproduction of a system of
commodified life. Corporate rights over commodity production and dis-
tribution have usurped individual rights except to labour-power and accu-
mulated individual assets, but these rights are also in decline. All the
necessities of life have been commodified under corporate ownership and
upheld by national laws everywhere.
By the twenty-first century, global corporate entities and their numer-
ous associated institutions were in a position to determine or set the
parameters from outside national borders to most aspects of national state
and legal activity. The ‘rules based international order’ (RBIO) became
the ruling legal framework or rule by law, and the formal political pro-
cesses of liberal democracy began to be analysed for their increasing

22
P. Phillips, Giants: The Global Power Elite, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018;
M. Stoller, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2019; W. Rugemer, The Capitalists of the 21st Century, Cologne:
Tredition, 2019.
23
L. Artz and Y. R. Kamalipour (eds.), The Globalization of Corporate Media Hegemony,
New York: State University of New York Press, 2003.
24
J. Mosedale (ed.), Political Economy of Tourism, New York: Routledge, 2011.
25
C. McInnes, K. Lee, J. Youde (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Health, 2018.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 361

subordination to the corporate sector as ‘corporate capture.’26 And along

with corporate capture, came the capture of the law. Neoliberal policies in
the form of laws were pursued consistently across the industrial world
from the early 1980s, austerity policies from the 2010s,27 and inflationary
policies in the 2020s.
Liberal democracy in its early stages as rule by national capital had to
allow for compromise with the working classes, but as rule by global capi-
tal, political pressure from the subordinate classes can no longer exact
compromises. The formal structures of liberal democracy have been left in
place and the formal motions of elections and debates that characterize
them have continued, but their significance has been reduced to maintain-
ing social order and restricting workers’ rights at the national and local
levels, using state revenues, expenditures, and the national debt for the
global capital accumulation. But they retain an existence that suggests
democratic control through elections of political parties and pre-selected
candidates ostensibly reflecting the people’s will.
What then is the source of law and social power in the twenty-first cen-
tury at the national level? Transnational corporations (TNCs) prevail
through their global ownership of the means of production via global
agencies, rules and regulations, and, above all, global control of capital
movements. Because the economies of national states have become part of
the global economic chains dominated by TNCs, and national debts pre-
scribed by global institutions, it follows that national policies are

26
B. Balanya, A. Doherty, O. Hoedman, A. Ma’anit, E. Wesselius, Europe Inc. London:
Pluto Press 2000; G. Monbiot, Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, London:
Pan Books, 2000; Harris Gleckman, Multistakeholder Governance and Democracy: A Global
Challenge, London: Routledge, 2018; Rachel Tansey (ed.), Corporate Capture in Europe,
Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU (ALTER-EU),
September 2018, https://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/documents/corporate_
capture_web_1.pdf; Corporate Europe Observatory, V, Cann and B. Balanya, Captured
States: When EU governments are a Channel for Corporate Interests, February 2019, https://
corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/ceo-captured-states-final_0.pdf. See also:
‘McKinseyGate: France’s Shadow Government and the Rise of the Corporate State,’
https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/03/31/mckinseygate-frances-shadow-government-
and-the-rise-of-the-corporate-state/. S. Vitali, J.B. Glattfelder, and S. Battiston, ‘The net-
work of global corporate control,’ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/
journal.pone.0025995; Hugh Compton, ‘The network of global corporate control: implica-
tions for public policy,’ Business and Politics, Volume 15, Issue 3, October 2013, 357–379.
27
S. McBride and B. Evans (eds.), The Austerity State, Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2011.
362 G. TEEPLE

necessarily framed by supranational rules and regulations and treaties

intended to advance global corporate interests at the expense of national
interests that were once the interests of national capital.28

The Rule of Law and the Rule by Law

Most governments claim to adhere to the rule of law, understood as a set
of principles to defend against the arbitrary, unequal, or unaccountable
exercise of political power. The rule of law embodies the principles for the
equal implementation of the law, principles that are not always formally
defined even in constitutions that proclaim the rule of law as fundamental.
The role played by the rule of law is thought to serve as a bulwark against
peremptory or repressive legal processes, especially for those classes and
social sectors that embody and benefit from countervailing property
forms. Analyses of the rule of law, however, seldom address the nature of
the law at play, the question of which law is at issue. The content of par-
ticular laws implemented under the rule of law is usually absent from the
discussion of these procedural principles.29
If the principles of the rule of law are promoted without examining the
laws at issue, they provide an affirmation of implicitly biased particular
laws. The irony expressed by Anatole France is a good illustration, but it
has been pointed out that the Nazi laws in Germany or the former

28
It might be argued that the postwar Bretton Woods global institutions and the United
Nations and NATO created in the 1940s are being challenged or replaced for many nations
by new global agreements, such as BRICS, SCO, EAEU, and regional trade pacts, but while
this appears to be the case, the argument still holds. There is nothing in the new arrange-
ments that displace the role of corporate capital, except that the new groupings might be
fairer than the earlier ones. And this is because they are not predicated on the US dollar and
military domination, and while could be seen as a positive development, both are still private
corporate arrangements. Neither the old nor the new is the expression of any form of
democracy.
29
There is a popular but mistaken meaning given to rule of law, possibly spread by the
frequent use of the phrase by Margaret Thatcher, that implies a duty to obey the law. Such a
view may have served Thatcher’s purposes, but it bears no relation to these legal procedural
principles. E. P. Thompson argued controversially that the rule of law is ‘an unqualified
human good’ (Whigs and Hunters, p. 267). It is true to say that the rule of law is a set of
principles that originally opposed arbitrary monarchical rule and now provides a bulwark
against dictatorship and so a step towards more democratic rule, but it belongs to a system
of private property and serves mainly as a barrier to the misuse of the law by authorities. In a
genuine social democracy, rule would be by the people and law strictly a predicate to demo-
cratic processes.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 363

apartheid laws of South Africa can also serve as examples,30 all of which
were practiced under the rule of law. The rule of law—the principles of
equal application of the law—disguises the biases in substantive law, leav-
ing the impression that laws are the product of democratic processes and
are practiced with equality even though they carry the intrinsic biases of a
legal system defined by class and ethnic contradictions.
The main principle of the rule of law is that all are subordinate to the
law, but it does not govern or control the nature of the laws to which all
are subordinated, rather it provides a procedural frame for their imple-
mentation. By implication, the rule by law is assumed to be impartial, but
in practice this cannot be. It is the embodiment of the prevailing forms of
property that benefit one class or gender or form of property to the disad-
vantage of others. Laws in a system of private property defined by its con-
tradictions will always contain bias. This is law that amounts to exclusive
rights, claims, and entitlements attached to certain assets, which means the
more assets the more beneficial the law and the fewer the assets the less
beneficial.
Although reflective of the prevailing property relations, the law in its
making as a specific empirical form is the product of political processes in
liberal democracies, and for this reason is open to compromise, interpreta-
tion, and influence by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of
the state, and even by extra-parliamentary demands. These different but
related powers influencing the making of law point to the constant pres-
sures that produce bias in the law.
Biases in substantive law may be disguised by the abstract egalitarianism
of the rule of law, but they cannot be eliminated. The rule of law itself
possesses a tenet that purports to uphold the impartiality of the courts
while guaranteeing their partiality. This principle is the independence of
the judiciary: judges, especially at the highest levels, are not elected or
accountable or subject to precedent in their decisions, and not obliged to
divulge their reasoning. The courts, especially the supreme courts, which
are the embodiments of the rule of law and make final legal decisions of

30
J. Shklar, ‘Political Theory and the Rule of Law,’ in A. Hutchinson and P. J. Monahan
(eds.), The rule of law: Ideal or ideology, 1–16 (1987) p.2. The point is made more emphati-
cally by J. Raz, ‘The Rule of Law and Its Virtues,’ in The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and
Morality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009: “A non-democratic legal system, based on
the denial of human rights, on extensive poverty, on racial segregation, sexual inequalities,
and religious persecution may, in principle, conform to the requirements of the rule of
law.” p. 261.
364 G. TEEPLE

systemic import, are unaccountable.31 To make the independence of the

judiciary one of the principles of the rule of law violates the overarching
rule of law that declares all as subordinate to the law and does nothing to
undo the biases in laws.32 It gives appointed and unaccountable judges an
autonomy or a free hand in the interpretation and application of inher-
ently biased laws.33
It has also been argued that this contradiction in the rule of law is also
found in the making of the law by the legislature. Legislatures cannot
make and amend the law and be subordinate to it at the same time. This
contradiction is more obvious when a legislature makes the claim to be
sovereignty itself.34 Plenary powers assumed by a legislature, almost none
of which has any formal obligation to represent the electorate, point to a
counterfeit democracy. And to these two exceptions to the rule of law, we
can add the use of executive orders that have the force of law and that are
growing in number around the world.35
The rule of law, then, contains a contradiction in that the law-making
powers of the independent judiciary, not to mention the legislature and
executive, place them in a position superior to the law. But why this
31
To be consistent with the liberal democratic principles, all judges would have to be sub-
ject to election and recall and a public accounting of their legal reasoning. These three prin-
ciples would go far to circumscribe the undemocratic nature of judicial decisions in liberal
democracy; the question is why are they not introduced?
32
The independence of the judiciary is argued to be the guarantee of judicial impartiality
or freedom from influence and bias, but such a position ignores the political process of
appointment, the unaccountability of the judiciary, and the biases implicit in the law itself
and in the mindsets and socio-economic origins of the judges. The principle of judicial inde-
pendence is in effect the principle of arbitrariness. And the ‘unreviewable’ nature of supreme
court decisions places arbitrariness at the heart of final judgements.
33
The independence of the judiciary establishes the ‘rule of persons,’ that is, independent
legal entities, at the heart of the ‘rule of law.’ This contradiction is compounded by the fact
that the judiciary also ‘makes’ the law with its interpretations, and so can be understood as
representing prevailing property holders in the making of law and in its adjudication. And it
follows that judicial independence can be taken as a legal bulwark for the interpretation of
the law as the embodiment of the prevailing property relations.
34
J. Waldron, ‘The rule of law and the role of courts,’ in Global Constitutionalism, March
2021, Vol. 10 Issue 1, 91–105, 2021, 93.
35
W. J. Olson and A. Woll, ‘Executive Orders and National Emergencies: How Presidents
Have Come to “Run the Country” by Usurping Legislative Power,’ Policy Analysis, October
28, 1999, https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa358.pdf; D. Curtin and
M. Egeberg (eds.), Towards a New Executive Order in Europe?, Milton Park: Routledge,
2009; J. Trondal, An Emergent European Executive Order, Oxford: Oxford University
Press 2010.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 365

contradiction? Because laws are but the formalization of the prevailing

property relations, which, as argued, are the real seat of sovereignty, and
laws require agents for their formulation, they do not spring from the air,
and in liberal democracies they are made by the executive and legislature,
with the judiciary given independent powers of interpretation and adjudi-
cation. All three branches of government are obviously above the law and
placed in such positions because laws are not immaculately conceived and,
moreover, must be designed to ensure that if those without a stake in the
system manage to gain ascendancy in any of the three branches, the ability
to change property forms from within can be checked. The tenet that “no
one is above the law” is merely an assertion guaranteeing the sovereignty
of law, while at the same time obscuring the partiality of the makers, inter-
preters, and enforcers of the law.
The rule of law also conceals the partiality of substantive law. On the
one hand, the rule of law is procedural law and serves to promote the
abstract equality of the principles of legal process in liberal democracy. On
the other hand, the rule by law refers to substantive law that reflects the
real, existing property relations that are anything but equal in the assets
they rest on and the social power they confer. The abstract equality of the
rule of law under which the inequality of substantive law is implemented
helps to disguise the unequal social power of private property. The implicit
coercive function of substantive law, that is its all-embracing social control
via contract relations, is disguised by the seeming equality of its applica-
tion. The unequal social impact of substantive law and its defence and
delivery by the executive branch, its making and amending by the legisla-
ture, and its interpretation and adjudication by the judiciary can be passed
off as exercises in equality.
In liberal democracies, the rule by law is argued to be the reflection of
the will of the people as voiced through elections and the legislature, but
the people’s will as so many private individual conflicting interests in a
system of private property cannot be a coherent voice. The ruling law as
sovereign means the rule of the prevailing property relations, the rights of
generalized incorporated accumulated private property, whose final arbiter
in the courts is by and large unaccountable. Despite the declarations in
most liberal constitutions, sovereignty does not reside in the people, and
cannot if they are defined as an atomized electorate. The entire structure
of liberal democracy is designed to uphold rule by law, that is, substantive
366 G. TEEPLE

law as sovereign,36 which is guaranteed by the rule of law, a guarantee that

allows the prevailing property relations to parade as impartial, as if the
voice of the people as equals unified.
The rule of law, to reiterate, is a set of principles developed during the
long conflict over the arbitrariness of monarchs and the need for stable
and authoritative rules to regulate competition amongst the rising bour-
geoisie. Initially, it was the ‘voice of the people’ in opposition to political
arbitrariness when the people were defined by assets sufficient to qualify as
a stake in the system. It comprised principles that guard against arbitrary
rule but does not determine the nature of the particular laws that rule. It
came to prevail with the achievement of bourgeois democracies, and it has
served the interests of capital competing against itself for political control
and limited accountability. It has resonated to a degree with the petit
bourgeoisie (small farmers, independent artisans, shopkeepers, and so on)
as the mechanism of limited legal protection against usurpation by large
corporate concerns. And it has also served the interests of the working
class in allowing it to use the mechanisms of liberal democracy to advance
countervailing property forms: trade unions rights, employment stan-
dards, public health and education, and social security.
But with the decline of national corporate competition and the central-
ization of capital at the global level, the rule of law no longer provides the
same national advantages to capital, indeed becoming a barrier to the
advance of global capital. For this reason, there are growing violations of
all aspects of the rule of law, and some have argued that the corporation
and state have abandoned respect for the law altogether.37

36
L. P. Beth, Politics, The Constitution and the Supreme Court, New York: Harper and
Row, 1962. She cites Aristotle as contending that “rightly constituted laws should be the
final sovereign,” p.9.
37
Within liberal democratic systems, democratic liberties such as freedom of assembly and
the press, the franchise, and so on have been essential to the organized strength of the work-
ing class. And for this reason, the rule of law has been an important principle to defend as a
guardian against arbitrariness and differential justice, despite the inherent bias in law in
favour of corporate private property. But now, after decades of neoliberal policies that have
brought transnational rules, albeit adopted as national laws, it becomes increasingly difficult
for the working class to exact the limited countervailing rights it once did. Retrenchment of
workers’ rights throughout the industrial nations has proceeded without pause since 1980.
And contempt for legal standards by corporations and states is visible everywhere, for
instance, in surveillance, censorship, assassination, rendition, and torture policies, confisca-
tion of private and state property, sabotage, US/NATO destruction of entire nations (Iraq,
Libya, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and so on). Consolidated global corporate
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 367

The contradictions in the rule of law exist because of the contradictory

nature of civil society. They can only be resolved by making the people, as
sovereign over socialized property, into the subject in law-making and the
law into the predicate, reflecting the genuine democratic will of the people
as subject instead of substantive law. As it stands, the rule of law assumes a
legal process as employed by a state that embraces the prevailing property
relations in opposition to the countervailing rights and claims of the
majority working class. It is the pretence that unequal substantive laws can
be made and applied impartially by the neutral principles of the rule of law.
And so, to contend, as E. P. Thompson did, that “the notion of the rule
of law is itself an unqualified good”38 is to say that equality before the law
is an absolute that can transcend all property forms. But this is to miss the
point that equality before the law is an abstraction belonging to a system
of private property in which all are declared equal in their possession of
abstract exclusive rights, rights that are unrealizable except as attached to
unequal real assets.
In a system of socialized property, rights would not be attached to pri-
vately accumulated assets because assets of any import would genuinely be
public property, whose disposition would be decided democratically, and
individual rights to a share of the social product would be as always
unequal, based on individual needs and contributions to the social prod-
uct. Specific unequal individual rights would exist in principle and in prac-
tice in cases of inability to contribute—the very young, the elderly, the ill,
and the disabled, and in cases of structured inequality as partly addressed
by modern affirmative action laws.39

private property now finds the rule of law a barrier to its further centralization and ignores it
with complete impunity.
See: W. J. Olson and A. Woll, ‘Executive Orders and National Emergencies: How
Presidents Have Come to “Run the Country” by Usurping Legislative Powers,’ Policy
Analysis, 358, 1–29; and D. Curtin and M. Egeberg (eds.), Towards a New Executive Order
in Europe?, Oxford: Routledge, 2009.
38
This is a reference to the controversial claim by E.P. Thompson in his book, Whigs and
Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act, London: Alan Lane, 1975, pp. 208–209. This asser-
tion by Thompson spawned an interesting debate over the rule of law, a debate that revealed
how unclear the concept remains. For a review, see: D. H. Cole, ‘“An Unqualified Good”:
E. P. Thompson and the Rule of Law,’ Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 28, No. 2, June 2001,
177–203.
39
The rule of law is marked by the contradictions mentioned that can only be resolved by
making the people, the broad working class, the actual subject in law-making and the law the
predicate of the decisions of this subject. The rule of law presupposes legal processes as
368 G. TEEPLE

Proximate Sources of Law: Constitutions, Statutes,

Regulations, Common Law, Codes,
and Executive Orders

The study of law begins in many legal textbooks with proximate sources,
but this starting point bypasses the question of the initial source of law. By
eclipsing a study of the origin of law, we are left with the implication that
the law is strictly the product of immediate or secondary sources in the
legislature, executive, and judiciary. Seen in this way, law can be upheld as
the product of these ostensibly democratic sources, the supposed repre-
sentatives of the people as the presumed original source.
The argument made here is that the primary source of law has always
been the prevailing property relations, which under capitalism are manifest
as concentrated embodiments of capital, as corporations, and their per-
sonifications as class owners. The development of the modern forms of
government and the laws they enact are to be understood as reflecting the
demands, needs, and objectives of corporate capital. Proximate sources are
the specific empirical sources found in the levels of government and judi-
cial decisions that produce actual or substantive laws. It follows that they
are but the particular expressions of corporate property relations in the
form of laws that the political party holding a majority in the legislature
manages to legislate, the executive to implement, and the judiciary to
interpret via adjudication.
The study of ultimate sources explains law in general, while the study of
proximate sources explains positive or substantive laws. What follows is a
brief survey of the most common forms of substantive law by reference to
their proximate sources. They will be drawn out with references to the
broad private property relations that define the system.
Constitutions. Constitutions are the usual starting point in the study of
proximate sources. They map out the structures, procedures, and limits of
law-making, implementation, and enforcement, not to mention the power
to dissolve national assemblies and even to suspend the constitution that
is to usurp all legal powers by the executive.40 But constitutions do not

employed by the state and corporate sector in opposition to the working class. To take the
rule of law as ‘an unqualified good’ means to accept the state as is and the preeminence of
corporate private property as a given.
40
See C. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: crisis in the modern democracies, London:
Routledge, 19??
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 369

exist outside of the property relations of the society whose politics they
define; liberal democratic constitutions cannot be anything except the
basic rules for the maintenance of a system of private property. They were
designed and written by those possessing sufficient assets to qualify them
as stakeholders in the system, in the absence and fear of those without.
And however abstractly stated, the principles of constitutions are intended
to mitigate the inherent conflict and allow the growth of the intrinsic
inequalities of private property to the advantage of those with substantial
assets and commensurate social power.
Legislatures. Legislatures are the next obvious proximate source. These
are elected bodies of government whose purpose is to make laws within
the jurisdictions set out in the national constitution. Laws usually begin as
draft proposals or statements presented to the legislatures, which, after
passing through stages allowing for debate, amendments, and a vote of
approval, they are proclaimed and pass on to the executive branch for
approval before becoming law in the form of statutes, part of the formal
legal code of a nation. The content of statutes, then, almost always reflects
the particular policies represented by the political party that holds the
reins of power and represents the interests of particular configurations of
accumulated capital.41
Municipalities. Local governments and their by-laws are generally
included along with legislatures because their existence is usually derived
from legislative statutes. They obtain their authority to enact rules, regula-
tions, by-laws, and ordinances from legislation passed by a superior legis-
lature. The council that oversees the municipality or local government is
usually elected, and this allows for a modicum of public scrutiny over
municipal legislation, but elected local councils exercise their limited pow-
ers at the discretion of the superior government. Nevertheless, with cer-
tain powers of taxation and long-term capital borrowing, this level of
government is favoured by local forms of corporate capital, especially the
construction industry and land developers, and is often rife with corporate
corruption by the same.42

41
It is true that there are laws that do not represent the interests of prevailing corporate
capital, but generally they either do not present serious threats to the accumulation process
or are routinely ignored or violated with impunity if they impinge on accumulation, as for
instance in the case of environmental laws or certain civil and political rights.
42
T. Hunt, ‘Municipal Corruption—A Literature Review,’ International Centre for
Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, September 11, 2020. https://icclr.
org/2020/09/11/municipal-corruption-a-literature-review/. This is corruption that may
well be viewed by superior governments as an acceptable form of ‘rent-seeking’ at the
expense of local residents by tapping ‘unutilized tax facilities.’
370 G. TEEPLE

Common Law. Common law, sometimes called case law, is another

proximate source, which is established through the carrying forward of
past judicial decisions. Its source, then, is not legislated law as in statutes,
but law as made by judges and various institutions, agencies, or tribunals.
In these legal systems, which embrace about a third of the world’s popula-
tion, mainly Britain and its former colonies, there are two operational
principles that are preeminent: precedent and stare decisis. They mean
respectively that the current court decisions should follow previous deci-
sions made on similar cases as a guide, and that a decision made by a
higher court is understood as binding on a lower court.
There is no formal legal obligation to follow precedents, unless they are
decisions by a supreme court, which are usually accepted as final judge-
ments. The principle of precedent is taken as “the preferred course for
judgement,” not as “an inexorable command,” and so, the acceptance or
rejection of previous judicial decisions remains within the realm of judicial
discretion. There are, moreover, no clear or strict rules for the deployment
of stare decisis, and therefore no way to determine if a current decision is
an accurate application of the principle of precedent. Still, the accepted
and continuing use of precedent lies at the heart of creating law in a com-
mon law system. It is law, however, created by unelected judges, acting
with a high degree of discretion and representing privilege in their own
socio-economic backgrounds and/or in their appointments, positions that
combine generous salaries, pensions, and tenure of position.
In common law jurisdictions, it is widely held that the principles of
precedent and stare decisis are nothing less than “a foundation stone of
the rule of law,” as Blackstone would have it. Their purpose is to maintain
“public faith in the judiciary as a source of impersonal and reasoned
judgements.”43 They are to offset judicial bias and arbitrariness and so
“promote the even-handed, predictable, and consistent development of
legal principles,” serving as a source of “stability and integrity of the
courts.” In other words, past legal decisions as the product of judicial
verdicts are to be the guide to future interpretations, and so, the probity,
honour, and virtue of the common law legal system have rested on what

43
T. E. Freed, ‘Is Stare Decisis Still the Lighthouse Beacon of Supreme Court
Jurisprudence?: A Critical Analysis,’ Ohio State Law Journal, Jan, 1, 1996: 1776–1797.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 371

amounts to a closed circuit of judicial findings because no law is confirmed

until interpreted by formal judicial means.
The principle of precedent, however, could also make the defence of
the judicial decisions more important than justice itself. In 1932, the
noted American Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis (1856–1941),
wrote about stare decisis in a dissenting opinion that the doctrine “is usu-
ally the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the
applicable rule of law be settled than it be settled right.”44 This apparent
defence of the rule of law [precedent and stare decisis], even in the face of
a mistaken judgement becoming a precedent, opened the door to a clearer
grasp of the significance of these principles. This reasoning would appear
to be an admission that mistaken or iniquitous decisions could stand as
precedents despite the harm or injustice to the defendant in order to
uphold past decisions to maintain the appearance of the integrity of the
courts. The appearance of integrity was more important to maintain than
to admit the actual lack of integrity or the reality of an unjust decision and
so an unjust precedent. Stare decisis and precedent have long been criti-
cized as allowing for the replication of mistaken judgments.
Brandeis is arguing that it is more important to implement the princi-
ples of precedent and stare decisis, even if they reproduce an injustice, in
order to uphold the authority of the courts predicated on this so-called
cornerstone of the rule of law than to deny stare decisis in the case of an
unjust decision. To put this another way, a travesty of justice is not suffi-
cient reason to deny or reject stare decisis or precedent, and so challenge
the authority of the courts. Or, injustice is to be tolerated in order to
uphold these two principles and so the authority of the courts, even if rest-
ing on mistaken reasoning and unjustifiable decisions.
The principles of precedent and stare decisis, which may stand for sta-
bility of interpretation and restraint on the judiciary, are more a guarantee
of the prejudicial nature of the law by means of the continuity of judicial
opinions and decisions that may well be patently misconstrued or biased.
They can be seen as bulwarks of the arbitrariness of the judiciary, the
underlying guarantee of the class nature of the law.
In current judicial processes, the determination of a mistaken judge-
ment or a travesty of justice can only be made by analysis of the law in
question, its application to a particular case, and the reasoning behind the

44
Ibid., p.1776.
372 G. TEEPLE

decision.45 There are avenues of appeal for what are considered miscar-
riages of justice, but travesties can be allowed to stand for the sake of the
sanctity of the courts.
Brandeis was not the first or the last to wade into the argument over the
principles of precedent and stare decisis. More critical dimensions to the
debate exist. The overarching assumption in the use of precedents, for
instance, assumes that the facts of a current case are similar to the facts of
past cases. To establish the facts is a task always fraught with uncertainties
and ambiguities, but to compare the facts of cases across time and circum-
stance is a doubly dubious venture. There is no unequivocal way to deter-
mine the facts or to assess their similarity in different cases. Along with this
inherent problem, it cannot be overlooked that in an adversarial system
the lawyers involved are not disinterested parties to what these facts are
and how to establish them.
In the case of a supreme court decision, stare decisis represents “the
judgement of last resort” and is considered final and obligatory. But what
is it about the supreme court that makes its decisions superior to lower
courts? Why does the supreme court possess a mandate as close to arbi-
trariness as imaginable? Its decisions are beyond dispute, its judges are
unelected and have near permanent tenure, it need not recognize prece-
dent, and its reasoning can be confidential, or blatantly without merit.
In the absence of an answer, the linking of some fundamentals of the
system may provide some understanding: there is a ‘flaw’ in the system of
corporate private property, namely, that the majority working class exists to
be exploited; it has no essential stake in the system, but the political form
of liberal democracy exists to maintain the legitimacy of this exploitation
by allowing a circumscribed voice and vote. Here is the rub: liberal democ-
racy provides the possibility for the realization of that voice and vote in the
legislature, the main branch of government for making the law. Although
the legislature keeps the law within the bounds of what is permissible, it
does provide the chance for unwanted criticism, exposure, and prosecu-
tion of state and corporate malfeasance. The undemocratic character of
the courts provides a powerful antidote to this ‘flaw.
There is a relationship between statutes and common law that should
be mentioned. On the one hand, the powers that are associated with par-
liamentary sovereignty mean that a legislature has the authority to review

45
M. Taggart, ‘Should Canadian Judges Be Legally Required to Give Reasoned Decisions
in Civil Cases?’ The University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1, Winter 1983 (1–44).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 373

and change or repeal the principles ensconced in common law decisions.

On the other hand, the principles set out in statutes are initially without
interpretation in practice. Interpretation of the provisions of a statute is
the preserve of the judiciary through its review or adjudication process.
Laws are abstract statements of principle until interpreted by the judiciary.
Here again, we see the arbitrary powers of the judiciary over the entirety
of a system defined by legalities.
The Civil Code. For the majority of the world’s population, instead of a
common law tradition providing the source of law not covered by statutes,
there is a national ‘civil code’ that stands as the main source. For many
national and sub-national jurisdictions, the French Code Napoleon (1804)
serves as the main source, but for many others in Europe, Asia, and Latin
America, a combination of the German ‘Civil Law Book’ (1896), the
Swiss, and the French Civil Codes were adopted as the key influence.46
Both the French and German Codes owe a large debt to the Roman Code
Justinian (535CE). Such systems of law draw from the main principles of
accumulated past cases, codified, and set out in specific articles.
There are three noteworthy points to make about ‘civil code’ legal sys-
tems. One is that they are similar to common law systems in that the codes
are derived from past decisions, and so the proximate source remains the
code, but behind the code lies a history of judicial decisions by unelected
judges. The codes are different in that different practices arise in different
systems and have been isolated and codified, but similar in that they are
both products of the powers of a marketplace status quo.
Another point is that although such codification may appear to make
judicial decisions into the mere application of the code’s provisions, in
fact, as in the common law tradition, judges must use discretion and make
interpretations of the code for each case and do so with awareness of other
standing interpretations. All laws, regardless of origin, must suffer inter-
pretation in adjudication, which raises the questions of who makes this
interpretation and how, and how it is possible to render a neutral decision

46
According to Max Weber, the German Civil Code of 1896 was adopted by Japan with
changes, and the Swiss Civil Code of 1912 by Turkey; by the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, an amalgam of the French, German, and Swiss Codes was integrated into the
legal systems of much of Europe, Asia, and Latin America. See: E. Shils and M. Rheinstein
(eds.), Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, New York: A Clarion Book, 1954, 285.
The wide adoption of these civil codes, which dealt mainly with relations of private property,
by the late nineteenth century by most of the non-common law countries provides a useful
gauge to the spread of the capitalist mode of production.
374 G. TEEPLE

in a system marked by irresolvable contradictions and biased influences,

and designed to uphold them.
The third point can be posed as a question: how is it that a legal code
compiled in the sixth century CE, from even earlier codes, can still have
the apparent currency to serve as the basis of new law codes developed in
the nineteenth century, and to reach well into the twenty-first century, and
to serve as the basis of law codes across the world? The answer lies in what
they all have in common: the majority of clauses in all these codes has to
do with private property; they are the products of marketplace society, the
very reason for law, and the fundamentals of the market and exclusive
rights have remained very similar. It could be argued, similar since the
sixth century BCE in Greece, or even in the eighteenth-century BCE
Babylonia.47
Executive Order. There is one further modality of law that should be
mentioned: legislation by order-in-council or executive order. Every year
there are many hundreds of executive decisions made by governments that
result in laws or actions that have not passed through the usual legislative
procedures, and as a consequence they are decided outside public scrutiny
and are almost impossible to appeal. The enormous growth of such deci-
sions has given rise to the notion of government by executive order. The
general result can be called ‘administrative law,’ which is often close to
legal arbitrariness that is very difficult to appeal or reform.

Private Law, Public Law

In the study of substantive law, that is specific legal relations, there is a
distinction made between private and public law. While there is a certain
debate and even confusion surrounding the division, the analysis we have
made in the separation of the capitalist state and civil society and the origin
in private property helps to clarify it. Private property, as the prevailing
social and economic relation, is not only the cause of this separation, as we

47
Excessive litigation is a good indicator of the degree of commodification and extent of
contractual relations defining a society. Compare these studies of the fifth-century Athens
BCE and the United States in the twenty-first century CE. M. R. Christ, The Litigious
Athenian, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998; F. H. Buckley, The
American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law. Yale University Press, 2013. Most of the almost
300 laws in Hammurabi’s Code concern the private property rights of merchants, fathers/
husbands, slave masters, landowners, and so on, and the punishments for their transgres-
sions—in eighteenth-century BCE Babylonia.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 375

have argued, but also provides the main principles informing the content
of both sides of the division.
Given society as marketplace, the category of private or civil law com-
prises the forms of law of the market, laws that concern private interests in
relation to other private interests, that is, relations of owners of private
property to each other. Contract law, for instance, is grounded in this very
relation and as such reduces the parties to the contract to mere possessors
of private property ‘freely’ agreeing to exchange the rights to their pri-
vately owned goods or services. Tort law concerns a purported wrong
done by a person to another and the amount of compensation for that
wrong if proven. The parties to the dispute and the compensation are
similarly understood entirely in monetary terms. In private law, as the law
covering relations within civil society, there is no place for love, affection,
artistry, humanity, dignity, altruism, sorrow, or any other human charac-
teristic—unless it is reduced to its putative monetary value.48
The category of public law also reflects society as marketplace, but in
this case, the laws embody the defence of the principles of the market.
Constitutional law falls into this category because it sets out the most fun-
damental legal principles that determine the structure of a government
that oversees a marketplace society: civil society. Criminal law is also
included here, encompassing the laws defending the system against trans-
gressions of the principles of private property. Tax law is placed here as
well because it concerns the revenue stream from civil society by which the
state exists as the embodiment of abstracted contract relations. Also
included is the broad range of administrative law, much of which covers
the sphere of what has come to be known as the welfare state, as well as
the numerous commissions and other legal structures for managing soci-
etal infrastructure.
In keeping with the nature of this division in law, private law is generally
initiated by one party to a dispute, a conflict within civil society in the
form of personifications of private property against one another. Public
law is initiated by the state, the embodiment of the whole, as a defence of
the system, which concerns the principles of the prevailing property rela-
tions. This distinction between public and private law corresponds to the
nature of modern society, divided into two separate spheres: the state and
civil society. The former is the abstracted whole, the embodiment of rules

48
Private or civil law usually includes these sub-categories: contract, tort, property, family,
succession, trade union, and corporate law.
376 G. TEEPLE

and regulations that characterize the relations of the parts; and the latter
is the arena of the real concrete relations between parts.
Administrative Law. The sub-category of administrative law falls within
the domain of public law, and it comprises an enormous number of laws
categorized as regulations: by-laws, rules, ordinances, and so on. Some
regulations are contained within a statute, but many statutes empower the
government or its ministers or appointed commissions, tribunals, and
boards to make regulations independently and adjudicate them, outside
the purview of the legislature or judiciary yet possessing the force of law
embedded in the statute. Whatever the reasons for this delegation of
power, it is at the same time a derogation of the powers of the legislature
and elected executive and stands as a stark example of law-making often
without even the pretence of democratic process.
These delegated powers may allow for arbitrary decrees and quasi-­
judicial processes with limited regard for due process or procedural rules
of law. And, indeed, a government may use this route to prevent legislative
or public scrutiny of its policies and potential effects of its laws. Moreover,
laws devised in this manner, especially by appointed officials, are much
more susceptible to influence-peddling—not a small problem in modern-­
day nation-states.49 The real problem with administrative law, however, is
not the corruption but the fact that it functions outside of electoral
accountability.
The nature of administrative law is most closely associated with those
attempts by government to address two main spheres of activity in civil
society not covered by elements of private law. These are (1) arenas in
which the market has been unable to operate successfully, and (2) arenas
in which the market typically does not operate. In both cases, administra-
tive law comprises in large measure what is often referred to as govern-
ment intervention: the need for regulation.
The market shortcomings of the first arena are addressed by means of a
variety of public corporations and regulatory agencies, at all levels of gov-
ernment. Such agencies could include port commissions, energy control
boards, public utility agencies, communication facilities, and transport

49
M. De Benedetto, ‘Administrative Corruption,’ in A. Marciano and G. B, Ramello
(eds.), Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, New York: Springer, 2021, 1–8.
https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_527-2; A. Ogus,
‘Corruption and regulatory structures,’ in Law and Policy, 26: 329–346, 2004.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 377

boards, among many others. Since 1980, wherever these agencies can be
privatized, they generally have been.
The second arena includes all those aspects of social reproduction that
are not addressed by the market or indeed are the consequences of the
market. They constitute social needs that must be satisfied to maintain the
legitimacy of the system and its orderly reproduction. Such needs gener-
ally reflect ‘non-vested interests,’ those classes of civil society without sig-
nificant present or future rights, claims, or entitlements to commodified
wealth, and therefore without the means to withstand the vagaries of the
labour market. Unemployment, ill-health, poor working conditions, preg-
nancy, economic downturns, and so on would all present potentially
socially disruptive or destructive situations for these groups. The state
intervenes with social reforms in order to avoid widespread social disrup-
tion. These reforms constitute forms of countervailing property relations,
sometimes called the new property, or social citizenship, that allow for a
degree of de-commodification of labour-power and therefore some respite
from the consequences of the labour market.
There are many hundreds of commissions, boards, tribunals, and indi-
viduals with these administrative powers in all liberal democracies, and
they exist at different levels of government. Their influence is pervasive,
and although their regulations are usually published, in practice their
operations will often appear as arbitrary to all except those who can afford
legal counsel.50 Formally speaking, the parameters of their practice are
usually set by the enabling legislation and generally the rules of natural
justice. Briefly, these rules include the necessity to hear both parties to a
dispute, the exclusion of bias in the proceedings, and the need to follow a
due process that is consistent with the doctrine of fairness.
For a variety of reasons, the relative prominence of this ‘new property’51
reached its highest development in the 1970s as the welfare state. But by

50
Administrative bodies become powers in own right, especially when central to state con-
trol. See: David Burnham, A law unto itself: power, politics, and the IRS, New York: Open
Road Integrated Media, 2015. State tax collection agencies and police boards are good
examples, with histories that are almost as long as the existence of the state.
51
A critique of the article by C. A. Reich, ‘The New Property,’ The Yale Law Journal, April
1964, Vol. 73, No. 5, 733–787, would require much more space than we have here, but the
idea that the broad range of state redistribution of some of its revenues in the form of social
security payments constitutes a new form of property is an idea that is consistent with the
argument in this book. It is not state largess, however, but the socialization of a portion of
wages and salaries that performs the function that the ‘jubilee’ did in the ancient world in
378 G. TEEPLE

the 1970s the movement of the corporate sector out of its confines in the
nation-state was part of the changing conditions that underlaid the
KWS. Consequently, by the 1980s, a vigorous and conscious political, fis-
cal, and ideological attack was mounted against the welfare state and in
favour of a return to an unmitigated regime of private law. Globalization
had begun to undermine the postwar conditions and to provide new
global conditions for the assertion of the principles of private property.

The Law and Countervailing Property Forms:

‘Patriarchy,’ ‘White Man’s’ Law, and Trade Unions
In the legal systems of the industrial world, there is a general presupposi-
tion that all citizens are equal. But this political and legal equality is an
equality of abstract rights that takes no account of the real conditions of
material life. The law is premised on a system of private rights, a market-
place society of contract relations as the prevailing form of social
intercourse.
It follows that all those groups, strata, or peoples, which have stood
outside this system of private property and yet are part of society in one
way or another, have also stood outside the purview of the legal system.
These categories include or have included workers, children, indigenous
peoples, certain ethnic/religious groups, and women. The law has been
long silent about or treated as dependents all those who have been outside
mainstream market relations. The following three brief examples of legally
marginalized groups are meant simply to illustrate the meaning of coun-
tervailing rights.
Patriarchy. One of the most obvious examples of legal bias in all capi-
talist nations is that shown against women. Although much mitigated
today, historically this bias was so profound that women were in effect
without even the basic legal rights extended to men for most of the history
of liberal democracy and had to suffer (and still do) the presumption in
law of being inferior or subordinate to men. It has been argued that this
sexism in capitalist law and legal process finds its origin in the capitalist
division of labour between the world of work and that of domestic life.52

freeing the lowest orders of society from debt slavery and imprisonment and so restoring
degrees of social trust or belief in an otherwise unequal system.
52
M. Benston, ‘The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,’ in E. Malo (ed.) The
Politics of Housework, London: Allison and Busby, 1980 (100–109).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 379

The capitalist world of work begins with the labour market and ends
with the production, exchange, and consumption of commodities, a world
in which everything is defined in terms of private property, exclusive indi-
vidual relations to goods and services. The domestic sphere, however, has
been defined as outside the marketplace and is dependent on income
gained ‘at work,’ in the marketplace. Early in the history of capitalism,
these two spheres became defined by a gendered division of labour.
Women gradually came to occupy positions within the domestic sphere
outside the labour market and in a position of economic dependency on
men, who in turn found themselves obliged to sell their labour-power as a
commodity. Reflecting these relations, legal rights were extended to those
whose labour-power was commodified in the labour market but not to
those ‘outside’ it in the domestic sphere.
If the law presented a bias against or silence about women because they
were outside these market relations, it reflected men as employees or
employers as fully ensconced in these relations, defining their legal status
as persons, as buyers or sellers of commodified labour-power in the mar-
ket. Male-female relations, then, throughout the history of capitalism up
to the present have been marked by this division of labour (commodified/
non-commodified labour) formalized in law as persons and non-persons.
And because capitalism is defined in part by the commodification of goods
and services, the law privileges those individuals and institutions that
reflect or embody capital as commodified labour or wealth in relation to
those who do not.
Consequently, the law was long absent from the domestic sphere, while
at the same time it has reflected the rights or claims of those whose labour-­
power was commodified or who possessed commodified wealth. By virtue
of this fact, those who perform non-commodified labour (domestic
sphere) or who do not own wealth in this form do not have the same sta-
tus before the law. Dependent women in the home, children, the unem-
ployed, the disabled, all those whose existence is outside commodified
forms or the definition of personhood become the subjects of various cat-
egories in administrative law and are treated as lacking the status of full
legal entities.
The legal status of women in law has changed, particularly since about
1970 when women began to enter the labour force in growing numbers.
With this change—the increasing commodification of their labour-­
power—came a decreasing economic dependence on men, and it followed
a rising demand for women’s rights. The origins of the contemporary
380 G. TEEPLE

feminist movement are found in this period and are premised on the fact
that women’s social and legal inequality was confronted by women’s
growing participation in the labour market. The law began to be chal-
lenged for its gender bias, arguably a bias that had lost its foundation. This
challenge, however, did not take aim at the criteria for these rights, namely,
the commodification of labour-power, a foundation that remains the gen-
eral basis of economic inequality.
If women have gained equal rights in many spheres, it cannot be argued
that they are equal to men in the labour market.53 Generally, women do
not earn wages equal to men even if employed in the same line of work.
This gender bias in wages represents an enormous financial benefit to the
corporate sector.54 And it is this sector that controls the mass media and so
social attitudes towards women,55 not to mention the state56 and so the
laws that affect women’s rights.57
‘White Man’s’ Law. While the treatment of women before the law
remains obviously biased—no doubt partly due to the enormous corpo-
rate benefit from wage discrimination—the law’s foundation in private
property becomes even more obvious when examined in relation to indig-
enous rights. In this category of rights, we include all those claims and
entitlements that belong to pre-market and stateless societies: in a word, a
collective people’s relation to material and cultural wealth that is not

53
In 1995, the UN Human Development Report claimed, “In no society do women fare as
well as men.” One of its conclusions stated: “If women’s unpaid work were properly valued,
it is quite possible that women would emerge in most societies as the major breadwinners.”
54
International Labour Organization, Global Wage Report 2018/19, “What lies behind
gender pay gaps?” “[T]he estimates …, which cover some 70 countries and about 80 per
cent of wage employees worldwide, show that on average women currently continue to be
paid approximately 20 per cent less than men” (p. v).
55
G. Tuchman, “The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media,” in L. Crothers
and C Lockhart (eds.), Culture and Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000 (xxx);
J. T. Wood, “Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views on Gender,” in J. T. Wood,
Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Culture, 1994 (231–244).
56
R. Monks (ed.), “The Corporate Capture of the United States” The Harvard Law School
Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, January 5, 2012, https://corp-
gov.law.harvard.edu/2012/01/05/the-corporate-capture-of-the-united-states/.
57
The long and lost struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment Act in the United States is
a classic illustration. See: R. DeWolf, Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the
Equal Rights Conflict Amendment, 1920–1963, University of Nebraska Press, 2021. See also
the review article: L. R. Woliver, ‘The Equal Rights Amendment & the Limits of Liberal
Legal Reform,’ in Polity, Vol. 21, No. 1, Autumn 1988 (183–200).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 381

commodified. The non-commodified and communal nature of indigenous

wealth means that it is non-alienable, that it cannot be bought and sold,
and that ownership or possession is in one way or another a collective,
cooperative, relation, not an individual, private, one.
Law in a capitalist society treats people and things almost exclusively as
relations of private property, and so, when law reflecting private property
meets a form of property that is not private it knows not what to do. Its
reaction is to transform those party to it (residential schools), deny it (out-
lawed potlatch and sun-dance), conquer it (physical annihilation), assert
private property in its absence (ranchers, armies, state), enter into treaties
(rarely honoured), or impose its laws (police, state), steal it (museums).
These responses reflect the fundamental incompatibility of two forms of
property: private versus collective, manifest as laws versus customs and
traditions.
From the perspective of the indigenous peoples on whom the law is
imposed, it appears to be the law of those imposing it, namely, the ‘white
man.’ In effect what is taking place is one form of property confronting
another, as two incompatible forms, with one having a developed level of
material culture and organization that allows it to dominate and ultimately
destroy the other.58
Trade Union Rights. The transformation of the marketplace of petty
commodity producer into the capitalist mode of production during the
Industrial Revolution brought into existence the incipient working class,
which gradually became the majority class. It emerges as propertyless and
so rightless in a system of private property defined by legalities, persons,
and contracts.
Its only form of property is its labour-power, which is dependent on
employment by capital as the only way to activate it and produce a wage
that allows for its reproduction. Capital, however, is also dependent for it
exists only by virtue of the surpluses produced by the labour of the work-
ing class. The two classes are interdependent, but one holds all the cards,
so to speak, because it can hire and fire, discipline and determine. It is the
net beneficiary of a system of private property, while the other must strug-
gle to gain what rights it can to a share of the wealth it creates. Even the
current right to leave an employer without penalty was once prohibited,

58
G. S. Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition,
University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Coulthard makes a perceptive critique of contemporary
forms of assimilation policies.
382 G. TEEPLE

but now this right does not extend to the right not to work for an employer.
The working class is tied to employers with only two options: to strive for
an alternative system of collective rights that benefit all or to fight for a set
of rights within this system that allows for a liveable standard for its
reproduction.
The long struggle for workers’ legal rights began during the period of
the industrial revolution and while it has not ended, by the 1980s, it did
reach its most complete point of development after which the retrench-
ment of workers’ rights began. Up to the 1980s the working classes of the
industrial nations had achieved a more or less comprehensive set of legal
rights, which can be categorized as trade union rights, employment stan-
dards, and the broadly defined welfare state that together have provided
for legal protections and an acceptable standard of living.
But these are rights to a share of the total social product, which the
corporate sector deems should be sufficient only to reproduce the working
class with the least possible risk of social unrest, and hence, a perpetual
struggle to maintain, increase, or decrease these rights. By 1980, a new set
of public policies began to be adopted by the industrial nations to retrench
these rights, leading to constant reduction of rights and the welfare state
up until the present day.59

The Legal Process and Its Agents

Justice. The rise of formal law was predicated on the coming of market-
place society, a system defined by private property and contract and by the
unequal accumulation of wealth and social power that accompanies it.
From its beginning, the market has led to a gap between the rich and
poor, dispossession of the means of production from the majority, chronic
poverty for some, and widespread indebtedness often leading even in the
twenty-first century to debt bondage, enslavement, and imprisonment.60

59
B. Evans, C. Fanelli, L. Panitch, and D. Swartz, From Consent to Coercion: The
Continuing Assault on Labour (4th Edition), University of Toronto Press, 2023. Although
the focus of this study is Canada, it could serve as a model for similar studies throughout the
industrial world.
60
Despite the claims of liberal democratic governments, legal punishments for debt are still
widespread, and many millions remain entrapped in forms of slavery by chronic debt. See:
J. O’Connell Davidson, Modern Slavery: The margins of freedom, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015;
K. Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the global economy, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999; Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 383

Everything is for sale in a marketplace society, whose credo is ‘buyer

beware,’ suggesting inherent problems of fraud and theft. The market, it
follows, gives rise to ineradicable grievances stemming from widespread
inequalities, a product of the system, which in turn produce a chronic
sense of injury61 for the working classes, but for the rich, these outcomes
are seen as the ‘best of all worlds.’ For one side, the idea of justice is
understood as a corrective or resolution, as a righting of ‘wrongs,’ as the
search for ‘fairness’ in societies defined by structured inequalities arising
from the invisible processes and effects of private property, contracts,
credit, and compound interest—the foundations of the divide between
rich and poor. For the other side, justice is the maintenance of the sta-
tus quo.62
The market privileges the rich and disadvantages the poor and produces
these destabilizing social inequalities. Such outcomes taken as ordinary
and natural constitute the very definition of economic justice, that is, the
vindication of the outcome of inherently unequal property relations.
There is a popular misconception that justice refers to an outcome of a
process that is satisfactory to all sides of a dispute or at least to the disad-
vantaged, a result that is ‘fair’ or ‘deserving.’63 This is not what justice is,

Marriages, ILO, Geneva 2022: [https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/%2D%2D-

ed_norm/%2D%2D-ipec/documents/publication/wcms_854733.pdf].
61
R. Sennett and J. Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, New York: Knopf, 1972. This
book does not make the case mentioned above, but it provides evidence of the inherent class
discriminations that define marketplace society. Even the preamble to Hammurabi’s Code
(c.1800 BCE) alludes to the law as providing protection for the ‘weak’ from the ‘strong,’
implying differential social power arising from differences in accumulated wealth.
62
The theme of structured inequality and justice is central to the last play of Aristophanes,
Plutus, first staged in 388 BCE; where is justice, the protagonist wonders, if the honest and
hard-working are poor, while the greedy and corrupt are rich.
63
The concept of ‘economic justice’ is misconceived if taken as the idea that everyone
deserves equal economic opportunities and shares in the social product. The problem with
this reading is that all persons in a capitalist liberal democracy do have equal abstract rights,
but their actual share is unequal; it is the impartial outcome of market activity, which is ‘eco-
nomic justice.’ Such a misunderstanding, common amongst well-meaning social democrats,
union officials, and academics, reflects a view from an era when not everyone had such rights
and the struggle for rights within the system was seen as the ultimate aim of class struggle in
a capitalist society and not the transformation of the system. The idea of ‘social justice’ simi-
larly alludes to the demand for a corrective to the normal outcome of the system. It was used
by Samuel Gompers, the anti-socialist leader of the American Federation of Labor at the turn
of previous century, as a call for rights within the system rather than for change of the system,
as a means to obscure demands for socialism. It is not a mistake to call for more rights for the
384 G. TEEPLE

however; it is the impartial or disinterested outcome of a legitimate pro-

cess. In a system marked by competition, exclusive interests, debts, and
compound interest, the chronic divide between the rich and poor and all
the attendant unequal consequences are the expected and natural out-
comes of the system.64 Marketplace society produces abject chronic pov-
erty for some and extreme riches for others. If not the product of
dishonesty, this is justice or economic justice, the indifferent result of the
logic of the system.
In ancient Athens and Rome, marketplace society produced such divi-
sions between rich and poor, creditor and debtor, or slave and owner, that
the threat of civil war was not uncommon. The solutions in the ancient
world to the social instability caused by the enclosures of clan land and
dispossession of a peasantry were several: a ‘jubilee year,’ that is, a debt
amnesty for the indebted agrarian classes, a periodic return of appropri-
ated lands, the extension of limited political powers to lend the exploited
a sense of participation, the formalization of laws, and the provision of
‘bread and circuses.’65 The ancient jubilee, political concessions, and
assorted charitable handouts amounted to actions undertaken by a state to
mitigate the continual social disequilibrium and suffering of a system of
private property.
In more general terms, the economic justice of marketplace society cre-
ated the need for distributive justice by the state to save the system from
the destructive effects of its own development. The modern distributive
justice of the Keynesian welfare state can be seen in the same light. The
capitalist mode of production produces chronic limitations to the well-­
being of the working class, such that its health and welfare are in constant
jeopardy. State-sponsored healthcare, education, pensions, and employ-
ment standards are structured to compensate for the normal, albeit nega-
tive for many, results of the system and to provide the minimums necessary
for their reproduction. In both ancient and modern times, then, the state

working class, but it is a mistake to assume more rights equals justice in a system predicated
on exploitation, or to assume more rights can be achieved in a world no longer amenable to
such rights, or to imagine that more rights will change the inherent structural inequalities of
the system.
64
M. Hudson, … and forgive them their debts. Dresden: Islet-Verlag, 2018, x–xii.
65
M. Hudson, … and forgive them their debts. Ibid., x–xii. See also: D. Graeber, Debt: The
First 4000 Years, New York: Melville House, 2011. See also: J. H. Blok and J. Krul, “Debt
and Its Aftermath: The Near Eastern Background to Solon’s Seisachtheion,” in Hesperia, The
Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Vol. 86, 2017 (607–643).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 385

has had to modify the outcome of the marketplace to restore or ensure a

degree of equilibrium to the market so that it will not produce social insta-
bility undermining the very premise of the state and the production of a
surplus.
Distributive justice, to emphasize, does not imply state concern or
interest in social well-being for its own sake, but rather in social stability to
save the system from itself, to counter the tendency in social contradic-
tions for one side to destroy the other. In its modern form, it is the indif-
ferent outcome of the socialization of a portion of wages and salaries
sufficient to offset the worst effects of the marketplace. The debt jubilee in
ancient times was controversial, and so too the welfare state in modern
times, both the object of criticism by the beneficiaries of the market as
violating the principles of private property, dampening of the inequalities
they produce, and limiting the accumulation of wealth for the few, the
outcome we know as economic justice. Distributive justice, from the point
of view of market orthodoxy, is an injustice, but from the point of view of
the majority, it is justice, the righting of the ‘wrongs’ of the system, albeit
without changing systemic principles.
The Rise of Courts and the Judiciary. If the economic justice of the mar-
ket gave rise to the necessity for distributive justice by the state, once the
market came to define all aspects of society and its members, it also gener-
ated the need for mechanisms to address individual violations of private
property and conflicts between owners of private assets. To adjudicate the
effects of the market on individuals, that is, criminal acts and civil disputes,
courts of justice and the judiciary evolved as the formal institutions neces-
sary to administer the many conflicted relations between persons in a soci-
ety defined by legalities.66 By the nineteenth century, with the arrival of a
capitalist mode of production, the courts and judiciary expanded rapidly.67
66
E. M. L. Economou and N. C. Kyriazis, “The emergence and evolution of property
rights in ancient Greece,” in Journal of Institutional Economics, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2017
(53–77).
67
In early marketplace society, defined by individual private property, the majority were
petty commodity producers and other small owners of the means of production, but in capi-
talist society, defined by corporate private property, the majority are employees with few
options in the event of unemployment and poverty except to violate private property, while
the minority corporate owners are subject to much increased competition, addressed in part
by fraudulent products and services, unscrupulous corporate rivalries, and bankruptcies.
Most of the working class, however, remains employed and so not compelled to resort to
crime, while most corporations find and seek an unceasing advantage in fraudulent conduct
with suppliers, consumers, the state, and each other.
386 G. TEEPLE

As a separate branch of government, they are but the division of labour

with respect to the administration of a society defined by private property.
They are a component part of the estranged whole, along with the execu-
tive and legislative branches, that is concerned with the adjudication of the
law as applied to particular cases, and that indirectly also ‘makes’ the law
as precedents and as interpretations of statutes. But the overarching func-
tion of the judiciary has been to uphold the rule of law, and the particular
laws in question are those embodying the prevailing relations of corporate
private property.
The judiciary, as guardian of the rule of law with the power of final legal
decision, is the one branch of liberal democratic governments that is made
‘independent’: for the most part it is unelected,68 unaccountable, and
given financial security and assured tenure. This independence is held by
most commentators to be little short of an absolute that supposedly guar-
antees that the judiciary is free from interference and allows its decisions
to be impartial.69 But the link between this so-called independence and
impartiality is tenuous, to say the least. The fact that the judiciary is
appointed, with some exceptions, by partisan parties in government sug-
gests that it is not without its political qualifiers. Vested interests do not
generally make disinterested decisions. It has, moreover, a very long his-
tory of demonstrated biases and corruption from external influences of all
sorts, despite this independence or perhaps because of it as it provides a
degree of impunity, unmatched even by that of the police, that can easily
be turned to personal advantage.70
Legal decisions have societal impact. Decisions by lower courts, how-
ever, are normally appealable to ‘higher’ appellate courts, but appeals gen-
erally come to an end in the supreme court of a liberal democracy. Its near
absolute power of decision is typically considered final, rendering it a
68
The main exception being several states in the United States. See: M. L Volcansek,
“Judicial elections and American exceptionalism: comparative perspectives,” DePaul Law
Review, 60(3), 2011 (805–820).
69
The extensive literature on judicial independence varies little on this point; see:
I. R. Kaufman, ‘The Essence of Judicial Independence,’ Columbia Law Review, Vol. 80. No.
4, May 1980 (671–701).
70
There is no shortage of literature on the corruption of judges; references go well back
into history. See, for instance, Hesiod, Work and Days (c700 BCE): judges who “devour
bribes and give crooked decisions,” (149) in N. M. Bailkey (ed.), Readings in Ancient
History 1969; W. Prest, “Judicial Corruption in Early Modern England,” Past and Present,
No. 133, November 1991 (67–95). There are documented cases from around the world.
See: J. A. G. Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary, London: Fontana Press, 1985.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 387

mandatory ruling with society-wide application. This is a decision taken by

an unelected and unaccountable branch of government in a democracy,
acting with constitutionally defined independence from democracy.
If the link between independence and impartiality is not a little difficult
to demonstrate, and if the meaning of independence is marred by patent
bias in the appointment process, then what can it mean for a branch of
democratic government to be considered independent? The definition of
independence is to be self-determining, autonomous, sovereign. Once
appointed, with biases intact, the judiciary is constitutionally defined as
independent, which makes it a sovereign entity but within a sovereign
state—a contradiction. The sovereign judiciary is independent from the
supposed sovereignty of the people, independent from even the pretence
of democratic control. The independence of the courts would appear to
be more a guarantee of the ‘rule of men,’ judges and their discretionary
powers, rather than the rule of law. Why is the judiciary not subject to
democratic principles?71
As argued, the real sovereign in liberal democracies is the law,72 the
formalization of private property rights; and private property is the source
of social inequalities and the differential economic power that follows and
that must be protected to maintain the status quo. For this task, uphold-
ing the law is of signal importance, a responsibility assigned to the judi-
ciary as its chief function, and for which it is given nearly unqualified final
powers over matters of law and independence from the electoral majority.
It is this majority and the possibility that it might come to control the
legislature and challenge corporate private property that present a con-
stant implicit threat to a system in which it has no stake.
Judicial Justice. Like economic and distributive justice, judicial justice
is the indifferent outcome of a legitimate formal legal process, but in this
instance, it is the outcome of the adjudication of the law in particular
cases. By definition, it is the ‘maintenance’ or ‘vindication of right,’ the
upholding of the inviolability of private property rights in the face of a
‘wrong,’ a violation of a particular law. However seemingly

71
To be consistent with the principles of liberal democracy, the judiciary would be elected,
subject to recall, limited in term, and its decisions and reasoning open to debate and appeal.
72
Aristotle wrote: ‘[R]ightly constituted laws should be the final sovereign.’ Cited approv-
ingly by L. P Beth, Politics, the Constitution and the Supreme Court, New York: Harper and
Row, 1962 (9).
388 G. TEEPLE

straightforward and established this definition, judicial justice is not with-

out its problems.
Substantive laws, for example, parade as impartial, but they cannot be.
To prohibit everyone from begging in the streets, for instance, neglects
the fact that the system chronically produces many without shelter or
income who must beg to live. And the legal right of corporations to fire
employees neglects to account for their future incomes. Laws, despite
their apparent egalitarianism, are the rules of a world that is defined by
unequal property relations that benefit one class to the disadvantage of
another, that provide the basis for class divisions and class conflict. The
judicial process does not recognize this bias, and the resulting justice
reflects the same tendencies but, at the same time, is at least theoretically
the disinterested outcome of the process. The resulting judicial justice will
reflect economic justice, unless offset by state distributive justice.73
Judicial justice, moreover, is always the result of a particular legal sys-
tem and the product of the discretionary powers of individual judges that
result in varying sentences for the same offence even in the same jurisdic-
tion. In short, justice at every level is always relative to a particular system,
jurisdiction, and judge(s), and ultimately, to the prevailing property rela-
tions. Even international law, often taken as universal or absolute in the-
ory, in practice suffers from the discretionary powers of individual states
and independent international judicial systems, and so is rendered relative
to a particular court or state, judiciary, or property form, as is law in gen-
eral. There is no such thing as absolute justice; all justice is conditional and
qualified.74

73
In acknowledgement that judicial decisions can seem extremely one-sided or unfair such
that they threaten the credibility of the justice system and expose its biases, there have arisen
in some jurisdictions special courts of equity, which have sought to provide a remedy for
certain patent injustices of justice decided in the regular courts and usual processes by means
of reference to some vaguely defined impartial, scrupulous, disinterested, upright judicial
quality—equity. If there were such justice, however, it begs the question of why only its
exceptional and not regular application.
74
This does not mean that political philosophers do not go in search of absolute justice;
witness the long debate on John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. But this quest for an equitable
society, or ideal political order, is nothing more than a political Holy Grail. Assuming mar-
ketplace society as the norm, Christian theologues have engaged in a never-ending search for
the Holy Grail or rather the Christian virtues it symbolizes and impossible to find in the
marketplace, and on the same assumption political philosophers have similarly subjected
themselves to forever debates on the meaning of the illusive ‘just society.’
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 389

Judicial Review. The power of the judiciary to interpret and adjudicate

the law extends to all legal matters, and such matters are central to the
executive, legislative, and administrative branches of government. This
power, then, stands as an indirect form of control over all state agencies by
an authority independent from democratic oversight. It removes political
matters from ultimate consideration by political representatives and places
them in the domain of judges whose appointment and livelihood rest on
maintaining and promoting the system. It is this dilemma that marks the
contentious issue of judicial review: the ultimate power over the law, the
quintessential expression of prevailing private property in liberal democra-
cies, lies with an unelected and unaccountable branch of government.75
The same point can be made in a different way. Certainty in the law, the
guarantee of contracts, the stability of property rights, and the partisan use
of the law are all central to the accumulation process and essential to cor-
porate investment. The signal importance of maintaining the prevailing
property relations provides the rationale for a judiciary given ultimate con-
trol over the law while standing in contradiction to the principles of
democracy as unelected and unaccountable.76
The power of judicial review and the judicial process in general are the
lynchpin of the entire legal process, the overarching control of a system
defined by legalities. The judiciary, an undemocratic branch of govern-
ment given near absolute powers, stands guard over the principles of pri-
vate property against their violation and the possibility of countervailing
demands made by the elected branches or from extra-legal or

75
C. Tate and T. Vallinder, The Global Expansion of Judicial Power, New York: New York
University Press, 1995 (2–5); R. E. Barkow, ‘More Supreme Than Court? The Fall of the
Political Question and the Rise of Judicial Supremacy,’ Columbia Law Review, Vol.102, No.
2, 2002. Here lies the significance of the so-called judicialization of the constitution: the
independent power of the judiciary extends over all aspects of public policy. For overviews of
the issue, see: R. Hirschl, ‘The Judicialization of Politics,’ in G. Cadeira, R. D. Keleman,
K. Whittington (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008 (119–141); and J. Jerejohn, ‘Judicializing Politics, Politicizing Law,’ Law and
Contemporary Problems, Vol. 65, No. 3, Summer 2002 (41–68).
76
The preceding arguments rest on M. Lerner, ‘The Supreme Court and American
Capitalism,’ and C. A. Beard, ‘The Supreme Court—Usurper or Grantee?’ in R. G. McCloskey
(ed.), Essays in Constitutional Law, New York: Vintage Books, 1957; C. A. Beard, The
Supreme Court and the Constitution, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall 1962; and
L. P. Beth, Politics The Constitution and the Supreme Court, New York: Harper and
Row, 1962.
390 G. TEEPLE

extra-parliamentary sources.77 This power amounts to ultimate authority

situated in a court system resting on judicial discretion at the pinnacle of
which stands the supreme court, above which there is no higher offi-
cial power.78
We can, however, imagine a world in which the question of justice does
not arise. If the main reason for a judicial system is the legalized world of
the marketplace, of human relations reduced to contracts between per-
sons, then it is possible to imagine a world without the need for justice and
its many agents that we find in capitalist society. When property is social-
ized, and no longer producing economic disadvantages or advantages or
incentives to private accumulation and associated social power, then the
question of justice as defined here does not arise.
Crime and Punishment. Laws are the institutionalized sets of private
rights that characterize a marketplace society. They comprise the formal
definition of all members as persons, all relations as contractual, and all
exchanges as if between equal values. The main reasons to break the law
arise from the same system that gives rise to the need for law, and they are
twofold: those with assets and associated rights use them to gain material
advantage over others, and those who have few or no assets and corre-
sponding viable rights must obtain adequate necessities for life by any
means. These two reasons are the continuous and inexorable products of
the market: both are components of economic justice, the natural out-
come of normal activity in the market, and both imply premeditated
actions, albeit predicated on socially determined constraints, one out of
need and the other out of the qualities and demands of money or capital
in the form of a person. In the eyes of the law, however, these two forms
of violation and their perpetrators are treated very differently. One is
charged under a criminal code, and the other in a civil lawsuit: they are
prosecuted under different laws, in different courts, and with different
outcomes.
The category of criminal law covers all actions that are conscious viola-
tions of ownership rights, but that also imply the rejection of the principles
underlying legal rights. The criminal is not only understood to have
77
This is a reference to trade union rights, women’s rights, First Nations claims, and the
entitlements grouped under the title, the welfare state. The ‘judicialization of politics’ can be
interpreted in this light as the disguised guarantee of capitalist private property, the founda-
tion of the system.
78
Some of these questions on judicial review are discussed in J. Waldron, “The rule of law
and the role of the courts,” Global Constitutionalism, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2021 (91–105).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 391

intentionally violated rights but also negated the ethical ground of private
property on which the entire marketplace society rests. Despite the fact
that homelessness, hunger, and joblessness, for example, are products of
the normal working of society, in law the vagrant is seen as responsible
alone and so punished as a threat to society, which is itself the very source
of this threat.79 The casualty of society, then, is punished under society’s
law for being its casualty and consequently for having no choice but to
nullify the principle of legality—and society gets away scot-free.
Corporate crimes, by contrast, are actions deemed to be disputes
between embodiments of private rights—no threat to the system here. For
this reason, they are prosecuted for the most part under civil law, which
means that these violations are within a legal framework that does not
challenge the premise of legality. They are about disputes over the rights
of the defendant and plaintiff—the two contending incarnations of private
property. Most of these violations can be categorized as forms of fraud,
broadly defined, which implies the pretence of acting within the law while
consciously violating it. The crime is an action perpetuated against the
consumer, competitor, employee, or government, all assumed to have full
knowledge of the product or nature of the transaction, which obviously
cannot be. Fraud, moreover, might well be considered normal behaviour
in a marketplace where deception is pervasive, wage theft common,80
competition the operating principle, ‘buyer beware’ the credo, and capital
accumulation the goal. When the growth of wealth and power are the
systemic as well as individual objective, moreover, illicit means to achiev-
ing them are easily discounted. So much so that the crime can appear to
be less about breaking the law and violating the rights of others than
about being caught by the authorities.

79
Until the second half of the twentieth century, vagabonds, the homeless and jobless,
were defined in most nations as criminals, and punishments were very severe. Vagabondage
has been used to illustrate the point, but the same argument can be made for all actions that
fit the definition of criminal under a given legal code. For the US example, see: Risa Goluboff
and Adam Sorenson, ‘United States Vagrancy Laws,’ in Timothy J. Gilfoyle, The Oxford
Encyclopedia of American Urban History, Oxford University Press, 1350–1365 (2019).
80
J. J. Kim and S. Allmang, ‘Wage Theft in the United States: Towards a new research
agenda,’ The Economic and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 32 (4), 2021 (534–551); N. Hallett,
‘The Problem of Wage Theft,’ Yale Law and Policy Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, Fall 2018
(93–152); B. Meixell and R. Eisenbrey, ‘An Epidemic of Wage Theft is Costing Workers
Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year,’ Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief #358,
September 11, 2014; Kim Bobo, Wage Theft in America, New York: The New Press, 2009.
392 G. TEEPLE

For a corporation to be charged, moreover, presents few negative con-

sequences for the executives who made the decisions to commit the fraud.
In civil law, a conviction typically amounts to a fine, which is usually paid
by the corporation, given that in law the corporation is deemed to be a
person, albeit a legal fiction, and so considered a responsible actor. The
executives and directors, the real legal persons, can be charged, but their
responsibility is usually limited to their stake in the corporation, thanks to
corporate limited liability laws. Imprisonment and fines for the individuals
who made the decisions to commit the fraud, whatever the extent of the
damage caused, are rare. There is, moreover, little individual notoriety
because the ‘corporation did it’ and most corporations do it. Corporate
investors and executives can benefit from both the legal and illegal opera-
tion of the corporation, but not be held responsible for its consciously
fraudulent use or even bankruptcy.
Corporate crime is pervasive: it far outweighs the effects of individual
crime on employees, consumers, competitors, governments, the environ-
ment, and the future.81 And yet, crimes of the corporations seem invisible,
while crimes of individuals seem to be an ‘ever-present danger.’ Part of
reason for this anomaly lies in how these crimes are defined, civil law being
about conflicting rights within the framework of private property, while
criminal law is about the violation of the rights of private property; the first
seemingly the normal product of self-seeking, and the second an apparent
threat to the system. Another reason is that corporations have always been
directly or indirectly powerful influences in defining the law and in its
adjudication,82 and this role comes by dint of their centrality to the system
itself; their existence and growth are the point of the system. Individuals
charged under criminal law, especially repeat criminals, it is probably fair

81
F. Pearce and L. Snider (eds.), Corporate Crime: Contemporary Debates, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1995; W. Huisman, A. van Baar, M Gorsiva, “Corporations and
Transnational Crime,” in G. Bruinsma (ed.), Histories of Transnational Crime, Springer
2015; G. Forti and A. Visconti, “From Economic Crime to Corporate Violence,” in
M. L. Rorie and C. F. Welford (eds.), The Handbook of White-Collar Crime, John Wiley and
Sons, 2020.
82
R. Chen and J. Hanson, “The Illusion of Law: The Legitimating Schemas of Modern
Policy and Corporate Law,” Michigan Law Review, Vol. 103, Issue 1, 2004 (1–149);
H. Wells, “The rise of the close corporation and the making of corporation law,” Berkeley
Business Law Journal, 5(2), 2008 (263–316).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 393

to say, have never been asked to give their thoughts on, or to write drafts
of, the criminal code.83
These two categories of law, then, while corresponding to the princi-
ples of a system of private property, also accord with the class structure.
They match the differences between those owning assets and attached
rights and so no need to violate the principles of the system, and those
with few or no assets or viable rights and so no choice but to violate the
principles. And if the structure of the law matches the class structure, so
too does the form of justice that corresponds to it.
If judicial justice means the righting of a wrong by means of an impar-
tial court action that equates the penalty with the crime, then justice takes
two different forms with respect to these categories of law. Under civil law,
the violation is considered to be against the victim, and justice usually
takes the form of a fine as restitution for the harm done. Under criminal
law, however, the violation is deemed to be against not only the victim but
also the very principles of the social order, which the law represents; and
so, justice can take the form of both a fine and imprisonment.
A fine is the usual form of restitution to the victim, and imprisonment
is retribution for the harm to society. Both forms of justice are self-­
evidently untruths. First, it is not possible to equate a crime with a penalty;
they are two qualitatively different actions and so are not comparable.84
Fines are simply the logic of the marketplace equating human beings with
monetary value, but money as restitution can never correspond to all the
implications of a harm done, and outside the marketplace this equation
makes no sense. Imprisonment as retribution is irrational: society punishes
its own outcome, that is, society creates the conditions for its own nega-
tion, and then wants to negate not itself but its victims.
Second, economic justice, the normal result of the working of market-
place society, circumscribes individual responsibility, the assumption that
underlies legal notions of fault and accountability. To be without assets

83
OECD, “Lobbyists, Governments and Public Trust” [https://www.oecd.org/gov/eth-
ics/lobbyists-governments-trust-vol-3-highlights.pdf].
84
The concept of retribution, “an eye for an eye,” rests on the mistaken understanding that
two wrongs make a right, and that these two actions, which appear to be equal, actually are
not. For a genuine understanding of legal transgressions, their causes must be thoroughly
grasped and then addressed as the content of the corrective second action. To repeat the
transgression as if a corrective reaction is illogical and senseless. With this reasoning in mind,
the question that arises is why such an unfounded and unjustifiable notion of justice is so
pervasive.
394 G. TEEPLE

and viable rights or to pursue capital accumulation at any cost and without
ethical considerations are both natural consequences of marketplace soci-
ety. They are the social determinants of human behaviour that frame or
condition individual culpability in this system.
Third, the recipients of retributive justice populate the prisons of the
capitalist world; they are the casualties of the market, the principles of
which always produce some members as their violators. The recipients of
justice in civil law cases, the perpetrators of corporate crime, the source of
the greatest harms done to the whole of humanity and the planet, rarely
end up in prison or liable for the fines charged to their corporations. They
live on to reward themselves for the corporate benefits from the crimes
they have committed.
Fourth, the considerable variation in sentencing for the same crime
across jurisdictions and judges has raised questions about the integrity of
the law, the judicial system, and their relation to criminal acts.85 Legislatures
have sought to address the resulting questionable credibility of justice by
restricting possible outcomes. Mandatory minimum sentencing, manda-
tory and voluntary arbitration, and ‘damage caps,’ which are beneficial to
corporations, among other means, have been employed to circumscribe
the variations and so ameliorate the misgivings and suspicions they create.
The reasons underlying the variations, however, cannot be fixed by restrict-
ing the variations. They arise from a judiciary that is appointed and unac-
countable, a marketplace society that is defined by contradictions and
continuously produces its own lawbreakers, and laws constructed to con-
tain but not resolve the contradictions. In capitalist society, far-ranging
variations in sentencing cannot be otherwise. In any event, the credibility
of the law for the working majority has never been what it has been for the
affluent minority. If anything, restrictions to sentencing only aggravate the
problem by limiting consideration of ‘mitigating circumstances.’
Fifth, retributive (imprisonment) and restitutive (fines) justice are two
forms of justice that are the outcome of criminal and civil law, which in

85
In part, the disparities in sentences stem from the impossibility of matching a crime with
a punishment. Such deviations appear to be endemic to legal systems everywhere. The
respected American lawyer, Marvin Frankel, was moved by the wide variations to write a
critique of sentencing. With regards to the United States, he referred to criminal judgements
as “monstrous evils” carried out daily by criminal court judges and argued that sentencing
left in the hands of individual judges with very few legal restraints bordered on near lawless-
ness. See: M. E. Frankel, Criminal Sentences: Law Without Order. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1972.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 395

turn are legal forms that reflect different relations of private property. The
structure of private property is always unequal and constitutes the founda-
tion of social class differentiation. These two main forms of justice can be
understood as class justice, albeit as the outcome of civil and criminal
procedures.86
The Trial. Judicial justice is the supposed indifferent outcome of legal
proceedings, and at the centre of these proceedings in common law sys-
tems87 is the trial. What, however, is a trial? At one time, this question
could be answered without much debate, when many civil and most crimi-
nal cases went to trial; and the definition amounted to an institutionalized
procedure in which the facts of case were argued before a judge or jury,
who after considering the facts would determine the verdict, the judge
would pass sentence, and justice would ‘be done.’
The right to a trial by jury, from its beginning, meant the right to be
judged by one’s peers in a class defined society, and not by the crown, or
later by the conservative tendencies of appointed judges. It allowed a cer-
tain democratic element to play a role in determining the guilt or inno-
cence of an accused, the legitimacy of a law, and the use of law by
authorities,88 in particular, state prosecutors, police, and other official
agents, who might be inclined to view working people as recalcitrant. It
was one of the few rights that enabled workers to confront state authority
by providing the possibility for a group of their peers to determine the
verdict and make comments on the law and its use.89 It was also an

86
In recent years, the idea of restorative justice has appeared, but properly conceived it
must take into account both sides of a transgression: the person who committed the act and
the community or society that created the conditions and the person.
87
Judicial proceedings in civil law systems vary considerably. Our focus is on the greater
similarities of principles in common law systems.
88
A. Shoenberger, ‘Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forest, and the Origin of the Jury
System,’ Nottingham Law Journal 24, 2015 (156–162).
89
E. P. Thompson wrote eloquent defences of the right to a jury trial as it was being sys-
tematically restricted by both Labour and Conservative governments in Britain from the
1960s onwards. See: E.P. Thompson, ‘Trial by Jury,’ in New Society 29 November 1979
(501–502); and E. P. Thompson, ‘Subduing the Jury,’ London Review of Books, 4 December
1986 and 18 December 1986. For a review of significance of the rapid decline of the trial, let
alone the jury trial, in twenty-first-century United States, see: Robert Burns, ‘What Will We
Lose If the Trial Vanishes?’ Ohio Northern University Law Review, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2011
(575–596). See also: J. Q. Smith and G. R MacQueen, ‘Going, Going, But Not Quite Gone:
Trials Continue to Decline in Federal and State Courts. Does It Matter?’ Judicature, Vol.
101, No. 4, 2017 (28–39).
396 G. TEEPLE

i­mportant right that allowed for the adjudication of the law to be moved
away from the complete control of judges, who, generally unelected and
unaccountable, personified the repressive power of the prevailing property
relations and displayed all the biases of their class.90
The right to a jury trial, then, opened avenues in the judicial process for
criticism and resistance to state use of the law to punish or silence its oppo-
nents or make examples of dissidents. The history of this right is a history
of resistance to arbitrary judicial processes. But after World War II, trial by
jury became increasingly a playing field for lawyers given to the parry and
thrust of rhetorical strategies beyond the knowledge of ordinary citizens.
The outcome of trials by jury, moreover, could become dependent on the
lawyers that one could afford. During these postwar decades, the legal
categories permitted for jury trial were reduced, the vetting of jurors was
expanded, eligibility for jury duty was restricted, challenges from the
defence were circumscribed, and the price of lawyers became unaffordable
for most, among other limitations; gradually, the right was whittled away
until the right to a trial or jury trial was all but lost.91
Plea-bargaining, Injunctions, and Arbitration. By the late twentieth
century, the trial and jury trial were rapidly being replaced by the practice
of plea-bargaining, the use of injunctions, the turn to mandatory sentenc-
ing, and compulsory and binding arbitration. In the twenty-first century,
the judicial system has been transformed into a series of processes that are
concentrated in the hands of appointed or hired officials who are not nec-
essarily disinterested in the application of the law, who can decide what

Whatever their democratic importance, juries have a long history of misuse. See: R. J. East,
‘Jury Packing: A Thing of the Past?’ The Modern Law Review, Vol. 48, No. 5, 1985
(518–538). The practice of ‘jury packing’ probably extends from the beginning of the insti-
tution. The long-employed property qualification for jury service, moreover, which allowed
the rich to be tried by peers, while the poor by their nemeses, was an indirect form of ‘jury
packing.’
90
While jury trials can be seen as a counter to arbitrariness, this is never completely the case
because the entire courtroom scene is played out within the frame of the prevailing law and
legal structure—carrying all the prejudices of the law and its practice. See: C. A. Beard, The
Economic Basis of Politics, New York: Vintage, 1957, p. 144; Max Lerner, ‘The Supreme
Court and American Capitalism,’ in R. G. McCloskey (ed.), Essays in Constitutional Law,
New York: Vintage, 1957; G. Myers, History of the Supreme Court of the United States,
Charles H. Kerr and Co, Chicago: 1912, https://archive.org/details/historyofsupre-
me00myeriala/page/645/mode/1up.
91
Burns, Robert. The Death of the American Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. 2009.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 397

evidence to consider, and who can make decisions without concern for the
reasoning or the rights of the defendants. The judge or arbitrator has been
made into the proverbial judge, jury, and executioner.92 What then
becomes of justice?
It becomes the outcome of the executioner, while due process and
other formalities of law are by-passed. It is executioner’s justice, ‘served’
by the executive branch, its administrators or police agents, increasingly
visible in police behaviour and the prosecution of anti-terrorist laws, assas-
sination programmes, drone attacks, torture policies, disappearances, ren-
dition, ‘regime change,’ and so on—no charges laid, no due process, no
questions asked, no deliberation, just the verdict.93
The near disappearance of the trial and jury means the forfeiture of
what limited democratic power the citizenry had over judging the ‘justice
of the laws,’ circumscribing the sentence, assessing the actions of police
and prosecutor, and ultimately criticizing the government. The loss of the

92
A succinct critique of plea-bargaining can be found in The Economist, ‘The shadow jus-
tice system: The global spread of plea-bargaining,’ and ‘A deal you can’t refuse: Plea-
bargaining,’ The Economist, London, Vol. 425, Issue 9066, Nov. 11, 2017. See also:
J. H. Langbein, “Torture and Plea Bargaining,” University of Chicago Law Review 46 (3)
(1978) (1–22); and M. Langer, ‘Plea Bargaining, Conviction Without Trial, the Global
Administratization of Criminal Convictions,’ Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 4, 2021
(377–411).
The expanded use of arbitration can be seen as corporate recourse to the rise in the use of
‘mass torts’ or ‘class actions suits’ that grew in the 1960s and 1970s and resulted in many
large settlements very damaging for the corporate defendants. For an analysis and critique of
arbitration, its corporate benefits, and its global reach, see: J. Silver-Greenberg and
R. Gebeloff, ‘Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice,’ and J. Silver-Greenberg
and M. Corkery, ‘In Arbitration, a Privatization of the Justice System,’ The New York Times,
November 1, 2015.
Injunctions against trade union strikes and First Nations land defence allow for consider-
able discretion by judges to prevent such actions against the assertion of corporate rights,
without due process, trial, or even ‘consultation’ but with powers to punish with fines or
imprisonment for violation of the court order. For a critical view of use of injunctions against
First Nations, see: K. Gunn, ‘Injunctions as a Tool of Colonialism,’ https://www.firstpeo-
pleslaw.com/public-education/blog/injunctions-as-a-tool-of-colonialism; for a critical
overview of injunctions, particularly labour injunctions, see: B. Laskin, ‘The Labour
Injunction in Canada: A Caveat,’ Canadian Bar Review, Vol. 15, no. 4, April 1937
(270–284).
93
See: D. Rohde, “The Obama Doctrine,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2012, Issue 192;
J. St. Clair and J. Frank (eds.), Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, Oakland:
AK Press Books, 2012.
398 G. TEEPLE

trial and jury are to be seen as part of ongoing restrictions to all aspects of
liberal democracy.
Police Enforcement. The role of the police in modern liberal democra-
cies is usually defined as the maintenance of social order, which amounts
to the protection of the relations of private property. It follows that the
existence of the police is to ensure the basis of the system to provide secu-
rity for the exercise of the rights associated with private property. But what
is it about modern societies that give rise to this need for security and police?
In modern societies, all is commodified, defined as an embodiment of
private property, including human beings, who are defined by commodi-
fied assets including their labour-power. Commodities and their relations
become formalized and regulated in the form of law, marking society into
sets of interrelated legalities. All relations become contracts between com-
modities, measurable by value and exchanged on the principle of equal
value for equal value. Members of society reproduce themselves by exer-
cising their rights, their social power, to the limits of the value of their
private property. But given the principle of equal value for equal value in
the marketplace, neither side of the contract can expand its value and
social power except at the expense of the other side, which is to violate the
principle of exchange.94
The coming of marketplace society brings into play the pervasive prac-
tice of deception. The ethics of pre-market social formations give way to
the credo of the market: buyers beware, everything has its price, and
everyone works to their own advantage. Honesty, honour, loyalty, and
conscience become ideals of the past or folkloric inventions now trans-
formed into ever-present dissimulation. Wage theft, adulterated and mis-
labelled consumer goods, indebtedness and compound interest,
‘rent-seeking’ in every quarter, political promises never kept, state-­
supported tax evasion, governments open to influence-peddling, and so
on—this is marketplace society. Because these deceits work to the advan-
tage of one side, it is a world that gives rise to extreme inequalities,95 and
these inequalities produce the necessity to commit even more

94
Growth in the capitalist mode of production comes through the production of surplus
value; but this augmentation of value does not take place in the realm of circulation, the
marketplace, the main sphere of police action.
95
T. Pikkety, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2014.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 399

transgressions by those without rights, and the consequent need for polic-
ing to protect private property.
Most of these market violations, however, take place in the arena of
private or civil law that concerns particular relations between the parts.
But what directly concerns the police are those infractions in the arena of
public law, the nature, and integrity of the whole grounded in private
property. Because the police are an agency of the state, whose principal
purpose is to provide assistance for the accumulation of private property,
the police are mainly concerned with violations of public law, more specifi-
cally, criminal law, transgressions against the principles of the system.
Wrongdoings in private or civil law are largely settled in favour of the more
powerful side of the chronically unequal contract, but infractions of public
law are understood to violate the principles of the system and here the
‘arm of the law’ comes into play.
If police exist as protectors of the rights of private property, then they
have a practical validity mainly for those who can exercise such rights. To
these people, the police appear as defenders of the right to life, liberty, and
happiness, as measured by the limits of what can be bought. But for the
non-possessor of the means to exercise such rights, the law defining the
rights of private property appears more as a barrier to life, liberty, and hap-
piness than the means; and the police appear as the enforcers of that
barrier.
When corporations break criminal laws, they are usually treated differ-
ently than the individuals who break the law. They usually have in their
employ accountants and lawyers and tax specialists whose employment
security depends on minimizing the legal ‘exposure’ of their clients.
Against these trained and experienced employees, the police and their spe-
cial white-collar crime units are a poor match. For accountants and law-
yers, the remuneration in the corporate sector is far greater than in the
public sector.
Prisons are populated mainly by those without the means of a decent
livelihood or the necessary material assets to fulfil their needs and have
broken the laws of private property in order to meet those needs. These
constitute infractions of criminal law and are penalized with prison sen-
tences because the offence is seen as a threat to society defined as private
property relations. Private law infractions, by contrast, are penalized with
fines and but not usually imprisonment.
400 G. TEEPLE

State Illegalities
A simple perusal of the daily news will confirm that governments at all
levels are continuously accused of violating their own laws or constitu-
tional provisions. The contempt for domestic and international law and
legal standards by states is widespread. How can this be? How is it that
democracies elected by popular consent break or bend the law routinely
and universally?96
Liberal democracies are by definition legitimate: they have the sanction
of a general election or referendum testifying to popular support, and they
appear to follow due process to make and uphold the law. Yet, they chron-
ically break the law.97
Because governments make, execute, and adjudicate the laws, it is easy
to assume that they do not act in unlawful ways; and it could even be said
that governments pass laws corresponding to their objectives so that they
do not need to violate the law. Nevertheless, governments can and do
break their own laws, constitutions, and international law regularly for a
number of specific reasons. The general source of these reasons, however,
lies in the contradictory property relations and the demands of capital
accumulation that define civil society and that provide the content of gov-
ernment policies and practice.
This paradox of a declared democratic state that nominally rules in the
name of all but can only rule in the interests of the prevailing corporate

96
This question arises at the dawn of democratic experiments, see: Jon Hesk, Deception
and Democracy in Classical Athens, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Contemporary exam-
ples abound, see: D. L. Rothe and C. W Mullins (eds.), State Crime: Current Perspectives,
Rutgers, The State University Press, 2011; A. Doig, State Crime, London: Willan, 2010;
P. Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules from FDR’s
Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush’s Illegal War, New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009;
D. L. Rothe, State Criminality: The Crime of All Crimes, Lexington Books, 2009;
N. Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2006; N. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang,
1991; G. Barak (ed.), Crimes by the Capitalist State, New York: State University of New York
Press, 1991; M. H. Halperin, J. J. Berman, R. L. Borosage, and C. M Marwick, The Lawless
State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, Penguin 1976.
97
This is a reference to legitimate states committing illegal acts and not to illegal states;
there is a long list of dictatorial regimes, especially after World War II, which were the result
of illegal acts by legitimate governments; most have been the product of US secret service or
military interventions. See: B. S. Torreon, S. Plagakis, ‘Instances of Use of United States
Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2023’ (Report Number R42738) Congressional Research
Service 2023 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/details?prodcode=R42738
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 401

sector is characteristic of all liberal democracies. Liberal democracies are

designed to contain this contradiction, but not to resolve it because capital
and labour are both part of the accumulation process. These democracies
cannot, then, be what they pretend to be, producing a predicament that
leads to pervasive state secrecy, deception, and law-breaking.
This conflict between liberal democracy and state secrecy and illegalities
is routinely rationalized as necessary for national security or reasons of
state.98 Given that the details of the reasons are kept secret, these exculpa-
tory phrases provide no answers; they remain rhetorical justifications that
do not erase the inconsistency. But they do point to the fact that inherent
in the system are contradictions, which need to be disguised to obscure
the state’s primary role of ensuring the rate of profit and accumulation
while professing to be democratic and ruling in the name of all.
In general, illegal government actions are a response to threatened cor-
porate interests, especially when unionized workers, organized farmers,
small business federations, First Nations, or other sets of collective inter-
ests constrain or hamper the accumulation process or the political preemi-
nence of capital.99 Other reasons may include a domestic corporate sector
that needs to be protected or bailed out, international corporate interests
to be defended or promoted, international treaties or agreements to be
sabotaged or aborted to inhibit international competition,100 or the oppor-
tunity arises for exploiting official positions for personal ends.101

98
R. Sagar, Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy, Princeton University Press
2016; M. P. Colaresi, Democracy Declassified: The Secrecy Dilemma in National Security,
Oxford University Press 2014.
99
For overviews of certain criminal activities of the state, see: M. Taillard, Economics and
Modern Warfare: The Invisible Fist of the Market, Palgrave Macmillan 2018; R. T. Naylor,
Patriots and Profiteers: Economic Warfare, Embargo Busting, and State-Sponsored Crime,
McGill-Queens University Press, 2008.
100
N. Deller, A. Makhijani, J. Burroughs (eds.), Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An
Assessment of U. S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, New York: Apex
Press 2003. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline is a good contemporary example of
the state confronting international competition—in this case, the United States against
Russia and Germany, which together were to be the main beneficiaries of the increased gas
transfer. See: S. Hersh, ‘How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline,’ [https://sey-
mourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream].
101
J. King, The Doctrine of Odious Debts in International Law, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016; L. Ndikuman and J. K. Boyce, Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign
Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent, Bloomsbury, 2011.
402 G. TEEPLE

Law and Ideology

Law, as argued, is the embodiment of the abstracted prevailing relations in
civil society. As such, it reflects the reality of a social formation become
marketplace, which is always historically and nationally specific.
Nevertheless, in whatever form, when the fundamental principles of the
system are reflected in law as formalized ideals, they acquire the weight
and aura of the fundamental principles of humanity itself. The principles
of a time-bound system are presented as principles true for all time—the
very meaning of ideology—the character of some existing thing is imag-
ined as its truth or essence, or the particular is taken as the universal.102
Seen and treated in this way, the principles ensconced in substantive law
become an important justification and legitimation of the system they
reflect, and they help to obscure the reality that these principles represent
a historically particular moment and are responsible for the structural
inequalities of the system.
The notion of ‘equality before the law,’ for instance, exists only as an
abstraction while the real application of the law is always attached to rights
that are only as viable as the size and nature of one’s assets. The most
extreme inequalities in real life do not violate the principle of abstract
equality before the law—both the poorest and the richest are prohibited
from sleeping under bridges. This is an important idea for legitimizing
liberal democracies because it perpetuates a belief in the equality of citi-
zens and the fairness of the legal system. Such an idea masks the prohibi-
tive cost of lawyers, the class prejudice of judges, and the economic
inequalities and power differentials between owners and non-owners, men
and women and children, consumers and producers and retailers, debtors
and creditors, and employers and employees.
The ideal of equality in law is the underlying assumption in contract
law, the legal character of most relations in marketplace society.103 The
premise of the contract is that the parties are of equal status, each bearing
full knowledge of what is exchanged, but it is self-evident that contracting
parties are rarely if ever equal. The contract between employee and

102
Ideology is not used here as a reference to a particular set of ideas or coherent general
perspective, but rather to the characterization of existence of something as if it were the
essence.
103
P. Gabel and J. M Feinman, ‘Contract Law as Ideology,’ in D. Kairys (ed.), The Politics
of Law, New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 403

employer, consumer and retailer,104 renter and landlord, and trade union
and corporation are obvious examples of the economic inequality that
violate the principle of the contract. But the assumption and formal
appearance of equality shrouds this inequality.
The principles of law embody an economic vision of human behaviour;
we act as if atomized individuals free to choose our path guided by rational
choice and framed by personal responsibility. The concept of fault in civil
and criminal law exemplifies this notion of individualism—as liability in
the case of civil suits and culpability in the case of criminal acts—when the
parties charged are understood as responsible for their actions. In a class-­
divided society where different material interests are predicated on the
exploitation of one class by another, where most needs are met through
commodity production, and where most relations are defined by contract,
the notion of a singular responsibility for individual actions bears little
relation to social reality, but it does reinforce the idea of individual respon-
sibility and produce negative consequences for the victim of marketplace
society based on this assumption.
The problem of individual accountability is especially clear in criminal
law. The obvious commonality of the class background of the inmates of
prisons attests to a system of private property that has always, but now
increasingly, made it necessary for some to break laws in order to live. To
examine the upbringing, the education, rates of unemployment, the life
prospects of these inmates, all elements beyond their personal control, is
to raise fundamental questions about the concept of individual responsi-
bility that pervades the law.
The outcome of a lawsuit or criminal charge upholds the view that we
are but our property relations. Compensation for victims is considered
only in monetary terms: one’s ability to work, emotional state, physical
being, or loss of love or affection is ‘restored’ only by means of a financial
consideration. Moreover, the compensation considers the relative value of
one’s present and future property relations: the putative value of a victim’s
loss is made commensurable with the purported value of the victim’s

104
In any contract, the caveat of ‘buyer beware’ shifts responsibility away from the pro-
ducer to the buyer, and this in the context of mass advertising, conscious corporate disinfor-
mation and deception, government collusion in product approval, and so on. The notion of
‘buyer beware’ suggests, furthermore, that the contractual relation is fundamentally a dis-
honest one, but if contractual relations are taken as the nature of human relations, then such
a notion suggests that all relations are to be couched in distrust.
404 G. TEEPLE

current assets and life prospects.105 We are defined in law simply as eco-
nomic relations, but patently this is not all that we are.
The law also accords differential legal status to those with property
rights: those who do not possess claims to real property or those whose
labour-power is not commodified are seen as dependents, wards, subordi-
nates, inferiors, marginal, or outcasts in relation to those who do. In this
way, the law affirms the basis of full participation in society as resting in
private property and denies full status to those who for whatever reason
remain dependent or ‘outside’ full membership in society. Whatever
groups in society that are dependent or without property rights in labour
or material assets—typically, women, children, the old, the unemployed,
the down and out, the disabled, and First Nations—fall into this category.
In general, the principles of law affirm a vision of society as marketplace
as natural, as the truth, and so obscure the structural inequalities inherent
in marketplace societies by attributing them solely to individual merit.
They also go a long way to disguise the illegalities committed by liberal
democratic governments.

By Way of Conclusion: The Limits of the Law

The rise of marketplace society and its reduction of humans to embodi-
ments and relations of private property were accompanied by the develop-
ment of a legal system that defined, administered, and adjudicated these
relations. This legalization of society evolved in accord with the accumula-
tion of competitive capital within national jurisdictions and its gradual
penetration throughout all the processes of social reproduction. Each
stage in this accumulation brought society as marketplace closer to the
legalization of all its relations, providing and cementing the foundations of
liberal democracy.
This spread of legalities greatly increased after World War II with the
rise of the welfare state. The expansion of administrative law encompassed
most of the remaining activities required to reproduce society as personi-
fications of private property. Given this, the limit of the law in one sense
was reached in the postwar era: almost everything was commodified,
transformed into tradeable goods, citizens were defined as persons, rela-
tions cast as competitive and framed by contracts, and all this largely within

105
R.L. Abel, ‘Torts,’ in D. Kairys (ed.), The Politics of Law, New York: Pantheon
Books, 1982.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 405

national jurisdictions. Very little of society lay outside its formaliza-

tion in law.
By the 1980s, however, two main consequences of the continuing
accumulation of capital become noticeable: the widespread merger and
acquisitions movement of corporations into ever larger monopolies, car-
tels, and oligopolies,106 and the increasing globalization of these same cor-
porations.107 Competitive capital and its national development, the two
main prerequisites of liberal democracy, gradually were succumbing to the
cartelized global accumulation process.108
This continuing accumulation in these newly merged forms109 pointed
to national markets now too small, national capital and labour resources
increasingly part of global production chains, national policies framed by
global agencies and institutions, culture commodified and globalized, and
governments ‘captured’ by corporate interests110 and subordinated to
political and economic agencies, all outside any pretence of democracy.
What then happens to law? It approaches its limit in a second sense. The
rationale of law has always been to regulate competition within national
jurisdictions, but competition leads inexorably to winners and losers. The
consequent increasing degree of monopolization and cartelization, not to
mention, financialization,111 means less competition, and so, less need for
law to regulate corporate activities. The globalization of the accumulation
process shifts the legal jurisdiction to the regional and global from the

106
David J. Ravenscraft, “The 1980s Merger Wave: An Industrial Organization
Perspective.” In The Merger Boom, L. E. Browne and E. S. Rosengren (eds.) Federal Reserve
Bank of Boston, 1987 (17–37). This merger boom of the 1980s grew extensively in the
1990s; see: Frederic L. Pryor. “Dimensions of The Worldwide Merger Boom”. Journal of
Economic Issues. Volume 35, Issue 4. 2001 (825–840).
107
J. Crotty, G. Epstein & P. Kelly, “Multinational Corps in Neo-Liberal Regime,” in
Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy, by D. Baker, G. Epstein and R. Pollin,
Cambridge University Press, 1998 (117–143).
108
By 2009, “the World Economic Forum (WEF) convened an international expert group
to formulate a new system of global governance,” See: H. Gleckman, “Multi-stakeholderism:
a corporate push for a new form of global governance,” in State of Power 2016 [https://
www.tni.org/en/publication/democracy].
109
The attempt by the United Nations to create a Code of Conduct for transnational cor-
porations was unceremoniously shut down in 1993. K. P. Sauvant, “The Negotiations of the
United Nations Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations,” The Journal of World
Investment and Trade, 16, 2015 (11–87).
110
See: Corporate Europe Observatory for numerous studies of corporate capture of the
European Commission. [https://corporateeurope.org/en]
111
J. B. Foster et al., Monopoly Capitalism and Financialization.
406 G. TEEPLE

local and national. Together, the decline of competition and the recasting
of jurisdiction have meant less need for law and, it follows, less meaningful
democracy and increasing reliance on state administrative agencies, taking
their directions from transnational organizations.112
For the corporate sector, national law becomes increasingly redundant,
not to mention, strongly resisted by expansive global corporations. For
the non-corporate part of civil society, the broad working class, the need
to regulate it and retrench the welfare state become subject to new devel-
opments in national law, which become more arbitrary, coercive, and
market-­defined and -driven.
These changes mark the second sense of the limit of the law: for the cor-
porate sector, law becomes increasingly unnecessary in the face of global
monopolies and their determination of state policies and regulations, and
for the working class, law becomes more restrictive in its application. By
the late twentieth century, then, law had reached its limits in two senses:
almost everything was reduced to tradeable goods and services and so
legalized, and, at the same time, law as the regulation of corporate compe-
tition, and so, the raison d’être of the national state, was coming to an
end. The focus of legal development shifted to the maintenance of social
order or its abandonment, producing authoritative enforcement of arbi-
trariness at the national and international levels, lawlessness.113
Further developments in law at the turn of the twenty-first century
were framed by these two limits, with the emphasis moving in three main
directions: the retrenchment of the legal system, the weaponization of law,
and the growing lawlessness in both national and global spheres. The

112
The governing structure of the European Union is a good example where the executive
branch is made up of appointees and ex officio members with executive powers but without
accountability, while the legislative branch is elected but has only limited and shared powers
and is prohibited from exercising a representative mandate. The European Central Bank and
the European Court of Justice are both run by appointees from the member nations and
mandated to act without accountability to other governing structures or the electorate. Most
European nations, moreover, are NATO members, subordinating their militaries to an
American supreme commander. Despite these constraints, the EU is paraded as regional
liberal democracy.
113
Consider: police killings in the United States, the US/UK persecution of Julian
Assange, US/EU sanctions levelled against Russia, the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy
in Damascus, decades of Israeli apartheid against Palestinians, the NATO bombing of the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the US assassination of the Iranian General Soleimani, the
confiscation of Russian sovereign funds in the Western financial system, etc. The list is very
long and points to widespread patent violations of established international law.
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 407

examples are too numerous to list here, but a few will suffice to make
the point.
Retrenchment of the Legal Process. The retrenchment of the legal system
has been ongoing since the 1980s. The operation of the courts has been
increasingly defined by plea-bargaining, mandatory sentencing, partisan
injunctions, compulsory arbitration, and the decline of the jury trial.
Policing has become more coercive and intimidating; police violations of
law are treated with impunity (particularly, extra-judicial executions), their
arms and behaviour increasingly militarized. And the exercise of social
rights via the public sector has been met with decades of privatization and
deregulation, reducing state support and public access to health, educa-
tion, pension programmes, and unemployment insurance. Once relatively
comprehensive, the welfare state is now increasingly restricted. And not to
be overlooked, the retrenchment of workers’ rights throughout the indus-
trial nations has proceeded without pause since 1980.114
The Bretton Woods institutions set up in the years following World War
II can be seen in the same light. The ‘structural adjustment policies’
(SAPs) of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and later the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (World Trade Organization
[WTO] in 1994) were all significant forces in delimiting national laws
throughout the entire postwar era, particularly in the newly de-colonized
world. Few countries of the ‘global majority’ escaped the restrictive rules
and regulations of one or more of these organizations needed to offset
their exploitation through foreign investment from the industrial
nations.115
Weaponization. The weaponization of the law refers to the use of laws
and legal procedures as instruments for political or economic purposes
that were never the intent of the law. The practice creates the illusion of
114
See: N. Engbom, E. Detragiache, F. Raei, “The German Labor Market Reforms and
Post-Unemployment Earnings,” IMF Working Paper, July 2015, [https://www.imf.org/
external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15162.pdf]; B. Evans, C. Fanelli, L. Panitch, D. Swartz,
From Consent to Coercion: The Continuing Assault on Labour, University of Toronto
Press, 2023.
115
E. Toussaint, The Debt System, A History of Sovereign Debts and Their Repudiation,
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019; E. Toussaint and D. Millet, Debt, The IMF, and the World
Bank, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010. SAPs are supranational policies determined
by global agencies that usually include cuts to public sector programmes and employment,
privatization of state-owned corporations, the deregulation of state-controls, and devalua-
tion of currency, all of which created legal and economic advantages for foreign corporations
and disadvantages for national working classes.
408 G. TEEPLE

legal legitimacy to an action that is anything but legitimate. Perhaps

because in recent years there has been an expansion of legal weaponiza-
tion, it has been given a name, however ungainly, ‘lawfare,’ a play on the
word, warfare, and referring to an undeclared use of the law for political
purposes. But the instrumental use of the law is not a recent phenomenon:
the law itself, it could be argued, despite the pretence of underlying demo-
cratic authority, has always been an instrument for the advance of certain
interests over others.
One of the most common examples of weaponized law is the political
trial.116 And one of the most infamous, the Dreyfus Affair (1896–1906),
opened the twentieth century in which political trials and legal repression
of political movements became widely employed by the state. A recent
example of a political persecution is arrest of the journalist, Julian Assange,
by the British state, forcibly removed from the Embassy of Ecuador in
London and detained in Belmarsh Prison since April 2019, without
charge.117 In the United States, the most obvious example of the misuse of
the law is the persistence of the Grand Jury, which, it could be argued, in
itself stands as a repudiation of the principles of the rule of law,118 not to
mention in its continuing use. Less visible weaponized class bias built into
the law are the bail system and the power of contempt.119 In the United
States, years of the misuse of the law against left-wing individuals and
political movements were spawned by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917;

116
O. Kirchheimer, Political Justice, The Use of Legal Procedure for Political Ends, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1961.
117
N. Melzer, The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution, London: Verso, 2022. He
was released in June 2024, after a plea-bargain, freeing him from years of incarceration and
the threat of many more. His case represents a classic contemporary instance of the political
trial and the misuse of the law, which involved five governments: the American, British,
Swedish, Ecuadorian, and Australian.
118
R. B. Johnston, ‘The Grand Jury—Prosecutorial Abuse of the Indictment Process,’
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 65, Iss. 2, 1974 (157–169); “Lawyers Guide
to Grand Jury Abuse,” Criminal Law Bulletin, Vol. 13, Iss. 2, Mar/Apr. 1978 (123–139);
M. E. Frankel and G. P Naftalis, The Grand Jury: An Institution on Trial, Hill and Wang,
1977. The Grand Jury in the United States has been compared to ‘kangaroo courts’ and the
‘Star Chamber’ for its wide powers and denial of many of the rights commonly associated
with the rule of law.
119
R. Goldfarb, Ransom: a critique of the American bail system, New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1965; R. Goldfarb, “The History of the Contempt Power,” Washington University
Law Quarterly, Vol. 1961, No. 1, February 1961 (1–29).
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 409

this culminated in the McCarthy era (1947–1954) during which hundreds

of Americans were imprisoned and many thousands lost their jobs.
Assange is far from alone in being persecuted by the state for exercising
freedom of speech. Amnesty International has reported on the widespread
state restrictions to freedom to assemble, free speech, and dissemination of
the news.120 The Israeli state has managed to twist criticism of its actions
against the Palestinian people into the expressions of antisemitism, thereby
making decades of international criticism of illegal acts by the Israeli state
into a form of bigotry, as if Israel were above criticism.
The state is not the only entity to weaponize the law. Employing their
financial advantage, corporations have long used ‘SLAPP’ suits “to intimi-
date, silence or burden the defendant with legal costs.”121 These are law-
suits predicated on the inequality of defendant and plaintiff in wealth and
power. It is a system of justice that is not simply about legalities but is also
subject to manipulation by money as a means of weaponization: the pur-
chase of lawyers, judges, juries, and justice.
Lawlessness and Statutory Lawlessness. Lawlessness, as employed here, is
a reference to state actions that have no legal justification; it refers to the
completely arbitrary exercise of state power. The concept of statutory law-
lessness, at first glance, would seem to be an oxymoron: how can a statute
be lawless, or lawlessness be legal?122 A statute, after all, is a law. But

120
“[G]overnments around the world routinely imprison people—or worse—for speaking
out, even though almost every country’s constitution refers to the value of ‘free speech’.”
Unfortunately, Amnesty International routinely focuses its attention on nations out of favour
with the United States or European countries. [https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-
do/freedom-of-expression/].
121
SLAPP is the acronym for “a strategic lawsuit against public participation.” For an early
survey of the practice, see: G. W. Pring and P. Canan, SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking
Out, Temple University Press 2016. Recent attention by European Parliament has pro-
duced attempts at anti-SLAPP legislation, see: J. Borg-Barthet, B. Lobina, M. Zabrocka,
‘The Use of SLAPPs to Silence Journalists, NGOs and Civil Society,’ European Parliament,
2021. [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/694782/
IPOL_STU(2021)694782_EN.pdf].
122
These concepts were presented in the article written by Gustav Radbruch, “Statutory
Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law” in 1946, as a commentary on the status of Nazi laws.
[Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 26, no.1 2006 (1–11)] Although not directly linked,
the article seems to build on the argument by Ernst Fraenkel in his book, The Dual State, A
Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (1941), which is further expounded in the book by
Jens Meierhenrich, The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat: An Ethnography of Nazi Law, Oxford
University Press, 2018. In the current interim era of the transformation of law, the concepts
410 G. TEEPLE

s­ tatutory lawlessness is not merely a figure of speech; it points to an exist-

ing contradiction, a contradiction that arises because of the contradictory
nature of civil society. Liberal democracy needs laws that enable lawless-
ness—such as emergency laws and anti-terrorist laws—laws that make
arbitrariness legitimate. And the reason is that civil society is defined by
the contradiction between capital and labour, and labour is the side that
has no stake in the system, making it an ineradicable and constant threat.
The system has not only produced its own nemesis but also depends on it,
and in the present-day circumstances, its potential threat has never been
greater because of the usurpation by transnational corporations of state
powers and legitimacy by means of consultancies, executive ‘revolving
doors,’ and bribery.123
Lawlessness has become part of the daily exercise of power by some
states: secret and not-so-secret assassinations, torture centres strategically
placed to allow for ‘plausible denial,’124 rendition programmes and unlaw-
ful detention,125 sabotage of infrastructure, illegal sanctions and seizures
of property and personnel, military arbitrariness and the destruction of
entire countries, and extra-judicial executions by police and their immu-
nity from prosecution. The American and European extraterritorial asser-
tion of national law can be included here; it has no legitimacy in
international law except the legitimacy of power as ‘might is right.’ These
are a few examples among many more that point to state actions com-
monly practiced outside the law and without recourse for their victims.
Statutory lawlessness refers to the existence of laws that allow for state
actions that are outside the usual framework of the rule of law. While many
of these laws can be included under two categories, emergency and

of lawlessness and statutory lawlessness are central to grasping the fate of law, but our use of
the terms here is based on the view of law laid out in this chapter, not that found in these texts.
123
This threat is well understood by capital, but not by labour. The business councils
around the world have a clear grasp of the contradiction; the trade union leadership lives in
the dark.
124
Not to mention on American military bases, for instance, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
Bay. K. Greenberg and J.L. Dretel (eds.) The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib,
Cambridge University Press, 2005; Amnesty International, “Guantanamo Bay: Over 20 Years
of Injustice,” August 2023 [https://www.amnesty.org.uk/guantanamo-bay-human-rights].
125
Amnesty International, “Open Secret: Mounting Evidence of Europe’s Complicity in
Rendition and Secret Detention,” 2010. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110602215812/
http://amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_21023.pdf].
 9 THE LAW AND JUDICIARY 411

anti-terrorist laws, there are an increasing number of laws that perform the
same function to provide a legal veneer to otherwise arbitrary state actions:
partisan injunctions against trade unions and political demonstrations,
civil forfeiture laws at the discretion of police, mass surveillance of the
public sector, and the pervasive turn to consultancies in place of elected
officials or educated bureaucrats.
In the twenty-first century, the development of law has been following
these three directions—retrenchment, weaponization, and lawlessness—
and there is little reason for it not to continue along these lines until the
postwar global economic and political architecture no longer holds. But
recent changes to the current world order and its legal expression are
already visible: the growth of China’s economy to surpass those of Japan,
Germany, and Europe, and by some measures that of the United States;
Russia’s confrontation with NATO over Ukraine; and the emergence of
new trade and commercial arrangements, such as BRICS,126 the SCO,127
and China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative,’128 and Chinese and Russian credit
facilities, among many other organizational developments, have presented
many new emerging possibilities for the future of law. While these remain
to be fully realized, what is certain is that there is no return to the
Westphalian principles and structure of nation-states or the post-World
War II Keynesian welfare state. Their foundations have decisively moved
to the global level.

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Review, 1977, 6: 379–97.
 CHAPTER 10

Suffrage and Citizenship

The form and content of the liberal democratic state, we have argued,
were patterned after the prevailing property relations in civil society and
changed to reflect the shifting nature of these relations. With its rationale
outside itself in civil society, the state has had a semi-autonomous exis-
tence separate from civil society. Its existence, then, has always been para-
doxical: while its structures and activities appeared independent of civil
society, its raison d’être has lain in the intra- and inter-class conflicts, that
is, the personifications of contradictory property relations that character-
ize civil society. It has been no mere instrument of the capitalist class, and
yet its existence has been necessary to ensure the prevailing property rela-
tions as central to the system.
If the paradox is self-evident, the problem is how to understand the
relation between civil society and the state. How do the general and par-
ticular elements of property relations in civil society come to be reflected
in the state, to determine its structure, policies, and actions? In this chap-
ter on suffrage and citizenship and the next chapter on political parties and
other institutions, we analyse the formal and informal mechanisms that are
meant to bridge the divide between the liberal democratic state and civil
society.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 419

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_10
420 G. TEEPLE

Suffrage
The bourgeois revolutions and their declared universal principles spurred
the demand for an expanded franchise.1 This became the subject of many
long political struggles. It was a right that had to be fought for, it was no
gift; lives were dedicated to achieving it, many imprisoned for it, and some
died for it. In the twenty-first century, however, this struggle is not so easy
to fathom because universal enfranchisement2 was won in most industrial
nations only in the first half of the twentieth century and across most for-
mer colonial nations in the second half. By the late twentieth century,
however, the franchise did not seem to be living up to its promise. The
constant narrowing of political issues by political parties has stripped elec-
tions of much of their meaning, and the making of rules and regulations
by global institutions has led many to regard national elections more as
ritual than meaningful political acts. For some decades, political scientists
have documented the increasing cynicism, skepticism, and apathy sur-
rounding the right to vote.3
But if the right to vote and stand for election appears to be increasingly
meaningless, why the long and determined struggle to achieve them, and
why, moreover, does any proposal to revoke them seem unthinkable? For
the answer we must look to the meaning of election, the underlying sig-
nificance of the demand for the franchise.
The Meaning of Election. Election in liberal democracies is the means by
which civil society attains representation in the legislature; it is the heart of
the relation between civil society and the political state.4 It is the chief way
in which civil society is linked to the state, the institutionalized abstracted
property relations; it is the main mechanism by which civil society expresses
itself in a political way.

1
The terms franchise and suffrage will be used interchangeably to refer mainly to the right
to vote, stand for election, and petition the government.
2
Male enfranchisement was for the most part won in the late nineteenth century in the
industrial nations, but universal enfranchisement (i.e., males and females) has been largely a
phenomenon of the twentieth century, indeed, of the second half.
3
M.L. Kornbluth, Why America Stopped Voting: The Decline of Participatory Democracy
and the Emergence of Modern American Politics, New York: New York University Press,
2000; G. Evans and J. Tilley, “The Depoliticization of Inequality and Redistribution:
Explaining the Decline of Class Voting,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 74, no. 4, October
2012 (963–976).
4
The term “political state” is used here to distinguish the elected or transient from the
permanent or bureaucratic part of the state.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 421

If this is what election means, it is operationalized by the process of vot-

ing, the formal procedure of choosing amongst alternative parties or rep-
resentatives. The right to vote and the designation of who can vote are
seen as central to the relation of civil society to the state: those with the
right to vote determine, at least theoretically, the character of public policy
and the distribution of the public purse. It follows that the principle of the
right to vote stands at the centre of modern political systems defined as
liberal democracies.
The political importance of this right helps to explain the historical
drive to extend electoral reforms, especially the right to vote, to as many
as possible. But there is another reason for this striving to expand political
rights that we find mentioned by Aristotle at the dawn of consciousness
about political relations. To paraphrase, he wrote that anyone who is
“unable to share in the benefits of political association” or is “self-­
sufficient” and so not part of the polis is therefore “either a beast or a
god.”5 In other words, to be human is intrinsically to be a participant in a
community.
To put this in modern terms: the fact that we are born into a social
formation implies that we are by definition a member of that society and
that that society takes us as a part of it. To be part of society, in short,
means that the social being of individuals is already a form of actual par-
ticipation in it. And society is comprised of the membership of all social-
ized by it. To be a conscious part of something means consciously to
acquire a part of it, to take a conscious interest in it, to reiterate Aristotle.6
If to be a member is to be a participant, at least implicitly; it is not a
question of whether members ought to be participants because that would
assume that some subjects might not want to participate and so not really
be part of society. The fact that not all can or do participate in the affairs
of the state is an admission that the society is divided in a way that the
determination of public affairs is separated from the members, or at least
some members. That the members of society have historically sought to

5
E. Barker (Trans.), The Politics of Aristotle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 6.
Aristotle’s point is widely accepted as valid, in the abstract that is; in reality the Greek polis
did not include women, among other participants. But then, neither did modern liberal
democracy for the most part until well into the twentieth century.
6
And to paraphrase Marx. See: Karl Marx Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 3,
London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp. 120–1. Much of this discussion rests on Marx’
analysis in “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law.”
422 G. TEEPLE

extend the franchise is nothing but the desire to overcome this division
and allow for participation by all as the realization of membership.
In the nineteenth century the working class grew to become the major-
ity in civil society; accordingly, it strove to give itself political existence
because it needed representation to advance its interests in the sphere of
public affairs. This striving, in part, took the form of the demand for the
extension of the franchise in the shape of the right to vote and the right to
be elected—a striving for legislative control, it must be added.
This striving was for legislative control because of its formal political
significance, its purported concern with public affairs and law-making.
But, as argued, there is little by way of actual political power in the legis-
lature, and so the real goal of popular political struggle ought to have been
executive power because here lies the ability to act in the name of the
whole, to determine the nature of the prevailing property relations, and to
take initiatives genuinely reflecting the interests of the whole.
If, however, civil society, the majority of which is made up of the work-
ing class, were to achieve such a goal, the nature of executive power would
be transformed. Instead of being a near arbitrary power acting in the inter-
ests of the prevailing relations of property, it would become the power to
‘discover and formulate’ the law as an emanation from the real, genuine
whole, that is, a united whole and parts. It would thereby transform a
system of rule by law into a system defined by the active participation of
all, where members become the subjects, the active agents. The striving
for electoral reform is implicitly this striving for a unity of political and civil
life. To put it another way, the demand for universal enfranchisement is in
essence the demand for the dissolution of the separated spheres of the
state and civil society, a division produced by private property.7

The Struggle for the Right to Vote

That suffrage had to be fought for has meaning in itself: it meant that the
state did not represent the people and that the people had to struggle to
be represented by a state that presumed to speak and act in their name. If
before the achievement of universal enfranchisement, the state could not
have represented the people yet acted in their name, what did it represent?

7
As mentioned, much of this argument is from Marx’s analysis in his “Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law.” In Karl Marx Frederick Engels, Collected Works,
Volume 3, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp 119–121.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 423

Sovereignty in a marketplace society, as argued, rests in the dominant

property relations; it is the sovereignty of the whole as the prevailing prop-
erty relations. The personification of these relations is the essence of the
ruling class, which rules or determines public policy in accord with the
main demands of the prevailing property, namely capital accumulation. In
ruling, the ruling class acts in name of the abstracted whole, these presid-
ing relations, because it is their representative, their incarnation. Because
the state is the institutionalized form of the prevailing property relations
and the ruling class is their representative, the state and ruling class assume
sovereignty to be held and exercised by a minority in civil society, whether
the majority does or does not participate in electing the government.
If property relations are the whole, that is, the abstracted community
outside the actual community, the active parts, then, the embodiment of
these relations in the form of the state has provided the grounds for the
government to assume to speak and act in the name of the whole. And to do
so, even without universal enfranchisement when the majority did not have
a voice or vote in elections or policy formation. If the majority as the work-
ing class were to have a vote, however, it would lead to the introduction of
countervailing property forms, such as trade union rights and social reforms,
which can be realized within the system only as compromises with the pre-
vailing forms. Nevertheless, universal enfranchisement presents the possibil-
ity of countervailing rights being realized and even becoming dominant.
As the majority gradually became the working class, its character as
labour-power was dependent on capital as the means of production to
realize itself; labour-power was not, then, an independent form of capital
and accordingly considered outside these dominant relations and left
without voice or vote in government. But as dependent and individualized
capital, the working class suffered the unregulated dictatorship of corpo-
rate capital in the workplace and so came to understand the employer as its
nemesis. For relief, it sought a solution in striving for access to the law-­
making legislature. Corporate capital, by contrast, was faced with a
dilemma: on the one hand, it understood the working-class majority as the
means to capital accumulation and so necessary to maintain as a stable
productive force, while, on the other hand, it knew that wages rose and
fell in inverse relation to profits, and moreover, that the working class with
majority representation in the legislature could legally overturn the domi-
nance of corporate private property.
Given that the working class was both necessary and threatening to
corporate capital, the class representing capital accepted a begrudging
424 G. TEEPLE

policy of accommodation in enfranchising the working class.8 If political

parties representing the working-class, moreover, could be restricted to
those advocating social reform and not revolution, the franchise could
prove to be a powerful mechanism for undermining more radical demands
and maintaining the compromise necessary for the economic stability
required by the accumulation process. And if the franchise were expanded
to include all the marginal and sub-categories of a stratified working class,
the number of political parties and their policies could also be expanded,
thereby sowing chronic disputes and different avenues for political oppor-
tunists instead of unity in the face of corporate capital. But this
unity has remained an abiding possibility, producing a chronic threat to
the system that provides universal enfranchisement.
The Women’s Suffrage Movement. The exclusion of women from so-­
called universal enfranchisement in the first many decades of liberal democ-
racy led to the rise of the women’s suffrage movement in industrial countries.
Why they were largely left out or ignored in the first place is a question
seldom addressed in the literature, but it is likely that it had much to do
with the position of women with respect to property relations. Women were
not considered fully human, i.e., not persons, because their rights in rela-
tion to private property were restricted.9 Their non-person status and non-
enfranchisement helps to explain the meaning of the right to vote.
The movement to win political rights for women is very telling about
the nature of political rights. Even with the achievement of the male right
to vote and be elected, often referred to as universal enfranchisement,
there was little thought given to the political rights of women.10 This
exclusion points to the property qualification that was historically always
one of the qualifiers for political rights. To be defined as an embodiment
of private property was accepted as normal, and to possess assets that

8
The alternative was no right to vote, loss of legitimacy, and potential revolution. In late
nineteenth century Germany, Bismarck recognized this dilemma and forged an agreement
with Ferdinand Lasalle, the leader of Social Democratic Party. P.A. Kohler and H.F. Zacher
(eds.), The Evolution of Social Insurance 1881–1981, London: Frances Pinter, 1982.
9
Joan Sangster, One Hundred Years of Struggle, The History of Women and the Vote in
Canada, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2018 (See Chap. 1).
10
For a short history of the struggle for female franchise in the U.S., see A. F. Scott and
A. M. Scott, One Half the People, the Fight for Women’s Suffrage, Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1975; for the struggle in Britain, see: Martin Pugh, ‘Suffrage and citizenship,’ in F. Carnevali
and J.-M. Strange (eds.), 20th Century Britain: Economic, Cultural, Social Change, London,
Routledge, 2014 (97–100).
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 425

provided a living revenue was not merely proof of one’s stake in the system
but also the main criterion for political rights, which were often scaled
according to one’s assets.11 Those not so defined were not considered full
persons until the second half of the nineteenth century when the property
qualification was reduced to one’s labour-power and realized with the
coming of male enfranchisement.
The winning of male suffrage was predicated on widespread agitation
for the franchise, grounded in the growth of male participation as workers
in a labour market. This status as wage-labourer not only defined men as
personifications of capital, if only of their labour-power, but also meant
they increasingly suffered the unmitigated power exercised in the work-
place by corporate capital, not to mention the corporate biases in employ-
ment law. Female participation in the labour market, however, remained
limited and their labour was deemed more suitable for domestic work,
dependent on a male bread-winner and outside the labour market. Women
were not defined as persons and so not considered to be appropriate bear-
ers of political rights in liberal democratic states, until early in the twenti-
eth century, with minor exceptions.12
The female franchise was won in a few countries in the late nineteenth
century, but for the most part women’s political rights in the industrial
nations were won after political agitation predicated on the increased role
of women in the labour market during World War I, when they had
assumed the place of men who had volunteered or were conscripted for
the war. Female participation rates in the labour market during World War
II had a similar effect, but the postwar idea and principles for a ‘new world
order,’ which included a nod to human rights (the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights13) and the formal call to end all forms of discrimination,
also played a large if indeterminate role.14
The winning of political rights for women, which implied personhood,
did not, however, change the position of women with respect to many

11
This was the case in the democracies of ancient Greece and Rome, and in all the early
bourgeois democratic states. In reference to Britain, this point is well made in Martin Pugh,
‘Suffrage and citizenship,’ Ibid., pp. 97–8.
12
M. Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Review, 1969.
13
A non-binding declaration, not a convention binding on state signatories, which had to
wait almost 20 years, until 1976.
14
For a wide-ranging exploration of the political and religious factors that determined the
differences in national struggles for the female franchise, see, D. L. Teele, Forging the
Franchise: The Political Origins of the Women’s Vote, Princeton University Press, 2018.
426 G. TEEPLE

economic rights. In effect, it gave women the right to vote and be elected,
but not equal rights of ownership. Women generally remained in a subor-
dinate position with respect to ownership, employment, marital relations,
the family, and so on. Property relations changed only in incremental steps
for women until well into the twentieth century.15
If the foregoing provides some of the reasons why a struggle to achieve
the franchise was necessary for representatives of countervailing property
forms, it can also help to explain what was won in achieving universal
enfranchisement.
The Achievement of Universal Enfranchisement. The example of South
Africa provides a poignant and relatively recent example of the struggle for
the franchise and what it meant in practice. Between 1948 and 1991, the
South African government pursued a policy of ‘apartheid,’ institutional-
ized segregation, which divided its society into four major groups identi-
fied mainly by colour, although often referred to as ‘races,’ namely,
‘Whites,’ ‘Coloureds,’ and ‘Bantus,’16 later adding ‘Indians.’ During this
period, the majority ‘Bantus,’ the indigenous population, had no political
voice and suffered brutal state and employer repression, obliging them to
begin an armed struggle for the political rights adopted by that time by
most of the former colonial nations around the world. Fearing a left-wing
armed revolution, the government entered negotiations with the African
National Congress (ANC)—the largest political organization resisting the
regime—from 1987 to 1991, and which resulted in the abolition of apart-
heid, the adoption of the principle of universal enfranchisement, the free-
ing of the ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, in 1990, and the promise of
‘free’ elections in 1994 for a new government. As the main representative
of the indigenous African majority, the ANC won the election, and it has
held power ever since. Very little has changed for the majority, however.
The real sovereign power, the prevailing property relations, remained the
same; what changed was that the leaders of the ANC acquired positions of
power allowing them to share in the wealth that previously was a

15
In the US, women had achieved many rights to own property by 1900, but only in the
1970s did women finally gain full rights to their own finances. Exercising those rights in the
business and legal worlds was another question.
16
Under the apartheid regime, ‘Bantu’ was used as a pejorative and appropriately consid-
ered offensive by the people referred to, the majority ethnic group of indigenous Africans in
South Africa. The name derives from a group of related languages spoken in that part of
Africa. The use of skin colour or ethnicity for the distribution of rights is an obvious violation
of the principles of liberal democracy.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 427

monopoly of the ‘White’ ruling class.17 The election produced a change of

colour in the political hierarchy, the personified agents of the rule by capi-
tal that was and still is.
The majority in South Africa saw few improvements in their lives after
abolishing apartheid and securing the right to vote. Similarly, after win-
ning the franchise across the world, women remained unequal in civil soci-
ety: unequal in relation to men in wages, job prospects, family life, and so
on. And after universal enfranchisement, all working people have remained
subordinate to those who own the means of production.18 The striving for
political rights had to be accomplished, however, before it could be under-
stood what these rights meant and what was actually won.
In winning the franchise, what was won was the individual right to vote
and be elected, as captured in the phrase, one person one vote. All citizens
get their own vote, a right often held to be the hallmark of democracy.
This individual right assumes the bearer to be a person, the personification
of private property, and the right extends only to the political expression
of individual interests. There is no collective right to vote for collective
interests.19 The principle of one person one vote, belongs to the democ-
racy of a marketplace society; conversely, in a system defined by forms of
social or cooperative or indigenous collective property, the idea of the
individual vote by sovereign persons makes no sense.
Even in a marketplace society, the right to vote as an individual, which
assumes the bearer as possessing exclusive personal interests, is problem-
atic. The human being is always a social product, a member of a social
unit, and not the solitary atomized being that a system of private property
implies. In other words, what may be considered exclusive individual
interests always has a social context and cause. All individuals are part of
some grouping that provides the content of their interests; the idea that

17
H. Adam, F. Van Zyl Slabbert, and K. Moodley, Comrades in Business, Post-Liberation
Politics in South Africa, Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 1997: 218–222; H. Adam and
K. Moodley, Imagined Liberation: Xenophobia, Citizenship, and Identity in South Africa,
Germany, and Canada, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015:
18
Employment standards and legalized trade unions are the principle means by which this
subordination is ameliorated.
19
That is, no collective right to vote in a liberal democracy, but there are systems of aggre-
gated voting, sometimes referred to as ‘block’ voting, in corporate board meetings, political
parties, and trade unions general meetings, which means individual votes are assembled to be
cast together in the interests of a shareholder group or trade union or particular political
position.
428 G. TEEPLE

one can have one’s own particular political interests separate from all oth-
ers is not tenable. The concept of one person one vote runs counter to
what a political issue is and to the reality of what a human being is, even in
market societies. In other words, all the categories of capital and even the
personifications of configurations of capital, the ruling classes, are defined
by common interests.
The right to vote and be elected, furthermore, gives the citizen the
right to vote and stand for election but only for a particular political par-
ty.20 In effect this means that on casting a vote, one’s political right to
influence state policy is assumed by the party, but control of the party is
outside the realm of political rights. To cast a ballot is to short circuit one’s
political rights and place them in the hands of a political party. The choice
of party, moreover, is usually a choice from what is on offer, and so beyond
the realm of individual political rights, although with sufficient capital new
political parties can be created almost overnight and, what is more, win an
election within months of its creation.21 It is obvious, furthermore, that in
most liberal democratic nations, there are classes and strata whose interests
find little or no representation in the political parties that exist.
In sum, there is little alternative to the political parties available, or to
the choice of policies on offer, and no choice at all if there is no party to
represent certain class or strata interests. These negatives mean that the
right to vote is more a nominal than a real practical substantive expression
of citizen participation.

20
‘Independent’ politicians, that is independent from a political party, are possible but
not common.
21
Macron’s election in 2017 stands as a recent example. “The French president’s fledgling
new party…[won] a staggering three-quarters of all seats in the National Assembly, effec-
tively stamping out all opposition. And yet only 15% of registered voters cast ballots in its
favour on Sunday.” France 24, 12/06/2017. And this within 15 months of its creation. See
also: C. Chwalisz, ‘En Marche: From a Movement to a Government. April 6, 2018. https://
carnegieeurope.eu/2018/04/06/en-marche-from-movement-to-government-pub-75985;
and M. Vaudano, M. Romain, L. Martinon, A. Senecat, McKinsey and Marcon: What’s Real
and what’s fake about the controversy,’ Le Monde, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-deco-
deurs/article/2022/03/30/mckinsey-and-macron-what-s-real-and-what-s-fake-about-
this-controversy_5979414_8.html.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 429

Ideological Functions of the Franchise

Universal suffrage plays a very significant ideological role in liberal democ-
racy. Above all else, it provides what appears to be prima facie evidence
that in the act of voting the electorate really is sovereign. Even in nations
where voting and legitimacy are in decline, the existence of this right
implies that the electorate remains sovereign, and if political policies and
leaders are not popular the electorate are seen to have themselves to blame.
Even where the electorate are legally obliged to vote, the requirement
implies that the state is merely insisting that they exercise their sovereign
responsibilities by participating in a process that purportedly means what
it says—the exercise of their ultimate authority.
The right to vote can also make it appear that certain countervailing
policies passed by a legislative were the result of the vote. But as argued
in Chap. 6, sovereignty lies elsewhere, and so the link between voting,
the presumed exercise of sovereignty, and legislative results is tenuous,
to say the least. If the electorate appears to squeeze out of the state
certain countervailing policies, this is not necessarily accomplished
because the voting majority via a certain party has control of the legis-
lature, but more likely because the circumstances and timing have made
such legislation possible and necessary. The right to vote provides a
sense that the electorate has political control over public policy, whereas
public policy is always tied or subordinate to the demands of the prevail-
ing property relations.22
Universal suffrage or political equality also goes a long way to conceal-
ing systemic economic inequality. In other words, the appearance of dem-
ocratic control over public policy disguises the patently undemocratic
world of the workplace and the domestic realm, and it helps to conceal the
source of economic inequality resting in private property.
The principle of one person one vote, moreover, reduces political par-
ticipation to an individual act, as if we can exercise our political rights as
atomized individuals, as if political action is an individual and not a social
issue. It does this by affirming the notion that we are solitary, isolated, and
not social beings in our political behaviour. But the truth of political poli-
cies is that they necessarily reflect categories of civil society: classes,

22
In other words, legislation for publicly administered social programs are all victories for
the working class in a marketplace society, but they are also all framed by the principles of
private property.
430 G. TEEPLE

gender, strata, ethnicities, religions, regions, and corporate sectors. To put

it another way, the principle is ideological because it affirms that our defi-
nition as persons in law is what we are as human beings and as political
actors; it is to take what is and treat it as if the truth of what we are.
Because there is a certain reality in marketplace society to this definition of
self as a set of exclusive rights, it is very difficult to see the meaning and
limits of this definition. The reality of life in this society makes us per-
sons; and because this is normalized, indeed necessary to survive in soci-
ety, it is easy to understand how this state of existence comes to be treated
as the very definition of the human.
The practice of one person one vote isolates voters from the social cat-
egories that define their interests, it divides us from ourselves as members
of a class or other group, that is, political expression is depoliticized in this
formal political act. A solitary individual, defined by personal interests,
cannot behave politically because political action implies class or group
rights and interests greater than those of the individual.
The principle of one person one vote becomes a hindrance to collective
political action undertaken by the working class or any sub-unit of civil
society. It does not, however, inhibit the collective voice of capital because
capital expresses its political will through the control of the election pro-
cess by means of strategic corporate investment, advertising, economic
blackmail, and bribery of political parties and officials—in short, through
unofficial political processes of lobbying, secret meetings, and corrup-
tion.23 The corporate sector can put its “money where its mouth is” in a
way that the ordinary electorate cannot. The individual vote is no match
for the collective power of corporate money.24 In a political system that
from the outset has defined the accumulation of wealth as the point of the
system, the use of political office for personal or party or corporate gain is
not too difficult to justify.
The principle of decision-making and representation in a system of col-
lective or shared property would be a profoundly different phenomenon.
The assumption would not be a plethora of different antagonistic inter-
ests, but of collective interests, over which discussion and debate leading
to consensus would reveal the majority support for the way forward and

Jane Mayer, Dark Money, New York: Doubleday, 2016.

23

W. Rice et al, ‘Billionaires Buying Elections: How the Nation’s Wealthiest Translate
24

Economic Power into Political Clout,’ Americans for Tax Fairness, July 2022. (https://
americansfortaxfairness.org/report-billionaires-buying-elections/).
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 431

presumably the most reasonable position. It would not be a question of

which corporate sector interests will benefit the most from state policies,
but what is in the interests of all. The debate could be over the nature of
the interests of all, but that is different from a debate over favouring some
private interests over and at the expense of others. The debate and discus-
sion in this instance would also differ from the practice of one person one
vote in that the decision made would be carried out by the voters them-
selves and not by a state or authority separate from the people.

Significance of Universal Suffrage

If these arguments point to the limitations of the right to vote in a liberal
democracy, there are nevertheless several significant positive aspects to the
achievement of universal enfranchisement that must be mentioned. First
and perhaps most important, it represents the last stage in the progressive
removal of the property and other qualifications for the right to vote and
be elected. It is often forgotten that the right to participate politically was
from the beginning tied to one’s assets as a measure of one’s stake in the
system, not to mention exclusions based on gender, colour, ethnicity, lan-
guage, religion, wealth, status, education, and so on, which at different
times and places were reminders of the limitations of this democracy. The
winning of universal enfranchisement changed the significance of the fran-
chise from the safe hands of the ‘trusted’ minority to the perennial threat
of the ‘dangerous’ majority, from those with a stake in the system to those
without.25
Second and closely related, the accomplishment represented not only
the removal of most barriers to political participation, but was also a large
step towards the recognition of all citizens as equal in rights in relation to
the state and implicitly to each other. The importance of this accomplish-
ment can be seen clearly when compared to past and present political sys-
tems in which political rights have been circumscribed by one or other

25
Central to Solon’s reforms was ‘timocracy’ a form of government that employed assets
of graded value as the criteria for holding official positions. The property and other qualifica-
tions remained fixtures of political participation until the principle of universal franchise was
established with the bourgeois revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and
then much later the practice, over the better part in the twentieth century. We have argued
that labour-power as capital is the possession of property rights in labour-power.
432 G. TEEPLE

criteria in practice or principle. It is the legal acknowledgement that we all

have this lawfully equal, albeit limited, voice in public affairs.26
Third, as a result of the universal franchise, the ruling minority has been
obliged to search for improved ways to ensure the desired outcome of
elections.27 New and divisive political parties were created,28 parties split,
policy platforms stripped of class content while adopting an ‘all-in’ appeal,
registration regulations engineered, the voting process manipulated, par-
ticipation suppressed, gerrymandering contrived, voters bribed, party
membership stacked, campaign promises not kept, legal persecution and
prosecution of opponents,29 political privilege put up for sale,30 corporate
lobbying much expanded,31 among other means.32 All of these have a long
history, but have increasingly come to be seen for what they are and so
play a growing role in undermining political legitimacy.
The increased use of ‘proportional representation’33 can be understood
as a response to this extensive growth of political manipulation and decline
in legitimacy. But all attempts at reform of the electoral system in liberal

26
That the political power of the franchise remains more theoretical than real does not
negate the importance of these implications of the universality of the right to vote. It is a
break with history, marked by abiding inequalities accepted as natural, to acknowledge offi-
cially the equality of all in the possession of political rights.
27
S. Rokkan, ‘Mass Suffrage, Secret Voting and Political Participation,’ in L. A. Coser
(ed.), Political Sociology, New York: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 128. Rokkan mentions a few
of these manipulations of the electoral process.
28
P. Agee, L. Wolf (eds.), Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, London: Zed
Books, 1978.
29
This is a reference to SLAPP lawsuits (“Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”).
See R. Nader, and W. J. Smith, No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in
America. Random House, 1998.
30
F. S. McChesney, ‘The Practical Economics of “Pay to Play” Politics,’ in E. J. Reid (ed.),
Structuring the Inquiry into Advocacy, Vol. 1, The Urban Institute, 2000. https://www.
urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/62271/309696-Structuring-the-Inquiry-into-
Advocacy.PDF#page=41.
31
R. Tansey et al, Corporate Capture in Europe: When Big Business Dominates Policy-
Making and Threatens Our Rights, Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation
in the EU. 2018 (https://www.alter-eu.org/corporate-capture-in-europe).
32
See also: A. Jungherr, G. Rivero, and D. Gayo-Avello, Retooling Politics: How Digital
Media are Shaping Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
33
For good overviews of ‘proportional representation’ electoral systems, see: M. Gallagher,
‘Comparing Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Quotas, Thresholds, Paradoxes
and Majorities,’ British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 1992 (469–496);
and A. M. Carstairs, A Short History of Electoral Systems in Western Europe, London:
Routledge, 2009 (1980) (See Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 433

democracy to give the illusion of greater choice and better representation

ignore the fact that the principle of the ‘imperative mandate’ is not guar-
anteed or central to any liberal democracy, and indeed is a prohibited
policy in the constitutions of the member states of the European Union
and in the European Parliament. Electoral reform implies that the elector-
ate is in fact the seat of sovereignty, but as argued, sovereignty lies in the
prevailing property relations, making electoral systems little more than
limited forms of political expression.
Fourth, equal political rights meant that the majority of the electorate
acquired a legal mechanism, as opposed to extra-legal or illegal means, to
demand countervailing rights as compensation for the chronic failure of
marketplace society to address social needs. Suffrage provides at least
implicitly a means for the propertyless to make demands on the proper-
tied. But it also shows the powers that be,34 which regularly use public
policy and the markets as disciplinary forces against the working class, that
the ‘best’ democracy is one in which the electorate are apathetic, cynical,
jaded, disinterested, and uninformed.35
To put it another way, universal political rights open the door to the
possibility that the legislature can be used as a political platform for advanc-
ing criticisms and progressive policy proposals in the public arena. Or
more generally, it makes possible legal resistance to the status quo, which
is a very important right especially when the liberal democratic state has
entered an era in which it is obliged to retrench the welfare state, includ-
ing labour regulations and employment standards, and to allow the irrepa-
rable despoliation of the global environment in the interests of capital
accumulation.36
That the historical achievement of universal enfranchisement does not
resolve the separation of political and civil life is obvious. But it does rep-
resent the end of the striving of civil society within liberal democracy to
control what intrinsically belongs to it, that is, the general affairs as

34
We have used this expression to refer to the institutions that embody the prevailing
property relations and are able to act in their interests.
35
See: the Trilateral Commission Report in 1975 where it is complained that the electorate
was demanding too much and increasingly more from the public sector, and the powers that
be needed to find ways to dampen political interest and participation. M. Crozier,
S.P. Huntington, J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies,
New York: University of New York Press, 1975.
36
It has to be said, however, that these possibilities were seldom realized anywhere, and
now they are increasingly checked by the globalization of economic relations.
434 G. TEEPLE

embodied in the state. This accomplishment is the main indicator that the
historical completion of political development has arrived, that is, the
divide between the state and civil society is now more or less complete,37
but not resolved. Along with this completion, so too comes the realization
that the franchise did not end the division between civil and political life
or give control over public policy and disposition of the public purse. It
allows the majority to see that the right to vote has given them only nomi-
nal political power, more ruse than reality. Hence, the growth of cynicism,
apathy, and despair about the possibilities of political change within the
framework of liberal democracy. This negative reaction is implicitly the
realization that liberal democracy never was what it pretended to be, and
it opens the door to the consideration of possibilities outside this political
system that has not lived up to its promises.

Citizenship: Institutionalized Class Conflict,

Counterfeit Identity, and ‘Imagined Community’
in a Marketplace Society

Why now in the twenty-first century the question of citizenship? In the second
half of the twentieth century, globalization, the integrated world-wide
process of capital accumulation, began to undermine the integrity of the
national market, the foundation of the nation-state, and for this reason in
this same period, the meaning of citizenship became an open question
because it is meaningful only as a creation and in the context of the
national state.38
What is citizenship? Humans are born into social formations, and social
formations usually define their members by virtue of birth, marriage, or
naturalization. Humans cannot be born or exist as isolated entities; they
are by nature a product of some organized association, making them
members as a matter of course.39 In pre-market communities, membership

37
Except for constitutional monarchies, second chambers in legislatures, and indirect elec-
tions for heads of state, as in the US and EU.
38
W. Kymlicka and W. Norman, ‘Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on
Citizenship Theory,’ Ethics, Vol. 104, no. 2, Jan. 1994 (352–351). Kymlicka and Norman
offer other explanations for this late twentieth century rise in interest about citizenship, but
not this seemingly obvious one.
39
In a marketplace society, characterized by private property, humans can imagine their
existence as independent beings, as embodiments of exclusive rights, but these beliefs are
merely the result of socialization by such societies.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 435

is marked by tribal, clan, or family rituals, name-giving, and so on, but in

marketplace societies, defined by private and conflicting interests and ter-
ritorial boundaries, membership is acknowledged by the conferring of for-
mal rights and obligations and a state-related identity by the authority
with jurisdiction over that defined territory. This form of membership is
citizenship.
The phenomenon of citizenship arose in the ancient Greek city-states in
the time of Solon (sixth century BCE). Its fundamental precondition was
the decimation of tribal social units by the rise of marketplace society;
market-based Greek city-states were social formations defined not by
informal custom or tradition, but by legalities, formal rights, and wide-­
spread class conflict largely between debtors and creditors, slaves and own-
ers, and serf-like farmers and landlords. In these city-states the social
unities and identities of traditional tribal, clan, or kinship relations were by
and large transformed into legal or coercive relations abstracted from
market-­based commodity exchange.
This coming of marketplace society and the consequent initial timo-
cratic rule produced two main problems, which remain to this day: how to
determine and expand the territorial boundaries and market relations under
a state’s jurisdiction, and how to define membership and contain the social
conflict characteristic of the domestic market in that bounded territory.40
If the first was determined by pre-existing former tribal territories or nego-
tiated treaties or wars, the second was established by the dominant powers
using various criteria, but which usually included place of birth and source,
amount, and type of income.41

40
Forced labor, class conflict, and slave revolts, it is widely accepted in the literature, were
endemic in ancient city-state economies, see: C. O. Ward, The Ancient Lowly, Volumes I and
II, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1900; G. E. M. De Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in
the Ancient Greek World, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981; M. I. Finley, Politics in the
Ancient World, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 2. Here Finley writes about
the “centrality of classes and class conflict” in the ancient world; M. I. Finley, The Ancient
Economy, Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1999.
41
M. Polakoff and P. Dhrymes, ‘The Economic and Sociological Significance of Debt
Bondage and Detribalization in Ancient Greece,’ Economic Development and Cultural
Change, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1958 (88–108); Ernest Barker (trans), The Politics of Aristotle,
London: Oxford University Press, 1970 (Book III, 92–110). Aristotle here reviews the vari-
ety of definitions of citizenship as practiced in the ancient Greek city-states, but with rare
exception, the common element is the amount of accumulated capital producing a revenue,
generally placing wage-laborers, whose capital was their labor-power and so dependent on
employment, at the lowest level of citizenship.
436 G. TEEPLE

The origin of citizenship, we suggest, was the attempt to define mem-

bership in a marketplace society, characterized by competition and capital
accumulation that produced chronic class conflict and growing class iden-
tities threatening systemic stability. Citizenship was intended to replace
tribal or clan identities, loyalties, and customs with formal rights and obli-
gations and to create an identity offsetting class consciousness and befit-
ting a political system not a clan-based organic community.42 It was part of
the provision of institutional structures designed to contain new property
relations and the consequent intrinsic social unrest.
It amounted to formalizing social existence as sets of legalities common
to its members, by the conferring of a tiered set of rights and obligations
scaled by size of assets and restricted by gender, place of birth, and social
ranking. Citizenship was and still is the mitigation and institutionalization
of class conflict by means of civil, political, and social rights and state iden-
tity and obligations; it has meant defining and placing members within an
accepted legal and ideological framework of the marketplace. It has been
a necessary part of the creation of a regulated ‘association’ of possessors of
formal private rights and obligations in a given political jurisdiction and a
world defined by contract.
The holding of these formalized rights, obligations, and this identity
has been the official definition of membership, of citizenship, conferred by
an existing authority resting on the pre-eminence of accumulated capital.
Citizenship was a legal blessing from the authorities, a baptism by the state
acknowledging membership in a market society. Its purpose has been to
mollify inherent contradictions and to offset the growing class conscious-
ness arising from the market by legalizing ownership and relations between
owners, by officially recognizing members as legal participants in a system
that has existed for nothing more than their own exploitation in the accu-
mulation of wealth.

42
The loss of genuine community accompanied by the rise of inherent social conflict in a
marketplace society provides some of the reasons for the attempt to provide a common iden-
tity by devising citizenship and for the rise of religion proper (Chap. 12). It should be noted
that some city-states, like Athens, did not confer full citizenship on women, but some did,
and the definitions of citizenship changed over time.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 437

The Coming of Modern Citizenship

in Liberal Democracy

Citizenship in the ancient world was instituted for similar reasons to citi-
zenship in the modern world. Both were responses to class conflict, grow-
ing class consciousness, and a lack of a jurisdictional unifier or identity,
all products of marketplace societies. Citizenship defined membership in
terms of the market as the embodiment of formal rights and obligations,
with a contrived identity to compensate for the lack of social coherence of
the market (and often arbitrary territorial boundaries), a world of contrac-
tual, conflicted, and competitive relations between possessors of private
property.43
Modern citizenship was created to define membership in market terms
in a national market. This set of formal civil, political, and social rights,
obligations, and identity were necessary to life in a marketplace society to
tie the working classes to the reproduction of the system, in which they
exist to be exploited and which has no inherent integrity. It was to authen-
ticate participation in market relations as producer, consumer, tax payer,
and potential military personnel, all in the interests of national capital
accumulation. This fabricated status has worked to socialize those with no
stake in the market with the idea they do have a stake and to counter the
ever-present class consciousness with this invention of a national iden-
tity—in a word, nationalism.
It could be argued that the struggle for the franchise by the growing
working class helped precipitate the conscious creation of a national iden-
tity. The fostering of a national self-consciousness can be understood as a
necessary counter to class identity and a means to institutionalize and dis-
guise class conflict by defining membership as the ideological acquiescence
to the necessities of the rule of a national configuration of capital.
Working-class consciousness rests on a set of interests opposed to the
prevailing property relations. These interests produce a class identity and
solidarity that cut across national identities, which by contrast define
members by the interests of national capital and their international con-
flicts. Class consciousness stands as the antithesis to citizenship and nation-
alism, and it is for this reason that the modern state has systematically
promoted national identities with the creation of anthems, flags, state

43
B. Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism,
London: Verso, 1991.
438 G. TEEPLE

symbols, dominant languages, official histories, invented heroes, authori-

tative legal and political structures, and the consecration of a dutiful
god44—all the components of nationalism, the heart of the modern social-
ization process.
To be a citizen, then, is to have a legal identity defined by rights, enti-
tlements, obligations, and nationality.45 This provides the ability to travel,
to establish residence, to have a political existence and access education,
housing, healthcare, employment, pensions, and implies the obligations to
pay taxes and avail oneself for state demands for jury duty, military service,
and so on. Citizenship, we might say, is of defining importance in this
world of nation-states, and so is a profoundly significant political device
for controlling the world’s working classes.
The precondition of this ideological and practical political envelope
embracing all members of nation-states was the creation of a domestic
market under one authority, an event that required the destruction of
indigenous, local, and regional loyalties, identities, and markets. The mod-
ern state had to follow the expansion of capital to new domestic and exter-
nal markets, and this required a standing army and navy, which depended
on increasing the national debt that in turn required an expanded tax base,
and a legitimate means to oblige military service. The coming of the capi-
talist mode of production brought with it all the prerequisites of national-
ism and the need for the institution of citizenship: the identity, rights, and
obligations required by a national configuration of capital and imposed on
its population as its main source of revenue and for its defence.
This is the modern nation-state, a social formation designed by and for
corporate private property, in which the majority of the population with
little or no stake in it is given certain rights to mollify or obscure this fact, a
national identity to counter its own class consciousness, and suffrage to give
the illusion of political control and access to state governing institutions.
Statelessness. Citizenship, or nationality, as the state’s acknowledgement
of one’s official existence, began to expand at the same time that the entire
world was being conquered by merchant capitalist states and defined as
extensions of their domestic markets. Along with these conquests of

44
That is, a god that speaks with the voice of national consciousness—‘god is on our side’.
45
The status of citizenship did not necessarily include the right to vote and so women
could be citizens but excluded from the franchise, along with defined religious and ethnic
populations.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 439

indigenous nations and ‘natural economies’46 came various definitions of

imposed membership as colonial subordinates or ‘subjects,’ most of which
were abandoned with decolonization only in the late twentieth century in
favour of modern citizenship in a sovereign state. The world is now, by
and large, a world of sovereign states, and the world’s population is defined
as citizens and divided by citizenship.
Not to have citizenship is to be stateless, and statelessness in a world of
states and official state identities is to be without the identity and rights
that comprise personhood, an absence which makes the stateless into legal
non-persons.47 To be without citizenship is to be adrift in a world of rela-
tions between states and their sanctioned rules and members defined
by national identities. It is to exist in a world in which there are few formal
means of dealing with the individual without such an identity or claims
and entitlements; it is to exist without recourse to a state for the defence
of one’s formal existence. It is unclear who or what you are. In a world of
nations and citizens defined by capital, to be deprived of citizenship, ban-
ished, exiled, or made a refugee is to be denied national meaning in a
world of nation-states.48
But statelessness has its purposes. Many nations have allowed immi-
grants ‘without papers’ to reside in the country to create a bottom strata
of the labour force that is largely outside the law as non-persons, unable to
purchase property, restricted as to employment, and subject to arbitrary
deportation and to extreme exploitation with little legal recourse. This is

46
The term ‘natural economy’ is a reference to the economic activities of indigenous com-
munities: the means by which informal, tradition-based, pre-market social formations repro-
duce themselves.
47
There are many millions of ‘stateless people,’ official estimates suggest 4.4 million, but
there are no accurate statistics; there are, however, about 108.4 million ‘forcibly displaced’
people in 2022, numbers that more than doubled in the last decade, according to the UN
Refugee Agency, and many of those will be stateless. https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends-
report-2022. There are two related UN Conventions: the 1954 “Convention Relating to the
Status of Stateless Persons,” and the 1961 “Convention of the Reduction of Statelessness.”
There is, however, no authoritative mechanism to address this growing problem of
statelessness.
48
The German Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which defined citizens by “blood” and “hon-
our,” stripped German Jews of their citizenship, denying them legal recourse in Germany
and in exile. After World War II, the United States and Israel sought to prevent Palestinian
statehood and citizenship, depriving Palestinians of the identity as the Nazis did to the Jews.
For other contemporary examples, see: J. Chai Yum Liew, Ghost Citizens, Decolonial
Apparitions of Stateless, Foreign and Wayward Figures in Law, Halifax: Fernwood, 2023.
440 G. TEEPLE

by and large the fate of the majority of Palestinians in Palestine due to the
actions and policies of the United States and Israel.49 But it is also the
practice of many European nations and Canada and the United States.50
The limits of citizenship. To be a citizen, by contrast, is to hold rights
and an identity, designated by a state that is the official representative of
national capital. But citizens, like non-citizens, face boundaries to their
existence; there are limits to citizenship just as there are barriers without
citizenship.
The majority of citizens are employees and so their means of existence
are defined by national labour legislation and markets, which present cer-
tain boundaries to the movement of labour and to the establishment of
international trade unions that attempt to organize across nations. The
possibility of establishing an international working-class identity to build
global unions and cross-national solidarity in order to confront global cor-
porations is undermined by the reality of national identities and rights
enforced in state territorial jurisdictions. The working classes, their rights
and identities, are restricted by citizenship, while, by contrast, the rich and
the managers of capital move with great ease across national borders,
defined in their activities by the global markets of capital that have for
them to a large degree superseded national borders and national identity.

Weaponization of Citizenship
Citizenship has always been weaponized, from its earliest appearance in
the ancient world to the present-day in the twenty-first century. It has
been habitually used as an instrument by the powers that be to control
dissident classes, groups, and individuals, to secure a degree of social
integrity in a market-based society, and to ensure the defence of an inter-
nally conflicted social formation. Modern citizenship defines membership
as a set of common rights, obligations, and identity in a society as market-
place fundamentally divided by the conflicting interests of labour and capi-
tal. The participants in these markets depend on each other but as two

49
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, London: One-World Publications, 2006.
50
On Canada, see: L-M. Gervais, “Le programme de la derniere chance pour les sans-
papiers.” Le Devoir 22 Juin, 2023. There are an estimated several hundred thousand illegal
immigrants in Canada. On the United States, see: J. S. Passel and J. M. Krogstad, “What we
know about unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, November
16, 2023. The estimated number of illegal immigrants in the US is over 10 million, consti-
tuting between 3 and 4 percent of the total population.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 441

sides of a contradiction: citizenship provides the appearance of common

interests in what is a system of inherent civil conflict.
The chief purpose of citizenship, it follows, is to mitigate internal class
conflict, to oppose class identity, to defend against external competition,
and to maintain a supply of labour befitting the structure of national capi-
tal. To this end, it prescribes an official language or languages, rights,
obligations, and in some cases a dominant religion that together compro-
mise a national identity.
Instrumentalization. Until the late twentieth century, the combination
of factors that amounted to citizenship could not pretend to be held
equally by all members of society. In the ancient world, it was a means of
privileging those with sufficient wealth to constitute a material interest in
the system and to be able to afford the armaments necessary for its defence.
But more than just affirming the existing privileges of the wealthy, citizen-
ship also served to validate the class and gender structure by attaching
differential rights and obligations usually according to degree and source
of wealth,51 which also translated into class biases.
By the late twentieth century, citizenship, along with universal suffrage,
appeared and afforded, more or less equally, rights and obligations to all
adult members of society, but long-standing barriers and inequalities per-
sist. Modern citizenship continues to be used in the same way as citizen-
ship in the ancient world, namely to privilege the wealthy and to manipulate
the structure of the productive classes, now working classes, in a way to
address the needs of capital. Because the advantages of contemporary
changes to citizenship for the rich and the corporate sector have produced
a large body of analysis and commentary,52 we will focus our comments on

51
Citizenship in ancient Greece and Rome never conferred completely equal rights to all
adults, and its different forms never lasted more than a few score years before being changed
by conquests and revolts. Women were not included, and the productive classes (slaves, arti-
sans, peasants) were subject to staged and divergent limited rights. See: P. J. Rhodes (ed.),
The Greek City States, A Source Book, Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1986
(54–60 and 96–113).
52
A. Shachar, ‘Citizenship for Sale?,’ in A. Shachar, R. Bauboeck, I. Bloemraad, and
M. Vink (eds.),The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
(789–816); L. Mavelli, ‘Citizenship for Sale and the Neoliberal Political Economy of
Belonging,’ International Studies Quarterly, 62, 2018 (482–493); K. Surak, ‘Millionaire
mobility and the sale of citizenship,’ in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 47,
No.1, 2021 (166–189); R. Baubock, ‘What is Wrong with Selling Citizenship? It Corrupts
Democracy!’ in R. Baubock (ed.), Debating Transformations of National Citizenship,
Springer Open, 2018 (37–41).
442 G. TEEPLE

the use of rights associated with citizenship to turn the working classes
against themselves in the interests of capital.
The use of citizenship to discriminate against women stands out as one
of the most obvious, pervasive, and long-term methods to divide the
working classes. Until the second half of the twentieth century, the major-
ity of women in the world were not conferred the full rights of citizenship
held by men;53 among other prohibitions, they were often denied the right
to vote and prevented from owning real estate and businesses.54 Even
when their entry into the labour market changed their property and vot-
ing rights, citizenship for women remain in many countries restricted by
marriage, pregnancy, and children’s rights in ways not affecting men.55
The laws regarding labour relations remain biased against workers.
Rights particular to workers have never not been under attack, but never-
theless they were won incrementally until the 1980s when they notably
began to be undermined. The laws regarding employment standards have
been eroded, unemployment insurance reduced, collective bargaining
hampered, strike laws increasingly restricted, and wage increases state-­
regulated. All these trends reduce the living standards of workers to the
benefit of the corporate sector.56
The size and structure of labour market are all important as means of
accumulating wealth and defence/expansion of national territory, and citi-
zenship is manipulated to these ends. Programs have been designed to
provide a ‘floor’ to the labour market, which is kept as low as possible by
53
M. F. Katzenstein, ‘Re-Dividing Citizens – Divided Feminisms: The Reconfigured
U.S. State and Women’s Citizenship,’ in L. A. Banaszak, K. Beckwith, D. Ruch (eds.),
Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
54
I. van Steveren, ‘Global finance and gender,’ in J. A. Scholte and A. Schnabel (eds.),
Civil Society and Global Finance, New York: Routledge, 2002 (228–243).
55
J. Gelb and M. L. Palley, Women and public policy: reassessing gender politics,
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996; J. Pahl, Private Violence and Public Policy,
the needs of battered women and the responses of the public services, London: Routledge, 2016
(1985); J. C. Merrick and R. H. Blank (eds.), The Politics of Pregnancy: Policy Dilemmas in
Maternal-Fetal Relationships, New York: Routledge, 2013 (1993). These three books,
among many others, cover a range of legal rights and policies that continue to discriminate
against women in the late twentieth century. Very little has changed in the twenty-first
century.
56
B. Evans, C. Fanelli, L. Panitch, D. Swartz, From Consent to Coercion: the Continuing
Assault on Labour, Fourth Edition, University of Toronto Press, 2023; R. N. Block,
S. Friedman, M. Kaminski, A. Levin (eds.), Justice on the Job: Perspectives on the Erosion of
Collective Bargaining in the United States, Upjohn Press, 2006.
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 443

employing large numbers of temporary foreign workers and illegal immi-

grants, largely unprotected by employment laws, minimum wages,
union membership, and employer discrimination, thereby maintaining a
sizeable section of the labour market constantly fearing deportation, fines,
wage theft, or imprisonment.

The Decline of Suffrage and Citizenship

Suffrage and citizenship were needed to legitimize and fulfil the rule of
capital in its national stage of development. They represent two main ways
by which the relation between civil society and the state has been institu-
tionalized in modern liberal democracy. Universal suffrage has provided
the electoral pretence of a people as sovereign, and citizenship has com-
prised the set of rights, obligations, and identity necessary to tie the whole
of the marketplace society, especially the working classes, to the interests
of national capital, the underlying rationale of the nation-state.
But capital, as the independent variable in our capitalist world, does not
stand still; its development has been continuous, and its national ‘moment’
could not last forever. Paradoxically, the rapid economic development in
the first three postwar decades produced the most complete realization of
the political and social rights, the Keynesian welfare state, that were to be
attained in the industrial nations. But underlying this development was
another movement, the globalization of capital. By the early 1980s, the
demands of global capital in the shape of neoliberal policies began to be
adopted by all the industrial nations; the world economy was increasingly
characterized by global value and production chains, not by trade and
commerce between nations.57 Global corporations and their regulatory
agencies were becoming their own main representatives in the accumula-
tion process on the world stage, superseding the role of national
governments.
The premise of national politics was disappearing. The liberal demo-
cratic state could not do otherwise than introduce neoliberal policies to
maintain its character as the political system for capital. By promoting
neoliberalism, however, it was becoming a national political system repre-
senting global capital; it was a set of institutional structures from the past
national stage of capital development, structures whose rationale had

57
Adrian Smith, ‘The state, institutional frameworks and the dynamics of capital in global
production networks,’ Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 39 (3), 2015 (290–315).
444 G. TEEPLE

outgrown it. It could no longer respond with national policies to address

national demands from the working classes or other strata that were pecu-
liar to the nation. It was obliged to introduce policies that increasingly
retrenched the established postwar welfare state, namely, all the social
rights benefiting the working classes.
Given this postwar development, suffrage, the electoral process that
provided the ‘people’ with the sense of sovereignty, progressively lost its
meaning. With the erosion of its rationale and the growth of global big
business, the legislature could no longer maintain the illusion of being the
site of the ‘people’s business’ but could be seen increasingly as a venue for
the business of global corporations. The evidence has not been hard to
find. Legislative members have been bought, elections marked by perpet-
ual scandals, the principle of ‘imperative mandate’ outlawed, and the elec-
torate has become deeply cynical about the political process.
Citizenship has also become less meaningful. This contrived official
membership in a marketplace society has reflected the characteristics of the
accumulation process particular to a national capital formation. With the
growing dominance of global capital, however, the world has succumbed
more and more to global commodification, with its accompanying cultural
homogenization or hybridization of most aspects of everyday life, and the
expansion of foreign travel, tourism, and overseas retirement. Certain
regions of the world have opened borders between adjacent countries cre-
ating economic unions within which living, working, and travel are more
or less unhindered by national barriers. The European Union is an obvi-
ous example. The destruction or division of entire nations through the
wars instigated by the United States and NATO powers in Africa (Libya),
the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine), and even in Europe
(Yugoslavia, Ukraine) has produced many millions of refugees, migrants,
and stateless people, all of whom will understand that it is easier to be
dispossessed of citizenship than to find it again.58

58
The millions of dispossessed become useful tools in the foreign and domestic policies of
nation-states; consider, for example, the Palestinians, the Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis, among
many others. United Nations, Refugee Agency, Global Trends: ‘World at War’, 2015
(https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/worldwide-displacement-hits-all-time-high-war-
and-persecution-increase). This report released on June 18, 2015, said, “worldwide displace-
ment was at the highest level ever recorded.” It said, “the number of people forcibly displaced
at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year
earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago.”
 10 SUFFRAGE AND CITIZENSHIP 445

Citizenship is not only about belonging to a nation, but also about

being separated from other nations. It can be seen as dividing the world’s
working classes, hobbling them with national regulations and restrictions,
and even persisting beliefs in national superiority. Labour legislation
defines the labour market in national terms. Trade union rights (to strike,
to organize, negotiate contracts, to demonstrate, etc.), employment stan-
dards, immigration policies, and so on have been minimized by the needs
of national capital while promoted by the struggles of labour.
Although labour legislation remains national in application, its retrench-
ment comes to reflect the interests of global capital. Its national definition
presents a barrier to class solidarity across nations, while its shrinking pro-
visions help to level cross-national differences for capital. The corporate
sector, by contrast, has more or less eliminated barriers for itself by means
of a long history of international commercial law, and since 1945 by global
agencies and treaties. The productive classes are confined by national leg-
islation, with decreasing control over its content, while the elites and man-
agers of capital work within global regulatory regimes outside the
jurisdictions of national states, and they move more or less at will across
nations open to investment.
If we accept that the defining characteristic of capitalist society is the
contradiction between capital and labour, we can see that citizenship plays
an important role in this conflict. The world’s population is defined by
citizenship, which is synonymous with a national identity, but not all of
identity derives from this political construct. The overwhelming majority
are also employees, workers whose interests are the antithesis of those of
capital. To be a citizen, however, is to be detached from the working
classes of other nations by labour legislation and national identity, accom-
panied by the sense of sovereignty in political structures created to serve
the needs of national capital but now active in the service of global capital.
Corporate managers, by contrast, actively work with one another across
nations following the mobility and rights of capital, defined by global rules
and regulations.
The process of global capital accumulation allows for its managers to
cut across national barriers of citizenship and regulations, to develop a
global consciousness befitting global capital, while citizenship forestalls the
working classes from international solidarity and class consciousness in
their confrontation with the global corporate sector.
446 G. TEEPLE

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 CHAPTER 11

Political Parties: The Bridge Between State

and Civil Society

The institutional bridges between the state and civil society are comprised
of suffrage, election, and citizenship, but these formal rights and practices
do not provide for the content, the partisan ideas and plans that become
government policies and programmes. Political parties are the mechanisms
that provide the content to the electoral process and the means by which
the political rights of citizens are exercised.

Why Political Parties?

The state, we have argued, is the product of contradictory relations that
define civil society. It exists separately from civil society because of the
nature of these relations: the unequal powers and social conflict that con-
stitute civil society oblige an external administration of its defining rela-
tions. The form and content of the state necessarily reflect these relations.
Just as medieval parliaments were comprised of representatives of nobility
and clergy as reflections of the prevailing but conflicted forms of property,
so too the parliaments of the Renaissance came to include representatives
of the mercantile bourgeoisie as personifications of forms of accumulating
private property, and the parliaments of the era of industrial capitalism
were obliged to include representatives of capital and the working class as
reflections of the centrality of the contested property relations between
the two. The content of state policies and programmes has always derived

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 449

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_11
450 G. TEEPLE

their overall characteristics from the dominant forms of conflicting prop-

erty relations.1
The relation of the state to civil society, it follows, is explained in part
by the very nature of state: because its existence is a manifestation of
antagonistic private property relations, its form and content cannot but be
a complement to those relations. The state as reflection of the prevailing
property relations in civil society accounts for the most general framework
of relations that the state exists to sustain and the most general structure
of the state itself.2 The specific characteristics of the form and content of
the state in a given period, however, must be explained by the particulari-
ties that define civil society in that period. It is the outcome of these con-
tests and struggles that determines the particularities of modern private
property whose embodiments seek political expression.
As the divisions of civil society evolve over time, so too do the property
relations that reflect those divisions. When the number of citizens socially
defined by them achieves a certain critical mass, their common interests
search for a representational form and political expression.3 Hence the rise
and fall of political parties over time reflects the development of class inter-
ests. Farmers, shopkeepers, independent professionals, technocrats, indus-
trial workers, incorporated capital, and so on, all have had political parties
of their own, but many no longer do because as a class or strata they no
longer exist in significant numbers or possess sufficient coherency to con-
stitute a noteworthy set of interests.
Come the nineteenth century, capital produced the working class,
which became the largest class and necessary to capital production, but
without capital for itself except as labour-power dependent on employ-
ment. For its well-being, this class could find some of its immediate inter-
ests addressed in the form of social reforms inside the system, but its
essential interests have always existed outside the system in the form of the

1
Duverger makes the case that there were always ‘factions’ or interest groups at the forma-
tion of modern liberal democracies and over time they became increasingly organized and
institutionalized like modern parties. M. Duverger, Political Parties, Methuen, 1959, pp.
xxiii–xxxv.
2
W. N. Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation, The American Experience, 1776–1809,
New York: Oxford University Press 1963; C. A. Beard, The American Party Battle,
Macmillan, 1928, see especially Chap. 1.
3
S.M. Lipset writes that “in every modern democracy conflict among different groups is
expressed through political parties which basically represent a ‘democratic translation of the
class struggle.’” S. M. Lipset, Political Man, New York: Anchor Books, p. 220.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 451

collective ownership of the means of production.4 The former set of inter-

ests can be and has been represented by any party within the system,5 but
it would be contradictory to find political parties within the system that
represent the latter interests. To realize those interests means overturning
of the system of corporate private property. In the eyes of existing govern-
ments these parties are usually taken as subversive, seditious, or treason-
ous, and they have often been prosecuted as such. For the most part,
communist or socialist parties in most capitalist countries have suffered at
one time or another with prohibition and prosecution of their organiza-
tions, and incarceration or banishment of their members.

Origin of Political Parties.

If the origin of political parties lies in the conflicting property relations of
classes and strata in civil society, then, the basis of political parties has
existed as long as class relations have existed, and no elaborate explanation
is needed.6 That is, no explanation unless one begins by analysing political
parties from the fictional starting point of social contract theories and the
vision of civil society as the sphere of the atomized individual.
Such is the problem of explaining political parties in certain mainstream
political studies, especially those resting on a pluralist paradigm. The dif-
ficulty is usually posed like this: if civil society is taken simply as an ‘empiri-
cal generality’—a term referring to the complete individualization of

4
Immediate interests are those that pertain to the well-being of the working class as the
working class, dependent and exploited, which can be accommodated as reforms, as part of
the accumulation process. Essential interests are those of the productive class as the over-
whelming majority to control the social product as their own as an autonomous collectivity,
the realization of which can only come about outside the system of private property.
5
While any party can address these immediate interests of the working class, such interests
have been more central to the policies of social democratic parties than others; since about
1980, however, the social reforms addressing these interests have been increasingly
retrenched or left largely undefended by all parties.
6
Here is Plutarch’s description of Athens at the time of Solon: “The city was divided into
as many parties as there were geographical features in its territory. The party of the Hill sup-
ported an extreme democracy, the Plain an extreme oligarchy, while the Shore formed a third
party, which wanted a mixed form of government…” And this was not to mention, “inequal-
ities between the rich and poor” that had “come to a head.” Ian Scott-Kilvert (trans.), The
Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives by Plutarch, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969,
p. 54. The word ‘party’ would probably be better translated as ‘factions’ given that civil
society is always defined by factions, which call for political expression.
452 G. TEEPLE

interests—without the means to bring some order to this plethora of dif-

ferences, an obvious dilemma arises. Can civil society as so many compet-
ing individuals arrive at agreement sufficient to legislate, or must civil
society so defined participate in government through representative politi-
cal parties and their delegates?
Because the first possibility is arguably not plausible or feasible if there
are no means to group the individual interests within civil society, the sec-
ond is seen as self-evident and the necessary way out of the dilemma. And
because representation by political parties is then taken as unquestionable,
the problem of their origin is taken as an obvious practical necessity and
nothing more need be said. The question of representation in modern
democratic theory does not usually address the meaning of representation
in itself or the significance of representation by political parties. Instead, it
becomes a question of numbers or of the structure of representation.7 The
issue becomes the meaning of ‘fair’ representation, the number of repre-
sentatives per unit of the population, or the percentages required to win an
election, or the method of their election, such as first-past-the-post, or
proportional representation (PR), and so on.8
Cast in this way, the dilemma—whether the citizenry participate as so
many individuals or through political parties—has no bearing on the lack
of an actual link with the government. As long as modern society remains
political, that is, a separated whole and parts, government remains the
embodiment and guardian of the prevailing property relations and civil
society remains the realm of conflicting property relations. The fictional
dilemma is resolved by pointing to political parties, but the political
remains.9

7
F. Pukelsheim, Proportional Representation: Apportionment, Methods and Their
Applications, Springer International Publishing 2014; A. Blais and L. Massicotte, “Mixed
Electoral Systems: An Overview,” Representation, Vol. 33, Issue 4, 1996, (…); and A. Blais
and L. Massicotte, “Electoral Systems,” Comparing Democracies, 2 (1996) (40–69).
8
Experiments with PR can be found in the early nineteenth century; sometimes they were
introduced as a corrective to the corruption of the legislative branch or to political control
by the ‘party machine’ or ‘party boss,’ and sometimes to offset the resulting large disparities
between seats won and votes cast in ‘first-past-the-post’ systems.
9
There has never in reality been such a dilemma; civil society has never been the fictitious
‘state of nature,’ it has always been defined by a relative degree of commonality amongst
types of competing property holders. From the beginning of liberal democracy such group-
ings were present as characteristic of civil society of the era: in England, they took the form
of the Whigs and Tories; in the USA, Republicans and Federalists; and in France, the
Montagnards and Girondins. These political divisions shifted over time as the struggle for
domination waxed and waned and different forms of property came and went. Even the
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 453

Representation
Political parties are the principal means by which civil society is repre-
sented in the legislature. It is as members of political parties that members
of the legislature are elected, not as individuals.10 The main form of repre-
sentation of the people is mediation by political parties: between the leg-
islative task of government and the people stands the political party. It is
through political parties that the members of civil society realize their con-
stitutional connection with the state. It is this mediated relation that lies at
the heart of representation in liberal democracy.
The most obvious implication of representation as mediation is that the
political right to representation of a citizenry becomes in effect the privi-
lege of mediating political parties. Political rights become merely the right
to choose one party over another, not to participate actively in the pro-
cesses of governing. The notion that the citizen has a constitutionally
guaranteed political right to representation is contradicted in practice by
this political right becoming the right of political parties. The political
rights of the citizen extend no further than the right to cast a ballot, stand
for election, or petition the government, but all arbitrated through politi-
cal parties or other mediating organizations.
Another consequence is that the electorate do not choose their repre-
sentatives but choose from those already chosen by political parties, that
is, the representatives are themselves chosen through privileged means.
Since party discipline is fundamental to the integrity of the party, once
elected the legislator must follow the dictates of the party or party leader,

vague distinction between ‘left’ and ‘right’ that arose during the French Revolution pointed
to the broad implicit political alternatives for civil society that have always characterized lib-
eral democracies between the productive classes and capital, between reform and market
orthodoxy. This is not the definition made by Bobbio, but for his attempt, see: N. Bobbio,
Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction, Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 1996.
All the early liberal democratic constitutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
were constructed by factions of conflicting interests of capital, and so they were united in
their intent to have a constitution that allowed for their competition over control of the
public purse and policy. The early nineteenth century saw the arrival of countervailing prop-
erty relations in the form of the working class, and its demand for social reforms and party
representation and later even revolution.
10
That is, other than the referenda, an institution that does appear in some constitutions.
But referenda are invariably restricted to certain situations and nowhere constitute the gen-
eral mechanism for bridging the divide between government and civil society. Occasionally,
legislators have been elected as ‘independents,’ but this has never been the norm.
454 G. TEEPLE

on pain of dismissal from the caucus or denial of party financing.11 The

idea that the legislature represents the people can be seen to be, shall we
say, overstated.
Not only do the elected representatives have a primary obligation to
the party, but they also have no constitutional obligation to represent their
constituents mobilized for the election. In some jurisdictions, such as the
European Union, member states and the Union itself prohibit any regula-
tion regarding the imperative mandate, the principle that obliges elected
representatives to represent their constituents.12 Even if there were no
prohibition of the imperative mandate, there is only rarely official sanction
for the principle and practice, and moreover, if representatives sincerely
wanted to represent their constituencies, they would be unable to do so
because in liberal democratic practice the constituency is nothing more
than so many ballots cast each representing a single unidentified atomized
interest. Theoretically, in liberal democracy there is no such thing as a self-­
consistent constituency. A plurality of votes for a candidate chosen by a
party is the closest the electoral system can come to demonstrating a uni-
formity, but pluralities are open to wide interpretation, and plurality bears
no relation to consonance.
Representation in the form of political party mediation means that the
relation between civil society and the state is in fact a relation between
only those interests that have been aggregated by parties and the state.
These interests may well not represent all the interests or for that matter
even the majority interest in society. It is entirely possible to find that none
of the mainstream political parties, or even all the parties taken as a whole,
can plausibly make a claim to represent the interests of the majority of the
citizenry.
11
T. Troughton, ‘Cracking the Whip: The UK’s Party Control System’ [https://consoc.
org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Cracking-the-Whip.pdf]; C. L. Evans, The Whips:
Building Party Coalitions in Congress, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018;
S. Bailer, ‘To use the whip or not: Whether and when party groups leaders use disciplinary
measures to achieve voting unity,’ International Political Science Review, Vol. 39 (2), 2018
(163–177).
12
The use of the ‘party whip’ and the prohibition of the imperative mandate make the
concept of representation more than problematic; one might say the electorate elects a time-
limited dictatorship. This prohibition is expressly stated in the French Constitution of 1791,
and its twisted logic turns representation of the electorate into the ‘freedom’ of representa-
tives to act on their own accord. See: O. Kirchheimer, “Changes in the Structure of Political
Compromise,” in A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (eds.), The Essential Frankfurt Reader,
New York: Continuum Publishing, 1982, p. 50. See also: Footnotes 14 and 15 in Chap. 8
for references to the European law on the imperative mandate.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 455

Choice as Democracy. If voting for a representative is the limit of partici-

pation for the majority, then, liberal democracy becomes little more than
a question of the choice of political party. But this is the choice of existing
parties officially validated in one way or another, and of already chosen
candidates, and of previously determined party platforms. Democracy
defined as choice would seem to be the choice of prescribed choices. A
highly circumscribed form of democracy, it might be said.

Party Formats: Brokerage Parties, Party

Proliferation, and One-Party Dominance
If choice of party is the hallmark of liberal democracy, what does it mean
when there is little or no choice? What if the choice is over nominal or
inconsequential alternatives, or a plethora of options focused on periph-
eral or topical issues, or is restricted by a single dominant party even in the
face of alternatives? What if the question of identifiable class interests dis-
appeared as a choice? The structure of the choices of political parties
becomes itself a question of representation.
If political parties represent the aggregation of different key interests in
civil society, the question of the choice of political party begins with what
are the preeminent interests that frame all the lesser interests. After World
War II, for instance, the postwar conditions allowed the development of
capitalism to tolerate the political expression of the immediate interests of
the working class in the form of the Keynesian welfare state, and together,
these postwar conditions and Keynesianism produced an era marked by
probably the highest standard of living for the working class in the indus-
trial world. The possibility of material plenty for the working class pro-
vided capitalism with what seemed to be a ‘human face’ and mitigated the
conflicts between labour and capital, even giving rise to notions of the
‘end of ideology’ and the ‘end of history,’13 with liberal democracy as the
official road to these ends. If social democratic parties seemed most prom-
inent in the promotion of Keynesianism, parties of all political stripes con-
tributed to the patch-work social reforms of the era—the highest
achievement of working-class struggles as reforms within the system.

13
See: D. Bell (ed.), The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties,
News York: The Free Press, 1960; F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man,
New York: The Free Press, 1992.
456 G. TEEPLE

During this same period, however, the global growth of capital began
to undermine the continuing expansion of Keynesian policies, a growth
that ended about 1980, spurred by the adoption of the retrenchment poli-
cies of neoliberalism, promoted by representative agencies and institutions
of global capital leaving little room for political variations. In effect, the
main determinants of political policy had moved beyond the reach of
national class forces and their political forms, making the policies of
retrenchment the main political choice. All political parties fell into line,
including social democratic parties, which quickly rid their constitutions
of any mention of socialism. After China adopted the ‘capitalist road’ in
1979 and the Soviet Union (USSR) followed in the mid-1980s with ‘per-
estroika’ and ‘glasnost,’ the communist parties of Europe dropped their
revolutionary rhetoric and attempted to find a place in the newly emerging
political landscape.14 But their shift to social reformism was too late;
Keynesian policies favourable to the working-class were off the new
agenda, and neoliberal policies advancing the interests of global capital
were the main choices on offer.15
The choice of political parties could do little else but follow the political
demands from agencies of global capital. The choices were narrowed to
variations on neoliberalism and the speed of Keynesian retrenchment
because the dominant forms of capital had moved to the global arena
where they faced few restrictions to their expansion, while constitutional
politics remained national where the political leverage of the working-class
majority, once a significant factor in determining political choice, was pro-
gressively lost in the rush to embrace neoliberalism.16

14
The success of Keynesianism for the working-class in the West helped to bring an end to
the attempts to build socialism in China and Russia, and at the same time undermined sup-
port for the left-wing political movements and analysis in the West. The 1980s saw dramatic
changes to political policy across the world.
15
G. Esping-Andersen, among others, has tried to make a case for European capitalism as
‘regulated’ or ‘organized’ and defined by a more expansive welfare state compared to the
market-oriented social reforms found in Anglo-American countries. See: G. Esping-
Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. The
twenty-first century has not been kind to this thesis; neoliberal policies of retrenchment have
made the same mark on governments across the world. See: T. Piketty and A. Goldhammer,
Capital in the 21st Century, Harvard University Press, 2014; K. D. Ewing, “The Death of
Social Europe,” in King’s Law Journal, 26:1 2015 (76–98).
16
Gary Marks, et al, ‘The Social Basis of Political Parties: A New Measure and Survey,’ in
British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 53, 2023 (249–260), the authors wrote about parties
in the twenty-first century: there is a “decline of the class and religious cleavages among the
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 457

The shift from the postwar era of Keynesianism to neoliberalism was

not so difficult as might be expected between such diametrically opposite
sets of policy because after the war the difference between party policies
was more or less Keynesianism, or more or less welfare state, not two or
more clearly opposing policies. After the 1980s, it was the same with neo-
liberalism: its greater or lesser acceptance by all parties. At the time, adop-
tion of neoliberal policies by the main parties was made more tolerable
because they were popularly understood as reversible if social democratic
parties were elected, an idea promoted by these parties and still harboured
by many despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
The narrow range of political choice in the postwar era of Keynesianism
was largely carried over into the limited structure of political choice of the
neoliberal era. The forms remained similar, the content made an about-­
face from labour-friendly to capital-dominant. As characteristic of the lim-
ited choices available from the Keynesian to the neoliberal eras, three
existing political party formats took shape: brokerage parties, multi-­
parties, and one-party dominant systems. Variations on a theme, it could
be said.
Brokerage Parties. These parties are often labelled “all-in” or “catch-­
all” or “big-tent” parties. They are now found in the party systems of most
nations, although the longest lasting and clearest example is probably the
two-party system of the United States. Both parties are cast as brokerage
parties, making it difficult to detect significant policy differences between
them.17 The same could be said of some other countries, in particular, the
United Kingdom and its Labour and Conservative Parties.18

mainstream political parties,” the “structure of political conflict has shifted markedly in
Western democracies.” p. 249.
17
In his first term of office, President Obama (2009–2013), a Democrat, retained from the
preceding Bush administration, Republican, the Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and the
head of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ben Bernanke, arguably the most important state appoint-
ments controlling military and monetary policies, the two centre-pieces of US global hege-
mony, and suggesting very limited if any policy change in those portfolios and an implicit
overarching uniformity in policy between the Democrats and Republicans. Vitoria Nuland,
before resigning from the Biden administration in 2024 as acting Under Secretary of State,
served as a high official in the US State Department under 6 presidents and 10 different
Secretaries of State.
18
For the transition from Thatcherism to New Labour, see: E. A. Reitan, Margaret
Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and the Transformation of Modern Britain, 1979–2001,
Oxford: Roman and Littlefield, 2003.
458 G. TEEPLE

The main problem with such parties is that by virtue of being “all-in”
they negate their meaning as a party, an organization that aggregates the
common interests of a portion of the electorate under the banner of a
certain set of policies. Parties exist because civil society is an arena of con-
flicting particular interests. The brokerage party, however, purports to be
open to all, to represent all positions, and accordingly promotes some ill-­
defined generic, all-inclusive, or nonspecific policies. By definition, the
“catch-all” party cannot be a party: to be all is not to be a party, what it
claims to be it cannot be.19
The quality of being “all-in” implies that no significant policy differ-
ences exist amongst the categories of the exclusive property relations of
civil society. This clearly cannot be the case. Competitive private property
is nothing if not conflictive; these differences are the foundation of com-
peting parties that define politics and liberal democracy. The idea of an
“all-in” party suggests that civil society is an arena of uniform parts hold-
ing a common interest. But if this were the case, there would be no need
for any party at all, let alone two or more competing parties or contested
elections. Furthermore, the brokerage function is as intermediary between
sectors of civil society and the state: the meaning of brokerage is to repre-
sent all the parts as parts, not as a resolution of the multiple conflicts in
civil society. And so civil society remains as it was before the purported
“catch-all” representation: the sphere of antagonistic competition.
The assumption that all can find their interests under one “big tent,”
moreover, obfuscates the fundamental division in civil society between
labour and capital, the divide that implies conflict over the system itself. If
all classes and strata are included in one party, the issue of class disappears
in the “big tent,” and this defining contradiction is lost like all the other
issues in this pretence of representation. What are not lost are the over-
arching prevailing interests that mark and frame national policy formation
across the globe. Brokerage parties work to obviate the need for specific
class-based parties and policies, a function that may well be their most
significant role in liberal democracy.
Multi-party Systems and Proportional Representation. One major effect
of postwar Keynesianism was to give capitalism a ‘human face’ and obscure
the class question with the ‘upward mobility’ that came with increases in
material wealth and public services. In the postwar era, the idea of class

19
A. P. M. Krouwel, “Otto Kirchheimer and the catch-all party,” West European Politics,
26(2), 2003, (23–40).
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 459

conflict was disparaged, even dismissed, and the goal of a socialist future
discredited by associating it with a police state or the excesses of the
Chinese ‘cultural revolution.’ By 1980 the era of neoliberalism opened
with new concerns and debates over the environment, welfare, immigra-
tion, feminism, and rights for trade unions, ethnic and minority groups,
indigenous peoples, among others. While all these issues have merit and
deserve to be addressed, none stand as a fundamental challenge to the
system. All are products of the ‘externalities’ of the capitalist mode of
production;20 and all can be dealt with or even solved, theoretically at
least, within the system. Except for disingenuous and insubstantial reforms,
however, none have been, which should give pause for thought.
With the idea of class conflict held in disdain, the critique of capitalism
fractured into as many positions as there were issues stemming from the
externalities of industrial production, all with their own validity but all
posed as resolvable within the system that was cast as reformable. Each
issue had its constituents and soon political organizations, but as small
organizations with small constituencies they met with little electoral suc-
cess in ‘winner-take-all’ elections, and so arose the complaint of a lack of
‘fair representation,’ the underlying rationale for the renewal and expan-
sion of ‘proportional representation.’21
The contemporary argument for proportional representation arose
from this growth of multiple parties and their demand for fair representa-
tion in legislatures as well as executive branches. It implies a political sys-
tem more accountable and representative of different interests and political
priorities than is possible with the reduction of political interests that
catch-all parties and winner-take-all electoral systems bring. If more issues
and interests can be represented, then, more democracy, so the argument
runs. But the logic of this argument is burdened, shall we say, by the

20
Externalities is an economic term for the pre- and post-production costs of commodities
that are not included in the price but are off-loaded to the state or more often to individuals
for the benefit of corporate shareholders. They take the forms of environmental destruction,
climate change, degraded health and medical care, low wages, discrimination against women,
violation of indigenous land claims, antagonistic labor relations, and so on.
21
Among other early histories of the system, see: J. R. Commons, Proportional
Representation, Boston: Thomas Y. Cromwell and Co. 1896. The use of PR in the US fell
into disfavor in the 1920s and 1930s, partly because it created difficulties for corporate con-
trol of city politics and use of the debt, and partly because it opened the door to minority and
left-wing political expression. See: D. J. Amy, “The Forgotten History of the Single
Transferable Vote in the United States,” in Representation 34, no. 1, (Winter 1996/7).
460 G. TEEPLE

equation of democracy with the proliferation of interests and parties.22

Such an association, however, does not imply greater accountability or
people’s empowerment.
The proliferation of parties and policies goes a long way to obscuring
the overarching prevailing property that dominates state policy. Political
debate becomes focused on important but peripheral matters that define
the different parties rather than the central issue of the policy framework
that is neoliberalism, not to mention the ‘forever wars’ that it has come to
promote. Without an understanding of the blanket policy frame within
which these multiple parties exist, which creates the problems that are the
focus of their attention, their issues cannot be addressed, let alone resolved.
Proportional representation facilitates the fracturing of a critical under-
standing of capitalism and the continuing expansion of war, and so pre-
vents the unification of resistance to the system and war, a resistance that
would intensify if civil society were not politically defined by multiple
issues but rather resolved into two political camps of labour and capital.
Instead, proportional representation works to support the careers of many
one-issue politicians, whose grip on small parties and narrow issues is sup-
ported by state financing, the life-blood of small parties.23 The net effect
of proportional representation is to miss the forest for the trees, which
means none of the many parties take a position critical of capitalism and its
neoliberal policies, or on the preparation and support for war.24
One-Party Dominant Systems. This is a reference to those liberal democ-
racies in which one party has held power for long periods, sometimes
spanning several decades, despite regular elections and alternative party
choices. Lengthy periods of political dominance have also been held by
party coalitions or marked by two-party duopolies with periodic

22
The idea of PR is that the distribution of party representatives in the legislature corre-
sponds to the distribution of votes cast for these parties by the electorate. If this is democracy,
then, democracy is not much more than a matter of ‘apportionment methods,’ as implied by
much research on the topic. See, for instance, F. Pukelsheim, Proportional Representation:
Apportionment Methods and Their Application, Springer International Publishing 2014.
23
See D. P. Kommers, “Politics and Jurisprudence in West Germany: State Financing of
Political Parties,” in American Journal of Jurisprudence, 16, 1971 (215–241).
24
There are several undemocratic implications of PR, but one of the main ones is the com-
plexity of the voting and vote apportioning systems, which seem to perplex most, except
those in charge. Aside from complexity, which opens the door to manipulation, PR does not
avoid the problems of the lack of the imperative mandate or its prohibition, or the mediating
role of political parties over which the electorate has no power. And it does not address the
unaccountability of the elected representatives between elections.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 461

alternations in power. The examples of Sweden, Italy, Japan, and Israel as

one-­party dominant regimes for much of the post-World War II era have
been well documented.25 The United States, Great Britain, and India are
all marked by two-party duopolies, whose alternations in power have
amounted to little more than minor differences in social reforms.
All these forms of political dominance—coalitions and one-or two-­
party dominant systems—may be considered forms of “catch-all” repre-
sentative systems. The choice of policy difference is negligible, more
apparent than real, a conclusion that draws us back to criticisms made of
brokerage parties above. These “all-in” party forms belie their function as
parties; what they offer the electorate is an illusion, a choice that is not a
choice.26
This reasoning leads to another problem. Before and after 1980, there
has hardly been a liberal democracy that has not seen coalition govern-
ments over many terms of office.27 These coalitions, along with one-and-
two-party dominant systems, characterize most of the world’s liberal
democratic governments, and minimize or eliminate the possibility of
choice. If, however, liberal democracy is defined by a meaningful choice of
political party representation, these non-choices or largely illusory choices
would seem to call into question their claim to be democracies.
The Formats of Political Choice. This long-term and pervasive domi-
nance of coalitions or one or two parties in power in most liberal democra-
cies calls for some accounting. How is it that political rule in liberal
democracies has come to be so narrowly circumscribed? How do we

25
T. J. Pempel (ed.), Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1990.
26
“All-in” party systems homogenize dissent and conflict; multiple parties and PR systems
make plurality of choice a virtue while ending in coalition governments, obscuring the over-
arching dominant framework and fragmenting resistance to the system as a whole.
27
L. W. Martin and G. Vanberg, “Coalition Government, Legislative Institutions, and
Public Policy in Parliamentary Democracies,” in American Journal of Political Science, Vol.
64, No. 2, April 2020 (325–340). The authors begin: “Most democracies are governed by
coalitions, comprising multiple political parties with conflicting policy positions.” S. B. Hobolt
and J. A. Karp, “Voters and coalition governments,” in Electoral Studies, 29, 2010
(299–307). The authors write: “Coalition governments are the norm in parliamentary
democracies.” M. Laver and N. Schofield, Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalitions
in Europe, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1998; P. Warwick, “The Durability of
Coalition Governments in Parliamentary Democracies,” in Comparative Political Studies,
Vol.11, Issue. 4, 1979 (411–532).
462 G. TEEPLE

account for such restricted party choice dominating the political system
for such long periods of time, and what is the meaning of these formats?
The answer is to be found in the structure of national and world econo-
mies in the two historical periods after World War II mentioned earlier—
the Keynesian and neoliberal eras. In the former, foreign policy was defined
by the Cold War, military policy by NATO and other military and arms
procurement treaties, monetary policy by independent central banks and
the Bank of International Settlement (BIS), trade relations framed by the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), foreign exchange regu-
lated by the IMF, infrastructure construction by the World Bank, and
domestic social reproduction by limited Keynesian reforms. The world
economy was spurred by reconstruction, decolonization, newly open mar-
kets, and enormous increases in industrial productivity due to new war-­
related production methods. After 1980 and the widespread adoption of
neoliberalism, the national character of economies was further restricted
by deregulation, privatization, and outsourcing policies that significantly
reduced the national power and role of the state in every domain, opening
the door to interventions by global capital. Global capital came to control
investment potential and maintain oversight on national policies, regulat-
ing national debt by means of a highly concentrated global credit rating
industry.28
The list of restrictions could be much expanded, but the point is made:
there is not much room for national political parties to mount indepen-
dent platforms.29 The differences have become largely imaginary ones,
loudly touted at election time, but with no real significance afterwards. It
is not for no reason that the electorate has seemingly lost interest in
elections.30

28
The largest global credit rating agencies are Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch.
For a critical review of their role in the global economy, see: G, Ng and M. Mohamed,
“Credit Rating Controversy: A Review,” Journal of Insurance and Financial Management,
Vol. 4, Issue 3, 2021 (49–64). M. Hung, P. Kraft, S.Wang, G. Yu, “Market Power and Credit
Rating Standards: Global Evidence,” Journal of Accounting and Economics, Vol.73, Issue
2–3, April-May 2022.
29
That is, with a business sector that is organized in a way that minimizes competition or
structures competition, union leaders who benefit from this corporate stability and a quies-
cent workforce, and a state bureaucracy and politicians who have no other rationale than the
corporate sector’s needs.
30
See article by R. A. Katz and P. Mair, “Changing Models of Party Organization and
Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party,” Party Politics 1995. The ‘cartel party
thesis’ points to a seemingly increasingly collaborative relation between parties, a diminishing
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 463

The Relation of the Executive Branch

to Political Parties

If liberal democracy is defined as a choice of political parties representing

different policies, it could be said that in the early twenty-first century it
had run its course. There is no longer much choice on offer in any liberal
democracy. Most such governments are comprised of coalitions or “catch-­
all” parties or one or two dominant party systems, all of which have
homogenized dissent and obscured class conflict and inescapably endorsed
neoliberal policies. With these policies of global capital accepted by all par-
ties, political representation of the working classes as national entities has
become almost non-existent. The postwar social reform policies that
addressed some of the immediate interests of the working class are now
under constant retrenchment and the welfare state has long been declared
not affordable, leaving little political choice for the majority.
There is little if anything to distinguish the main parties, and yet they
persist. And they persist because of the importance of choice, even if more
imagined than real, as the foundation of political legitimacy. This is the
problem that the twenty-first century has presented for liberal democracy.
If capital has become represented by global agencies and institutions,
while labour has remained national and politically leaderless, political
choice for the majority no longer exists. What then becomes the role of
political parties, and what is the significance for liberal democracy? Part of
the answer lies in the relation of the executive branch to political parties.
There are two fundamental aspects to the relation between the execu-
tive and political parties. The most obvious is that generally the party that

link with civil society and party members, the professionalization of executives, and special
relations with state bureaucracies. The concept bears a resemblance to the “catch-all party”
concept of Otto Kirchheimer. Such linkages, however, have long existed; informal and for-
mal connections between dominant party systems, corporate organizations, union bureau-
cracies, and state officialdom can be found in most of the postwar liberal democracies.
Examples are numerous, but here are three key ones: in Japan, the Keiretsu, state bureaucra-
cies, and party officials have been very close since the late 1940s; in the US, President
Eisenhower warned of power of the military industrial complex in 1961; in the UK, the City
of London assumed even more political power after the Second World War than before. See:
J. McGuire, “Japanese keiretsu: Past, present, future,” Asia Pacific Journal of Management,
2009, 26 (333–351); J. Roelofs, The Trillion Dollar Silencer, Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2022;
and A. Davies, The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in
Post-war Britain, Oxford University Press, 2017.
464 G. TEEPLE

wins an election also gains the right to form the executive.31 The electoral
contest between parties is ultimately over the right to executive power,
and the candidates for leadership are chosen by the party. In other words,
the president or prime minister is chosen by the party not by the elector-
ate. Liberal democracy is rule by the party not by the people, a fact that
makes the platforms of the contesting parties of great significance to the
representatives of the prevailing property relations.
The other aspect follows, and it is significant to the understanding of
the role of political parties in modern liberal democracies. The executive is
the holder of a quasi-monopoly over the prevailing interests, which have
subordinated the general interest.32 But this monopoly rests on the separa-
tion of the whole and the parts, and it can exist only as long as the particu-
lar interests of civil society remain divided. Here, we see the dual role of
political parties: as ‘interest aggregators,’ they provide an organized
expression of certain interests, while at the same time they maintain these
many divisions as parties in the legislature or executive. In this way, parties
both give order to the disunities of civil society and objectify the differ-
ences, affirming the foundation of political relations.
These disunities arise for the most part from the differences that ema-
nate from conflicting property relations, and it is political parties that give
them a political life or suppress them or deny them a political existence.
The relations of property, however, are relatively fixed only for periods of
time. In modern society, they resolve themselves increasingly into only
two: the owners and non-owners of the means of production. And the
disparity in wealth between them grows with the increasing accumulation
of global corporate private property and its political dominance as revealed
by the ascendancy of neoliberal policies. All the more important to obscure
the interests of the working and capitalist classes by means of the ‘big-tent,’ or
PR, or one- or two-party dominance.

31
Even when presidential elections are separate from legislative elections, the contestants
are usually defined by party affiliation. If presidential candidates are not associated with a
party, they will possess another connection grander than the individual, be it to a past
achievement, a religion, the military, a unifying national vision, and so on.
32
By ‘quasi-monopoly’ we mean that presidents or prime ministers rarely have power over
the central bank or the judiciary, but their monopoly powers usually extend over the vast
state administrative offices of social reproduction, police, and the military. And by ‘general
interest’ we are referring to the interest of all while the ‘prevailing interests’ refer to the domi-
nant corporate property relations, which until the second half of the twentieth century were
national but are now the interests of global capital.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 465

As the majority of particular interests in civil society become ever more

similar in reality—as overwhelmingly wage earners—the role of political
parties changes. Parties become progressively more important for the
maintenance of divisions, raising to prominence a variety of peripheral
issues, while the immediate and essential interests of the working classes
are suppressed or denied. If these divisions were not maintained and the
majority of citizens were to recognize and attempt to realize their com-
mon interest, then, the monopoly over the whole by a party executive
would no longer be possible. Instead of the whole as the prevailing prop-
erty relations separate from the people, there would be a real existing
whole, the recognized common interests of the engaged majority.
The persistence of political parties, and indeed the conscious state pro-
motion of at least two, allows for the maintenance of the executive as the
monopoly of the estranged whole, the abstracted prevailing property rela-
tions. The key to political rule is the continuing division of the electorate
when the actual divisions of civil society are increasingly diminished. As
long as civil society remains socially stratified with associated conflicting
interests, the rationale for having a number of parties will remain. As strat-
ification declines, so too will the rationale for numerous parties decline,
but if state financing of small parties lessens the decline in the number of
parties, the multiplicity of parties will continue to play a divisive role, even
though their policies will be increasingly difficult to tell apart, and oppor-
tunism may drive them into coalition governments.
The maintenance of two or more parties, however, is essential to the
legitimacy of the modern state. Without the illusion that significant policy
change can be had with a different party in power, the state would be seen
to be more clearly for what it actually is, namely, the political representa-
tive of the prevailing property relations and, by implication, acting on
behalf of those benefiting from those relations. Belief that fundamental
policy changes are possible within the system and that the rights and free-
doms as defined by the system are absolute, comprehensive, and real are
crucial to dampening opposition and maintaining social order with limited
coercion.
The programmatic differences between political parties are very much
trumpeted while out of office or at election time, but when in office the
parameters that confine policy choices are rather narrow and so make for
only a small range of choice. By nature of its existence the state can serve
only one ‘master.’ The political executive that does not accommodate the
interests associated with these property relations will not remain in office
466 G. TEEPLE

long, or where it presents a real threat to these property relations it will be

overthrown by force and replaced by dictatorship.
In most advanced industrial countries where the main class interests are
resolved into two sets of interests, and the working class is afforded a high
level of material well-being, the programmatic differences between parties
is very small, usually between more or less state ownership and the degree
of distribution of wages and salaries. Party differences, then, often gravi-
tate towards personal characteristics; the focus is on the promoted quali-
ties of the leaders because there is little else to differentiate the parties.
Electoral alternations of parties in power can take place, and the civil liber-
ties associated with liberal democracy exercised, albeit with a declining
respect and meaning.
In single-party political systems, or some form of dictatorship, however,
the weight of the state monopoly over the general affairs is much more
heavily felt. Here, the monopoly does not rest on a generalized belief in its
legitimacy, and so the need for police and military for social control usually
becomes more obvious. But a single-party system reflects the political rela-
tion where the contradictions between classes have made alternations in
party control over the state intolerable to those embodying or benefiting
from the prevailing form of property. In each of the well-known early
twentieth century examples of dictatorship—Italian fascism (1922–1944),
German Nazism (1933–1945), and Japanese imperial rule (1933–1945)—
the working classes had been organized and represented by socialist and
communist parties and presented serious threats to the corporate sector.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the many dictatorships set up
by the US often represented the overthrow of liberal democracy wherever
it presented the possibility of social reforms that might undermine the
unmitigated exploitation of the nation, including the use of its national
debt function.33
The same conclusion can be arrived at by analysing a line from Sigmund
Neuman: “A one-party system is a contradiction in itself.”34 Unfortunately,
he does not explain the phrase, but we can deduce the following. A

33
P. Blustein, And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out): The World Bank, Wall Street, the
IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina, Public Affairs, 2006; C. Dimitriu, “Odious Debts:
A Moral Account,” Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought,
August 2015; J. King, The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law, Cambridge
University Press, 2016.
34
S. Neumann, “Towards a Comparative Study of Political Parties,” in S. Neumann (ed.),
Modern Political Parties, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1961 (1956), p. 395.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 467

single-­party state is a contradiction because it implies one common inter-

est in civil society: if political parties function to ‘aggregate interests,’
namely, gathering similar property relations, one party suggests one inter-
est. But, if this is the case, then, the question arises as to why the separa-
tion of the state and civil society, given that the separation is due to
significant and irreconcilable differences in civil society And why a party,
even if only one?
One-party dominant governments, dictatorships, and existing ‘social-
ist’ governments persist as state monopolies over the general affairs of civil
society because of intractable or open antagonisms within the structure of
civil society that do not allow for the possibility of alternating parties, or
because of the overwhelming dominance of one aggregated interest that
does not have any serious opposition or does not brook any opposition. A
group of powerful oligarchs, or organized transnational interests, or a
state or party bureaucracies are some of the possible forces behind single-­
party governments. A genuinely common interest would not give rise to a
political party.

Constitutionalization and State Funding

of Political Parties

Before World War II, very few constitutions recognized the existence let
alone the representative and ruling roles of political parties, even though
the political process revolved around their election to power.35 If parties
were made a matter of law, it was usually to outlaw them as incompatible
with the existing political system.36 After the war, however, political parties
were given a place in the re-written constitutions of Italy and Germany,37
and then in the 1990s in the new constitutions of the former Soviet bloc
nations. By the end of the twentieth century, most constitutions and many

35
I. Van Biezen and G. Borz, “The Place of Political Parties in National Constitutions: A
European Overview,” Working Paper Series on the Legal Regulation of Political Parties, No.
1, July 2009 [http://www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl/uploads/wp0109.pdf].
36
R. Schmidt, Red Scare. FBI and the origins of Anticommunism in the United States,
1919–1943, e-book, Amsterdam: Museum Tusculanum Press 2004; V. L. Lidtke, The
Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany, 1878–1890. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1966.
37
And to some degree in Austria, see: I. van Biezen, “Constitutionalizing Party Democracy:
The Constitutive Codification of Political Parties in Post-War Europe,” British Journal of
Political Science 42, 2011 (187–212), p. 194.
468 G. TEEPLE

statutes across Europe defined in some detail regulations and legalities for
legitimate political parties.38
The reason for this change likely lay in the nineteenth century exercise
of working-class consciousness—the 1848 revolutions, the 1871 Paris
Commune, trade union agitation, the achievement of male suffrage—as
well as the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the pre-World War II experience
with fascism, and the wartime popular support for the Soviet Union, all of
which pointed to the structure of liberal democracy that made its transfor-
mation theoretically possible by means of the electoral process. This con-
clusion was probably sufficient to make sure that the re-written postwar
Italian and German constitutions and the eastern European constitutions
of the 1990s contained regulations for the compatibility of political party
platforms and procedures with the persistence of liberal democracy.
But what is it about the structure of liberal democracy that could have
led to this conclusion? There are three plausible reasons we can point to.
One is that the leader of the winning party in an election becomes the
head of the government, with monopoly control of the whole of the state,
aside from the judiciary and central bank. Without the regulation of par-
ties and the formal approval of their policies and internal selection pro-
cesses to ensure congruence with the principles of liberal democracy, this
power could spell the end of liberal democracy.
To put this another way, the victorious party in an election wins the
right to rule in the name of all, which means that a partisan interest in civil
society can legitimately act in its own interests as if they were universal.
The party that wins, moreover, may well not represent the majority of the
electorate, and even if it did this would not get around the problem of a
particular interest ruling as if it were the general interest: a plurality or
majority is not the general. Constitutionalizing parties would not change
this inevitable outcome of elections, but it would place legal limits on the
program and activities of the contesting parties.
A second reason is that the resolution of civil society into two broad but
different sets of interests, namely, labour and capital, could easily find
political expression in the structure of political parties as two fundamen-
tally opposing camps, highlighting in the political domain the main con-
tradiction of capitalism and pointing to its resolution outside liberal

38
A. K. Bourne, “Democratisation and the Illegalisation of Political Parties in Europe,”
Working Paper Series on the Legal Regulation of Political Parties, No. 7, 2011. [https://
www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl/uploads/wp0711.pdf].
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 469

democracy. To avoid this situation, no party associated strictly with labour

or capital can be permitted, in order that the parties on offer obscure the
reality of the common interest of the overwhelming majority facing the
exclusive but powerful interest of a very small minority.39
A third reason is the disappearance of class as a political issue. Without
political expression but implicitly understood by the majority as a key
issue, class, now hidden in party formats, reappears in the form of the
decline of interest in elections and party membership.40 Such a decline,
however, presents a problem for liberal democracy because its legitimacy
depends on a choice between multiple parties. It is that legitimacy that
disguises the role of liberal democracy in addressing Solon’s dilemma,41 to
convince the productive classes of their meaningful participation in a sys-
tem predicated on their exploitation and in which they have no stake.
If these three reasons provide the rationale underlying the constitution-
alization and state funding of political parties, they are operationalized in
two main ways. One is the creation of rules and regulations defining legiti-
mate political parties as supportive of the principles of liberal democracy.
The other is the provision of the means of existence of multiple parties as
central to the definition of liberal democracy as a matter of party choice. The
legitimacy of liberal democracy rests on these two factors: the assurance that
parties have platforms that do not reach beyond the relations of the prevail-
ing property relations and follow procedures within legalized limits, and
that the means are provided to ensure the existence of multiple parties.
The Meaning of the Constitutionalization and Judicialization of Political
Parties. In the most immediate sense, this means that all aspects of the
party come under state regulation: party principles, aims, goals,

39
Throughout the Cold War, the CIA worked across Europe to keep the Left divided. See:
P. Agee and L. Wolf (eds.), Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, London: Zed Press,
1978; H. Wilford, “Calling the Tune? The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War,” The Rusi
Journal, Vol. 146, Issue 1, 2001 (56–61).
40
I. van Biezen and T. Poguntke, “The decline of membership-based politics,” Party
Politics, 30 January 2014 (1–12); I. van Biezen, P. Mair, T. Poguntke, “Going, Going…Gone?
Party Membership in the 21st Century,” European Journal of Political Science, 2011;
Y. Mersel, “The Dissolution of Political Parties: The Problem of Internal Democracy,”
International Journal of Constitutional Law, 4, 2006 (84–113).
41
See Chap. 1, pp. 8–9.
470 G. TEEPLE

membership, and activities must all conform to state-defined rules.42 The

decisions on these matters are carried out by constitutional judicial com-
missions run by appointed judges, arbitrators, and administrators who are
not elected and whose appointment and livelihood rest on maintaining
and promoting the system. More broadly speaking, the state controls the
limits of political issues and activities that reflect the conflicts within civil
society, and can deny, restrict, or approve, in a word define, what consti-
tutes a legitimate political issue and its expression.
The constitutionalization of political parties, then, is an attempt to pre-
vent political parties from expressing platforms that criticize or overstep
the limits of liberal democracy as a political form, or that question the
source of its content in policies reflecting the interests of global capital
accumulation, or that expand political issues to take the electorate beyond
the confines of liberal democracy.
State Funding of Political Parties. The literature on state funding for
political parties, which is now extensive, seems to have settled on three
main reasons for the current wide acceptance of such financing.43 One is
to offset the declining revenues from falling membership in order to meet
the rising costs of running campaigns and maintaining staff. Another is to
‘level the playing field,’ or ‘equalize’ the conditions for electoral competi-
tions through funding to qualified parties. And a third is to dampen cor-
ruption by means of subsidies of ‘clean money’ in place of corporate funds
in search of favours or a quid pro quo.44
These reasons are, however, unconvincing as the rationale for state
financing. The decline of membership and voters is left unexplained and is
unrelated to the rising costs of maintaining a party apparatus. State fund-
ing does not usually eliminate other sources of funding, and the

42
I. van Biezen, “Constitutionalizing Party Democracy: The Constitutive Codification of
Political Parties in Post-War Europe,” British Journal of Political Science 42, 2011 (187–212),
pp. 200–201.
43
G. Orr, “Full public financing: cleaning up parties or parties cleaning up?” in J. Mendilow
and E. Phelippeau (eds.), Handbook of Political Party Funding, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Publishing, 2018, p. 84; I. van Biezan, “State Intervention in Party Politics: The Public
Funding and Regulation of Political Parties,” European Review, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2008,
pp. 345–347 (337–353).
44
A quid pro quo in the business world can be part of a fair and equitable contract, but in
politics it cannot. The politician and political party are supposed to be accountable to their
constituencies or to the ‘nation,’ but a quid pro quo implies an arrangement with an indi-
vidual, corporation, or corporate sector for particular favors not related to the general inter-
est of constituencies or the ‘nation.’
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 471

‘equalizing’ effect is an unexamined and dubious proposition. The idea

that state subsidies promote ‘fairness’ in electoral campaigns is a difficult
argument to make given private ownership of the mass media and numer-
ous and well-financed corporate lobbies. Political corruption has remained
widespread across all liberal democracies; one could say that it is endemic.45
The main reason for the now widespread use of the state financing of
political parties seems to be straightforwardly related to the importance of
enhancing or ensuring a plurality of parties as essential for the legitimacy
of liberal democracy. The long-noted decline in party membership and
member participation has made party administrators search for organiza-
tional security and tenure of office in public funding, an interest that cor-
responds to the interests of state officialdom to create the appearance of
vibrant political contests.
And the main reason for the decades-long decline is the increasingly
obvious loss of meaningful choices amongst the parties on offer. Coalitions,
duopolies, or one-party dominance point to one conclusion: all parties
promote more or less the same overarching platform. There are no parties
that raise class issues, none that promise to reverse the retrenchment of the
welfare state, none that oppose ‘labour market deregulation,’46 none that
stand against tax reductions for the corporate sector and the rich, none
that argue against increasing military budgets, and none that object to the
expanding national debt in aid of the corporate sector, among other class-­
related issues. No party offers an alternative to neoliberalism. Trade unions
remain nationally divided and provide little leadership for the working
class,47 and the intellectual left has all but abandoned class analysis. Politics,

45
V. Tanzi, “Corruption Around the World: Causes, Consequences, Scope, and Cures,”
IMF Staff Papers, Vol.45 December 1998, (559–594);T. K. Kuhner, “The Corruption of
Liberal and Social Democracies,” Fordham Law Review, 84, No. 6, May 2016, (2453–2476);
R. W. Bowen, Japan’s Dysfunctional Democracy: The Liberal Democratic Party and Structural
Corruption, New York: Routledge, 2003; B. Xu, “Governance in India: Corruption,”
Council on Foreign Relations, 2014 [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/
governance-india-corruption].
46
J. Peters, “Labour market deregulation and the decline of labour power in North
American and Western Europe,” Policy and Society, 27, 2008 (83–98).
47
J. Waddington, T. Muller, K. Vandaele (eds.), Trade Unions in the European Union:
Picking up the pieces of the neoliberal challenge, Brussels: Peter Land, 2023. There is a contra-
diction between union bureaucrats and the rank and file; the former derive their income and
pensions from membership dues, and so work stoppages are not in their interests, while
members of the rank and file must fight employers to advance their interests and work stop-
pages are often the only way.
472 G. TEEPLE

such as it is, is played out in the national arena, while policy comes from
the global domain. If this is the state of political parties in the early twenty-­
first century, what other way is there to maintain the existence of multiple
parties when their national foundations have eroded except to use state
funding?
Effects of Public Funding. Although it might be said that state financing
of political parties has prolonged the life of this moribund political system,
it could also be said that such subsidies have assisted this decline. The state
as guarantor of party funding and adjudicator of party legitimacy gives it
considerable leverage over party activities and platforms. The unelected in
the party hierarchy and state officialdom come to control what is supposed
to be the institutional bridge that represents the interests of civil society in
the state. Civil society progressively loses what little connection it had to
its chief means of political representation.
To put it another way, as party dependence on state financial support
and conformity to official regulations and adjudication grow, party admin-
istrators see the state as their source of power and security of tenure and
the party as the mechanism that provides them with both. The consequent
increased centralization of power in parties exacerbates the problem of
declining membership by reducing the party interest in attracting more
members, except perhaps for the purpose of donations. The party leaders
and administrators, however, become less dependent on constituent finan-
cial support and so less accountable to their constituency and less inter-
ested in ‘popular empowerment.’
As political parties increasingly become recipients of state support, they
come to act and be seen as a ‘public utility,’48 as part of the formal political
structure and not a genuine emanation of the interests found in civil soci-
ety. They take the form of mere electoral machines not expressions of the
conflictive interests of civil society. The political party becomes part of the
state electoral apparatus, providing the appearance of political contest and
choice in order to maintain the legitimacy of liberal democracy.
Constitutionalization and state funding have made the political party
into a structure of political compliance with the status quo, largely ending
its once limited role as an expression of a range of civil society interests.
The party is legally prevented from adopting certain political issues, ideals,
practices, and platforms not contained by the official bill of rights,

48
I. van Biezen, “Political Parties as Public Utilities,” Party Politics, Vol. 10, no. 6
(701–722).
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 473

constitution, and rule of law. To ensure the party conforms, it is subject to

examination and adjudication by officialdom. State funding allows the
party to exist more as an executive organization than as an expression of
civil society, able to seize on and benefit from political opportunities for its
party loyals. For the citizenry, the party system becomes a form of political
entrapment, in which the pretence of representation by parties supposedly
accountable to their members and constituents and offering democrati-
cally established platforms induces members to participate and vote believ-
ing the deception.

Corruption: Political Parties and Politicians

There is now a large and growing body of literature on the corruption of
politicians and state officials.49 Before the 1990s, discussion and studies of
political corruption was limited to a small number of researchers who,
with exceptions, treated political corruption as a problem of unscrupulous
individuals, or in the business world, as more a virtue than a vice, a sort of
useful instrument for circumventing supposed bureaucratic inertial in the
aid of greater economic efficiency.50 The 1990s, however, saw an enor-
mous growth in corruption51 likely connected with the realization of the
neoliberal policies of de-regulation, privatization, and outsourcing of state
programmes introduced in the 1980s, which began to reflect corporate
malfeasance.
Much of the literature in the twenty-first century is centred on prob-
lems with the definition of corruption, its measurement, causes, effects,
and remedies, and there remains a noteworthy focus on the individual
politician, official, or party.52 This attention to the definition and

49
P. M. Heywood, ‘Introduction: Scale and focus in the study of corruption,” in
P. M. Heywood (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption, 2014 (1–13).
50
Notable for this argument was E. Banfield, Political Influence, New York: The Free
Press, 1961, and N. Leff, “Economic development through bureaucratic corruption,” in
American Behavioral Scientist, 8, (8–14). A key early exception was F. von Hayek, The con-
stitution of liberty, Chicago: Chicago University Press 1960, in which he argued for market
success as determined by stable and predictable regulations overseen by a reliable state. A
later exception and more common argument against corruption in the 1990s was made
by S. Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform,
New York: Cambridge University Press 1999.
51
Heywood op. cit. p. 1.
52
D. Della Porta, A. Pizzorno, J. Donaldson, “The Business Politicians: Reflections from
a Study of Political Corruption,” Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 23, No. 1, March 1996
474 G. TEEPLE

measurable parameters of corruption, not to mention the particular char-

acteristics of the politician or party, leaves the consideration of corruption
in an inconclusive state. None of these debates raises the question of cor-
ruption as inherent in the structure of politics and in the nature of capital-
ist society reflected in politics.
Liberal democracy was born of marketplace society, and in the eigh-
teenth century it was adapted to the capitalist mode of production. It is
presented as a democratic form of rule that represents the interests of all
in civil society. But civil society as marketplace is not an arena of uniform
interests, it is marked by a dynamic that rests on the accumulation of capi-
tal arising from the exploitation of labour by capital. The entire point of
capitalist society is the accumulation of capital, which means that the form
of rule must favour the side of capital over that of labour, without allowing
either side the possibility of overwhelming the other. This is the task of
liberal democracy: to assist in capital accumulation, while convincing the
working majority that it is not a class with common interests but a mere
assemblage of atomized voters each with their own interest.
The adoption of neoliberal policies by most liberal democracies by the
late twentieth century has played a significant part in capital accumulation.
Such policies facilitate the corporate capture of formal state functions,
meaning that the state-wide social programmes that were developed in the
public sector in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, supposedly open
to public scrutiny, have been given over to the private sector, which is col-
lective private property and so beyond political accountability. Such poli-
cies have seen the extensive growth of corporate contracts to run major
parts of government, namely, in healthcare, education, policing, military,
elections, and the general business of the state itself.53
Given this reasoning, liberal democracy as a political framework appears
as the modern version of Plato’s ‘convenient fiction,’54 the necessary ‘lie’

(73–94); M. Philip, “The Definition of Political Corruption,” in P. M. Heywood (ed.),

Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption, 2014, p. 21 (…).
53
For an early popular promotion of corporate control of government, see: D. Osborne
and T. Gaebler, Re-Inventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming
the Public Sector, New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
54
F. M. Cornford (Trans.), The Republic of Plato, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1942,
pp. 103–106. This ‘lie’ was justifiable in Plato’s eyes because its purpose was to affirm the
rationality of the structured republic he mapped out. This republic, however, was an exploit-
ative system, certainly no democracy, and so in need of a ‘noble lie’ to justify its existence, to
provide its legitimation.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 475

that justifies a system of corporate private property in the eyes of all. This
political form is required for the sake of social order and is needed to
obfuscate the exploitation essential to the system. And all the while, it
assists the growth of extreme social and economic inequalities55 and dis-
guises the chronic corporate violations of the law.
As the form of rule over the marketplace, liberal democracy shares the
same ethics, the principles and standards defining human relations, as
in the market. It cannot be otherwise given that the content of political
policy is an expression of and framed by market principles and behaviour.
And it is the market that makes everything into a commodity, a mere
quantity of exchange value that appears in the form of a price. By marking
everything with a price, it signifies that it can be bought and sold. Bought
and sold, that is, via a contract, ostensibly exchanging equal value for equal
value, but with no guarantee. And so, with the contract comes a warning,
‘buyer beware,’ and the knowledge that everyone works to their own
advantage. These are the ethics of the marketplace that liberal democracy
exists to uphold and advance.56
The market is the arena of accumulation and growth of social and eco-
nomic inequalities and, it follows, social power. The more powerful, as
individuals or corporations, gain advantages at the expense of those with
less or without. The mediating institution between the concentration of
social and economic power in civil society and state policies is the political
party and the politician. Politicians and their parties hold official positions
that make, amend, adjudicate, and execute the law, and that determine
fiscal policies and the disposition of state revenues, positions that as indi-
viduals or parties have a value worth buying and selling. They are positions
that open the door to corruption. It is not the presumed corruptible
nature of the individual that is at issue, but the positions that politicians
occupy in ruling a marketplace society with powers that can be sold a price
in exchange for favours or a quid pro quo.
Even if the politician were honest in monetary and regulatory matters,
it is not possible for them to be honest to their constituents. The

55
T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge: The Belknap Press 2014, pp.
56
See Chap. 3 for a critical analysis of ‘human rights’ as the abstract ethics of the market.
Plato, as so many others, saw political corruption as a characteristic of individuals and not the
system; see his Seventh Letter or Epistle, where he explains his reluctance to take part in poli-
tics because the competing political parties amounted to “a succession of corrupt regimes,
each of which brought Athens to further decline (324b–326a).” Plato: Political Philosophy,
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu.
476 G. TEEPLE

institutionalized position of the politician has inbuilt restrictions that can-

not be overcome: the constituency is merely an aggregation of individual
interests that is not possible to represent as a coherent whole. The prohibi-
tion of the imperative mandate in the European Union, furthermore,
makes representation impossible as there is no constitutional necessity to
represent a constituency; the primary loyalty is to the party, it is the party
that chooses the representative not the constituency; and the generous
salary and benefits for the elected and the high cost of elections make
honesty for the politician a difficult decision.

The Lobby
The lobby is a non-constitutional mechanism that acts as a form of inter-
mediary between civil society and the state. In the last several decades,
lobbies have grown considerably in size and number around the world, in
many instances becoming not simply national but transnational agencies
acting on behalf of TNCs. They are by definition private associations that
seek to influence government policy and decisions on matters concerning
their specific interests.
There are two basic types of lobbies: one presses for specific changes
that are in the interests of all, and the other for changes in the interests of
some at the expense of others. The former would include all those citizens
lobbies that mobilize for improvements to policies on consumer safety
standards, environmental regulations, social security, access to information
and power, and so on. The latter would embrace those lobbies paid for by
the corporate sector to promote its interests in opposition to public well-­
being, often directly opposing the issues promoted by citizens lobbies.
The citizens lobbies are usually poorly financed and staffed by volun-
teers or poorly paid representatives. Their lobbying efforts rely on argu-
ment, reason, voting leverage, or publicity campaigns, and sometimes
protests.57 Some of the better known would include Greenpeace, Amnesty
International, and Human Rights Watch. Corporate lobbies, by con-
trast, are usually well-financed and staffed by well-paid professionals. Their
efforts rely on the use of money, in both legal and illicit ways. They are
usually legal corporations in their own right, in business to facilitate the
business connection with governments.

57
J. M. Berry, Lobbying for the People: The Political Behaviour of Public Interest Groups.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 477

The institution of the lobby is not only entrenched but also is growing
around the world. Its pervasiveness led one political scientist to coin the
phrase, the “democracy of the lobbies.” This oxymoron refers to the enor-
mous political power of the corporate lobbies with a sardonic reference to
their liberal democratic context. The contrast between the role of the citi-
zen and the corporate lobby in liberal democracy opens the way for some
critical analysis of the institution of the lobby.
Without examining the particular interests represented by corporate
lobbies, the institution itself points to the possibility of influencing the
branches of government outside formal and legitimate processes. While
direct connections between the citizen and the state are not provided for
in formal political relations, the corporate lobby, representing the privilege
of money, finds it can make connections with those who are in positions of
power: the citizen is politically restricted, but money can walk through any
door. Their existence also points to the fact that certain interests within
civil society can affect policy with no necessary consultation of any sort
with the broader general public. Corporate influence and its making of
public policy are out of sight.
An obvious criticism of corporate lobbies is the fact that they embody
the reality that not all interests in civil society have equal value or equal
means to have their views known or adopted by government. They repre-
sent the collective power of capital in politics while leaving the citizen to
find representation by means of one person one vote. To the degree that
they are influential, they make the right to freedom of speech and the
associated right to pressure and affect governments seem largely formal.
They also exemplify the notion that money talks, that votes can be bought,
and that members of legislatures and executives can be bribed.58
Corporate lobbies are only one side of this relation. Political parties
have long lobbied for themselves by the use of ‘bag-men’ selling favours
and promises for ‘donations’ to the party coffers. More recently, ‘pay-to-­
play’ has become surprisingly publicly admitted as a way to finance parties
and their members.

58
H. Brown, Pay-to-Play Politics: How Money Defines the American Democracy, Bloomsbury
Publishing, 2016; C. Cotton, “Pay-to-Play politics: Informational lobbying and contribu-
tion limits when money buys access,” Journal of Public Economics, June 2012; Jane Mayer,
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,
New York: Doubleday, 2016; Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the
Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Viking Press, 2017.
478 G. TEEPLE

Their mode of operation is antipathetic to the idea of democracy

because the work of corporate lobbies is carried out in secrecy and in the
interests of a minority. And to complement this general nature of their
method, they often resort to sabotage and blackmail of various sorts. They
are in a phrase, as one analyst aptly captured these criticisms, an ‘anony-
mous empire.’59
One of the most powerful lobbies in the United States and elsewhere is
the Israeli lobby, which has used money and threat of applying the label of
‘antisemitic’ to bend politicians to the support of Israel in the face of
decades of violations of United Nations sanctions and rulings.60 And this
is not to mention the charge that Israel has long had apartheid policies
towards the Palestinians, and that in 2023 it mounted an attack on the
enclave of Gaza that amounted to genocide.61

Referendum/Plebiscite
The referendum is often paraded as a democratic mechanism, an institu-
tion that sidesteps the politician and the party and goes straight to the
people to let them have their say. It is a political bridge that provides a
direct link between the executive and civil society, ostensibly allowing
public opinion to make or influence policy decisions. What something
appears to be, however, is not always what it is.
It is a political instrument, to be sure, but it is far from an exercise in
democracy, which would suggest that it originates in civil society as an
expression of the will of the people. Its use, however, is usually initiated
and directed by the executive branch and not by a legislature, or by some
organ of civil society. It is the executive that usually determines the reason
for its use, the agenda it will serve, the questions that will be asked, the
interpretation of the answers, the execution of the outcome, and the
financing of whatever campaign may accompany it.

59
S.E. Finer, Anonymous Empire, A Study of the Lobby in Great Britain, London: Pall Mall
Press, 1966.
60
John Mearsheimer and S. M. Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,”
RWP06-011.pdf. [https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/israel-lobby-and-us-for-
eign-policy]; in book form, same authors and title, published by Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2007.
61
M. Nijim, “Genocide in Palestine: Gaza as a Case Study,” The International Journal of
Human Rights, Volume 27, Issue 1, April 202 (165–200). Human Rights Watch, January
10, 2024, “World Court To Hear Genocide Case Against Israel” https://www.hrw.org/
news/2024/01/10/world-court-hear-genocide-case-against-israel.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 479

Where the use of referenda can legally arise from civil society, there are
many restrictions that usually apply. The question must be approved, a
demonstration of popular support must be shown, the cost of the cam-
paign is often prohibitive, and these, among other issues, serve to curb its
use. Generally, the obstacles are difficult to surmount and the monied
power of corporate campaigns is hard to match.
After the referendum is held, many dilemmas arise: what is its legal
status, what do the results mean, who will interpret them, who will deter-
mine what action to take?

The Ombudsoffice
The limitations of political parties as intermediaries between civil society
and the state have been drawn out. As the only electoral mechanism bridg-
ing this divide their shortcomings have been all along more or less obvi-
ous, but with the rapid changes in forms of governance after World War II,
their role in providing avenues for the redress of citizens grievances became
patently inadequate. To address this inadequacy the institution of ombud-
soffice was expanded in most of the industrial nations after 1945.
There are several specific reasons for this expansion, and the main ones
deserve an examination.62 The first reason for the growth in the ombud-
soffice that D. C. Rowat raises is labelled “additional protection against
administrative arbitrariness in the modern democratic state.” He is refer-
ring to the dramatic rise after World War II of administrative commissions,
tribunals, boards, agencies, and other structures that have pervasively
affected the lives of citizens and that derive their executive and quasi-­
judicial powers from government, but often proceed in more or less arbi-
trary ways and possess limited avenues of appeal to their decisions.
Corresponding to these agencies and commissions there was a rapid
growth of administrative law, a sphere of law that often leaves the citizen
or business affected at a serious disadvantage. Given these developments,
and the intrinsic inadequacy of political parties to deal with citizens’ com-
plaints of injustice, the institution of the ombudsoffice has provided a
non-judicial, non-constitutional mechanism to accommodate some of
these complaints, without the power to act on its conclusions or
recommendations.

62
This analysis by D. C. Rowat is one of the most succinct and critical reviews of the insti-
tution. See: D.C. Rowat, The Ombudsman Plan, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973.
The quotations are taken from pages 46–50.
480 G. TEEPLE

The second reason Rowat mentions has to do with the inadequacy of

the law courts. He argues the obvious: “The courts are too costly, cum-
bersome and slow, and in the English-speaking world the extent of their
power of review is not at all clear, though certainly severely limited.”
These continuing and growing shortcomings of the court system make
their use by citizens for some sort of redress for administrative arbitrariness
less than feasible.
The patent limitations of using elected legislative representatives is the
third reason presented. The lack of impartiality because of party affiliation,
the lack of any specific legislative structures for dealing with or investigat-
ing grievances, the political pre-occupations of the legislators, and the fact
that this is not the defined occupation of the representative all make this
avenue of appeal less than ideal.
Finally, the secrecy of government practice, the normal processes in all
modern democracies, is a further reason for a separate mechanism to deal
with alleged injustices. The point is that ‘administrative secrecy’ makes
administrative transgressions difficult to uncover, and the responsible offi-
cials or appeal mechanisms that are associated with the government are
generally loath to find fault with the system they are part of.
With these several reasons in mind, Rowat makes a summary statement
about the need for the ombudsoffice: “In short, in most democratic coun-
tries our traditional devices for protecting the rights of average citizens
against administrative arbitrariness are inadequate, if not actually defec-
tive.” The case for introducing the ombudsoffice, in his view, is at the
same time a rather serious indictment of the nature of liberal democracy.
If these are the reasons for the introduction of a non-constitutional mech-
anism to bridge the divide between civil society and the state, then, it
would appear that the existing constitutional mechanisms are not just less
than ‘adequate’ but in fact not really there for the purposes of addressing
citizens grievances over government or administrative actions.
Although Rowat’s examination is a critical one, it is mostly about the
reasons for the introduction of the office. The nature of its limitations,
however, can easily be laid out. The position of ‘ombudsoffice’ is an
appointed one, usually by executive branch, which means that it is subject
to political bias. The budget is set by the government and provides a pow-
erful deterrent to reports that are too negative about the government. The
reports, moreover, are made to the government (or ministry or legisla-
ture) for further action, the office cannot act on its research and findings,
it has no power to do anything but research and report and recommend.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 481

The breadth of its powers and the scope of activity it can undertake are
determined by the government in power.

“Shadow links”
Political parties are the main officially sanctioned mechanisms that bridge
the divide between the state and civil society, and to a lesser degree, the
use of referenda and the ombudsoffice also constitute legitimate if limited
links. These are lawful forms of connection between the electorate at large
and the state. But there is a set of informal and often secret activities of
lobbies, consultancies, and ‘shadow links’ that have always existed,
although they have increased considerably in the twenty-first century.
They may include state creditors, credit rating agencies, corporate
consultancies,63 mass media, global regulators such as the IMF or World
Bank, corporatized state agencies, not to mention corporate corruption of
government. Although the extent of their influence is not known, the
available evidence suggests their impact on public policy is extensive and
profound. But more, they are not links between the state and civil society
as a whole, but between the state and small select sets of powerful interests
in civil society.

Conclusions
All legitimate political parties are limited by national jurisdictions and
approved under formal regulations set out by the state or informal expec-
tations. They are also restricted by the principles and definitions of politi-
cal rights and processes found in constitutions. Given that parties are
forms whose content is found in civil society, their policy platforms are
further circumscribed by the nature of the contradictions found in civil
society, in particular between labour and capital.
The form and content of politics and political parties, then, have cor-
responded to national liberal democratic processes and the character of
national economies. Such was the case until the second half of the twenti-
eth century. By the end of that century, however, the form and content
had grown apart to the degree that the national forms had lost most of

63
For a positive view, see: G. Hodge and D. Bowman, “The ‘Consultocracy:’ the business
of reforming government,” in G. Hodge (ed.), Privatization and Market Development,
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2006, (97–126).
482 G. TEEPLE

their national content. Globalization, or transnational capital accumula-

tion, had become a power in its own right, and by 1980 was promoting
neoliberal policies that were gradually adopted by all governments and
their political parties as a prerequisite to international trade and com-
merce. The content of politics, capital accumulation, had evolved into a
global process, with its own transnational corporate forms and advocates
and agencies comprising a complex enabling system not accountable to
national governments, while the form of politics remained national.
This did not mean that the main components of civil society, capital and
labour, would find their interests equally restricted by national party rep-
resentation. Both of these classes have what can be called immediate inter-
ests, those able to be addressed nationally, and essential interests, those
that extend beyond the confines of the national or, for labour, the capital-
ist mode of production itself. The essential interests of capital are repre-
sented by the policies of neoliberalism, formulated by global agencies, and
adopted by liberal democratic governments everywhere as the raison d’etre
of the global system. They are represented in the platforms of all the main
political parties. The essential interests of labour, by contrast, as the call for
a socialist future and links with working class organizations across the
globe, are expressly or implicitly prohibited from representation within
national limits as contrary to the principles of national liberal democracy.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the idea that the immedi-
ate interests (wages and workers’ rights) were the main objective of work-
ers’ struggles was challenged by idea that labour also had essential interests
tied to socialized property outside a system of private property. By the
turn to the twentieth century, the union movements throughout the capi-
talist world were deeply divided on this point. Despite the divide, labour
organizations were by far the most powerful forces for liberal democracy
because this was the one route to a voice and vote in the exploitative sys-
tem they were born to and the means to win social reforms—the alterna-
tive being dictatorship. The tragic fate of the European labour movement
in the interwar years hung on this divide.64
Come the twenty-first century, labour has been faced with continuing
neoliberal retrenchment of its hard-won social reforms that addressed its
immediate interests and with expanding legal restrictions to the expression
of its essential interests associated with the constitutionalization of

64
The analysis of this question by Adolf Sturmthal has no equal, see his: The Tragedy of
European Labour 1918–1939, London: Victor Gallancz, 1944.
 11 POLITICAL PARTIES: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY 483

political parties. Increasingly unable to find formal political representation

in the twenty-first century, labour’s interests find alternative forms of
expression as protest movements, underground parties, spontaneous out-
bursts, and even rebellions.
State strategies, actions, plans, and procedures are all developed in
accord with the needs of global capital, which include the retrenchment of
social reforms, the immediate interests of labour, and legal restraints on
the essential interests of labour beyond national boundaries. Such are the
present dilemmas for the working classes and their political
representation.

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 CHAPTER 12

Politics and Religion

The links between politics and religion are under-examined and their sig-
nificance under-estimated. The religious beliefs of the electorate and the
institutions that promote these beliefs continue to play a prominent part
in politics. Simply to mention the many fundamentalist expressions of reli-
gion in politics is sufficient to make the point,1 and that the majority of the
world’s population professes a faith indicates the abiding importance of
religion in general. The modern state, for its part, continues to support
religion in many ways despite its declared secularity. Just why religion has
continued to be such an important factor in liberal democratic govern-
ments despite their claims of secularism is a question seldom addressed.
The overwhelming majority of the world’s population, between 80%
and 85%, maintain a belief in a spiritual being, and most of these affirm an

1
The literature on these resurgent fundamentalisms is extensive. See, for example:
P. Gifford, “Christian Fundamentalism, State and Politics in Black Africa,” in D. Westerlund
(ed.), Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence of Religion in Politics, London:
Hurst and Co., 1996; P. Freston, “Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism: the politics of global
popular Protestantism,” in J. A. Beckford and N. J. Demerath (eds.), Sage Handbook of
Sociology of Religion, London: Sage 2007; G. Gattaglia, “Neo-Hindu Fundamentalism
Challenging the Secular and Pluralistic Indian State,” in Religions, 2017, 8.; T. Sonn,
“Islamic Fundamentalism and Political Islam,” in History Compass, Vol.4, Issue 1, 2006
(176–192); I. Harris (ed.), Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth-Century Asia, London:
Continuum, 1999.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 489

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_12
490 G. TEEPLE

adherence to a formal religion, while about 15% claim to be secular.2 The

largest religious institutions or churches by membership are social organi-
zations that have a hierarchy of priests, self-identified members, a struc-
tured and formal belief system, and a rent-based revenue stream. This
combination provides them with the components of social and political
power that allows them to play a role not only in civil society but also in
the political affairs of nation-states and even in world politics. Their active
political participation in pursuit of their own goals and those of the state
is evident in their formation of and links to political parties and elected
governments.3 Since their inception, moreover, they have also been widely
used as political instruments by secular authorities.4
A few details about the current relation between the state and religion
will help set the stage for our argument. There are a little over 190 states
in the United Nations, and almost all of them have a positive or benign
connection to religion. About 10 have ‘hostile’ or restrictive laws regard-
ing religion, but no country has a comprehensive ban. About 43 of them
have a declared ‘official’ religion, and about 40 a ‘preferred’ or ‘favored’
religion, leaving just over 100 nations, a slight majority of about 53% of
the total, that has ‘no official or preferred religion.’5 This apparently neu-
tral position on religion, however, does not mean there are no general
benefits for religious organizations or no official references to spiritual
beings, but simply no declared religious preferences.

2
Statistics on religion are inconsistent to say the least, but these discrepancies are due
largely to different categories and survey methods. The assertions made in the text here,
however, conform approximately to the findings of the indexes, studies, and reports that the
author has consulted.
Statista, “Share of Global Population by Religion”[https://www.statista.com/statis-
tics/374704/share-of-global-population-by-religion/]; Pew Research Center Report, “The
Future of World’s Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050,” April 2, 2015;
Pew Research Center Report, “The Global Religious Landscape,” December 18, 2012
[https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/].
3
V. Yadav, Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties, Oxford University Press
2021, p. 1.
4
M. Grant, The World of Rome, London: Sphere Books, 1974. The chapter on “Religion”
(188–225) contains references to the instrumental use of religion in ancient Rome and other
early states.
5
“Many Countries Favor Specific Religions, Officially or Unofficially,” Pew Research
Center, October 3, 2017 [https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/10/03/
many-countries-favor-specific-religions-officially-or-unofficially/].
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 491

With minor exceptions, all states including the majority that are non-­
denominational offer a range of legal and monetary forms of public assis-
tance to religious organizations. These may include tax exemptions of
various sorts, subsidies or privileges for their educational institutions, sala-
ries and pensions for clergy, and certain legal immunities, among other
state benefits, all paid for by the taxpayer. In most nations, moreover,
there are also official references to a god in their constitutions, anthems,
nationality oaths, law court vows or other pledges, not to mention on
their currency, and even to a god as their sovereign. In short, some sort of
link between the state and religion remains pervasive well into the twenty-­
first century.6
These persisting and growing connections forced a reconsideration of
the ‘secularization thesis’ of the 1950s and 1960s, which suggested that
religion would wane in the face of the growth of science and technology
and the spread of market relations. The theory was no longer supportable
by the 1980s when ‘a global resurgence of religion’7 was noted. The evi-
dence for this resurgence has been widely reported,8 but the explanations
have been wanting. This strong and growing relationship between religion
and politics has presented new conundrums for the theory and practice of
liberal democracy.
Any relation between church and state, for instance, would appear to be
an association that violates the assumed democratic principle of the separa-
tion of church and state. Given the extensive connections, the principle of
state secularity comes into question: how comprehensive the link before
the state loses its claim to religious neutrality? Even assuming that the
benefits of the association are equitable for all religions and compatible
with freedom of religion, they nevertheless point to the disparity between

6
There are also several nations that make religion an important part of their national iden-
tity, but these statistics are expressions of attitude rather than official and quantifiable data.
See C. Huang, L. Clancy, and S. Austin, “Views on the importance of religion to national
identity.” Pew Research Center, January 18, 2024, [https://www.pewresearch.org/
global/2024/01/18/views-on-the-importance-of-religion-to-national-
identity/#:~:text=Among%20the%20publics%20who%20do,important%20to%20their%20
national%20identity.]
7
Among many other works, see: P. L Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World:
Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center,
1999; G. Kepet, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in
the Modern World, London: Polity Press 1994.
8
A. Moghadam, “A Global Resurgence of Religion?” The Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs, Harvard University, 2003.
492 G. TEEPLE

believers who receive certain state entitlements and non-believers who do

not. The question of freedom from religion, moreover, is not addressed by
the principle of the separation of church and state. And this problem
unveils another, that is the common assumption in liberal democracies
that citizens are believers in one religion or another. Discrimination against
non-believers is still widespread; atheism is still more tolerated than
embraced.9
These three issues, the pervasive belief in a formalized spirituality, the
assumption that all citizens are believers, and the long continuous history
of the near universal interplay of politics and religion, call for explanation.

The Relation Between Politics and Religion

The persisting links between religion and politics in the twenty-first cen-
tury find their origin in ancient times with the coming of marketplace
society.10 Religion and politics have a common history, neither one appears
without the other, and this because they arise from the same foundation.
As long as the grounds for the state exist, so too the grounds for religion.
This relation is not simply coincidental: not only do they share a premise,
but also, they are made up of the same elemental components. They are
not the same but rather represent different manifestations of the same
dynamic, the separation of the whole from the parts.11
The whole, as argued in Chap. 3, is comprised of the intangible prop-
erty relations that define the community, relations that in pre-political

9
Discrimination against atheists remains widespread across the world. For an analysis of
the high degree of religious intolerance that used to characterize the US, see: G. Myers,
History of Bigotry in The United States, New York: Random House, 1943. For the history of
anti-atheism and the prejudice that remains in the US, see: P. Klug, Anti-atheist nation:
religion and secularism in the United States, New York: Routledge, 2023.
10
E. Koulakiotis and C. Dunn (eds.), Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World:
Discourses, Practices, and Images, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
11
The argument in Chap. 3 is implied in this chapter. In summary: the whole is reference
to the property relations that comprise the community as rules and regulations; the parts are
the members of the community, the individuals who are socialized to behave in accordance
with those property relations. In pre-political social formations, the whole and parts are as
one, unified and informal. With the coming of the marketplace and private property, the
rules and regulations become formal and objective because each member is atomized as the
embodiment of exclusive and competitive private property, producing the grounds for the
appearance of political and religious institutions, which otherwise have no empirical exis-
tence other than behaviour.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 493

social formations are implicit and subjectively held, but in political societ-
ies appear as explicit, objectively embodied and institutionalized. Its sepa-
ration from the parts arises from the coming of exclusive forms of property
and the consequent disassembly of community as community—in other
words, the coming of marketplace society.12 The separation does not mean
the end of the social unit, however; it means that these relations reappear
in different forms. On the one hand, the whole acquires an objective
embodiment as the state that oversees and defines the law, the formal rules
that regulate material reproduction in civil society. On the other hand, the
whole also comes to have an objective existence as institutionalized reli-
gion, which represents community in the absence of community as com-
munity by means of rituals, doctrinal beliefs, and objects symbolic of
community, the subject matter of worship by a congregation.
It is the disassembly of the parts into so many units of private prop-
erty that gives rise to politics, and at the same time, that generates the
need for religion, the objectified relation between adherents and their god
or gods or undefined spirit. The separated whole is comprised of the for-
malized prevailing exclusive property relations in these two forms. As the
heart of politics, it is manifest as law and the state, which are tasked with
maintaining and advancing these relations for the material reproduction of
society. As the rationale of religion, it is manifest as a priesthood, place of
worship, and prescribed rituals and creeds that address the absence of
community as community with an imaginary ‘union’ with ‘others’ no lon-
ger possible in real life, in the competitive marketplace society.
By fracturing the social unity of pre-political social formations, private
property and the market make these two sides explicit, expressed as law
and state and as formal religion with gods, rituals, and creeds.13 In their

12
Our use of community and society throughout the text are largely in keeping with the
definitions developed by F. Toennies in his Community and Society: community is a reference
to a social unit as an integral totality, and society is a reference to marketplace social forma-
tions in which the state is separate from civil society, which is defined by private property and
contractual relations.
13
The word god spelled with a capital letter is a reference to the God or Gods belonging
to a particular religion. But since all gods are particular gods, our general reference to gods
will use the lower case; to use the upper case means that a particular God stands for all gods,
a usage that might well cause some unhappiness in the heavens. The gods of all religions are
all different: some religions have several gods, some only one, some none, and none are the
same. The idea that there is only one God who presides over all religions does not conform
to the facts.
494 G. TEEPLE

first historical appearances, however, the two sides were often found united
as one in the form of a divine monarch or ruling priesthood.14 Later, they
formally divided into two independent and explicit roles, ruler and priest-
hood, when the increase in the division of labour had produced a growing
surplus social product and expanded population, which in turn produces
the need for a more complex legal system and agencies and for the exten-
sion of religious institutions. The two sides then found their own discrete
institutional embodiment—the so-called sacred and the secular, or church
and state.15

Historical Stages in the Development of Religion

and the State

The separation of the state and civil society is due to the division of labour
and private property that produces a civil society divided against itself, as
competing exclusive property relations, producing the rationale for the
state and also the foundation and necessity of religion. There are three
grand stages that can be identified in the nature of the relations between
the whole and the parts: the pre-political, proto-political, and the political,
which we traced in Chap. 3, and to which stages in the development of
religion can be added. These stages are not to imply a sense of linear devel-
opment or to suggest that all cultures must or do go through such stag-
es.16 They are conceptual tools to define the characteristics of phases in the
historical growth of politics and religion, and to emphasize that they do
not come into existence fully developed but rather evolve over millennia
in accord with a changing foundation.
The pre-political/pre-religious period includes all stateless social forma-
tions, mainly hunting and gathering communities, implying that the

14
There is a large literature on this question, see N. Brisch (ed.), Religion and power:
Divine kingship in the ancient world and beyond, Oriental Institute, Seminar no. 4, Chicago:
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2008; and for a lengthy bibliography,
D. Graeber and M. Sahlins (eds), On Kings, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
R. Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule, Los Angeles, University of
California Press, 1978.
15
There are vestiges of the sacerdotal state, namely, the United Kingdom, Iran, and the
Vatican, where the head of state is also the head of the religion, and there are some examples
of rulers who trace their descent from the prophet Mohammad, but no rulers claim divinity
any longer or an actual link with the gods. The Emperor of Japan lost his divinity in 1946.
16
M. H. Fried, The Evolution of Political Society, New York: Random House, 1967.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 495

separation of the whole and the parts has not taken place; the contradic-
tion remains dormant, strictly implicit. And for this reason, there is no
such thing as the state and law, or for that matter art, religion, or philoso-
phy: they are all of a piece. As long as the division of labour is simple
enough not to require the objectification of leadership, for the same rea-
son there will be none of the other forms of the objectification of social
relations that come with the marketplace.17
All are one and therefore expressions or embodiments of the unity of
whole and parts, the social unit as a coherent totality. In other words, the
community as community exists, and because genuine community exists
the representations of it are emblematic of that unity, symbols to express
what is felt but not articulated due to the level of development of con-
sciousness. They are metaphoric presentations of communal units, or of
certain human universals, signs of a coherent totality, and not elementary
forms of religion or law, which are products of fractured social relations.
Both the integral units and the separated whole and parts are expressions
of human ‘spirit,’ but the former is not to be grasped as antecedent to
their objectification, rather as belonging to different forms of social life.
One is an integral unity, and the other a divided society. There is no prayer
in tribal social formations, for example, because totems are not gods but
symbols of social unities—tribes, clans, families—while prayer is a form of
striving to find union in a divided world.18 And there is no suffrage but
rather consensus, two different phenomena.
The stage of the proto-political/proto-religious encompasses all those lev-
els of development in which the division of labour and exclusive property
relations have begun to disassemble the community as community but
have not yet completed the process. It is the stage in which some regular-
ized institutions arise to embody a portion of the whole but only as some

17
What have long been cast as ‘primitive’ forms of art, religion, philosophy, and law, imply-
ing their antecedent status to their full development beginning in marketplace societies is to
miss their actual nature. They do not exist as discrete arenas of activity because they are one,
they exist as a unity, they are the parts of a genuine whole.
18
Emile Durkheim, in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life, argues that totemic symbols
are elementary forms of religion, but our argument would suggest that totemism, animism,
and other symbols of sub-units of tribal social formations are symbols of the union of the
whole and parts. This characterization would make totemism and religion completely differ-
ent phenomena. Totems are commensurate with the pre-political or the ‘natural economy,’
while religion is a product of the political or marketplace.
496 G. TEEPLE

segment of the whole while sections of the integrated whole and

parts remain.
These communities are characterized by dualities of real existing com-
munity and the alienation of this community in various institutions, prin-
cipally in the forms of headman, chief, council, or incipient monarchy.
With respect to religion, the duality often appears as sanctified leaders or
as representations of deities as hybrids of plants or animals and humans—
an expression of the duality of genuine community as symbol and as alien-
ated community that is found in this stage of development.
The political/religious can be said to arrive with the demise of the com-
munity as community or the appearance of exclusive forms of property or
the establishment of the marketplace due to the increasing complexity of
the division of labour. The community as such is no more, it has become
by and large merely the exclusive property relations now embodied in
some sort of leadership institution and formal law and/or a priesthood
and gods, estranged from the laity, the parts, which are characterized by
competing embodiments of private property as civil society. An abstract
world of deities, whose prototypes are humans, evolves to provide imagi-
nary representations of human relations that provide respite from market
principles and the power inequalities of the marketplace and to which
requests can be made for solace.19 In the early history of the real world as
marketplace, it is overseen by elected leaders or hereditary or consecrated
monarchs and a priesthood and their mirror image of society in the heav-
ens, populated with visions of archetypal humans.20
Totemism is the celebration and representation of what exists and is
lived—a living totality; a totem is not worshipped because it is a symbol of
a unity that exists. Religion, however, is the longing for what is implicit

19
This shift from the proto-religious to the fully religious may be seen as reflected in the
‘war of the gods’ in Greek myths where the Titans (the forces of nature) are sent back to their
origins by the Olympic gods modelled after humans. There is one god in these myths for
whom humans must be eternally grateful, Prometheus, who paid a terrible price for provid-
ing humans with the means to be like the gods. And for Judeo-Christians, the same may be
said for Eve whose curiosity and defiance gave us knowledge and saved us from a history of
indolence and ignorance in the Garden of Eden, only to be vilified by the ‘fathers’ of
the church.
20
The objectification of politics takes form not only as law and officialdom, but also as
specific “houses of parliament” and law courts designed to capture in architecture the power
concentrated in the state and law. Similarly, the priesthood and creeds and rituals reside in
“houses of god” designed to reflect the nature of the faith—churches, cathedrals, mosques,
temples, monasteries, and so on.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 497

but cannot be had in a political society—the very spirituality represented

by totems, the integrated whole and parts. Its appearance is co-terminus
with politics. It involves worship because it is the acknowledgement that
in a political society the unity of the whole and the parts lies beyond the
here and now. To worship is to pay homage to this unity in abstraction
because in a divided society it exists only in the most circumscribed ways.
Religion is the antithesis of totemism. They cannot understand each
other: the perspective of totemism lays bare the hypocrisy of religion: what
religion professes to be or do, it is not and cannot, while in totemism we
find the projection of generalized spirit onto nature and the metaphors of
multiple spirits of kinship units, both as competitors to the god or gods as
idealized humans. When they meet in history, religion and totemism can-
not countenance each other: religion represents the alienated spirit of a
divided society, while totems are the symbols of existing living spirit.
Totems have no meaning in a marketplace society.

The Problem of Legitimation and Solace

It is one thing to try to account for the rationale and rise of religion, but
it is another to analyse the role of religion in the marketplace society that
gave rise to it. As the product of a system of private property, religion will
persist as long as market relations do, but this foundation provides the
contradiction that defines the roles of religion. On the one hand, religion
exists to service the need for a spiritual connection with others, which is
otherwise severely circumscribed by contractual relations, and on the
other hand, it must justify the relations of private property that create the
social atomization and economic inequalities as the very reason for its
existence. The market gives rise to the need for religion, and religion both
provides solace from the effects of the market and rationalizes it at the
same time. At the heart of religion sits hypocrisy: the very existence of
religion is the objectification of hypocrisy, which can only be changed with
the demise of its raison d’être, the marketplace society.
There are other dimensions to the hypocrisy of religion. One has to do
with the behaviour of its priests and hierarchies, that is, the violation of the
trust put in religious institutions and their personnel by their congre-
gants.21 This is hypocrisy as the product of the pretence to embody human

21
D. Gawthrop, The Trial of Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault on
Reason, Compassion, and Human Dignity, Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013.
498 G. TEEPLE

spirit in an institutionalized venue and the consequent unequal power

relations between laity and clergy. The extent of these violations, especially
against children, in history and in recent decades staggers belief,22 but the
need for religion in contemporary capitalism appears to eclipse such
unhappy revelations. All the major religions, moreover, are in one way or
another deeply misogynist. How is it that the gods allow such
discrimination?
Another example of religious hypocrisy has been the extreme bigotry
shown by religions towards each other.23 Protestants and Catholics have
engaged in long wars, Catholics and Muslims fought for centuries in the
eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere, Catholics fought with the Orthodox
Church,24 Orthodox with Orthodox,25 Jews with Muslims, not to men-
tion clashes between Hindus and Buddhists and Buddhists and Muslims,
among other examples.26 Since 1980, the role of religion in global con-
flicts has noticeably increased.27 The gods never seem to rest.
There are few better examples of how significant the relation between
politics and religion has been, and still is, than the so-called wars of reli-
gion. It is not possible to separate religion from politics and from eco-
nomic interests; and if today’s wars seem less religiously defined than, for
example, the crusades of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the gods
are still invoked today to give their blessings to the wars of the twenty-first
century.28

22
Faisal Rashid and Ian Barron, “The Roman Catholic Church: A Centuries Old History
of Awareness of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (from the First to the 19th Century),” Journal
of Child Sexual Abuse, Vol. 2 7, Issue 7, 2018 (778–792); K. J. Kerry, “Child sexual abuse
within the Catholic Church: a review of global perspectives,” International Journal of
Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, Vol. 39, Issue 2, 2015 (139–154).
23
G. Myers, History of Bigotry in the United States, New York: Random House, 1943.
24
A. Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics, New York: Gaer Associates, 1949, 331–361.
25
M. Suslov, “The Russian Orthodox Church and the Crisis in Ukraine,” in A. Krawchuk
and T. Bremer (eds.), Churches in the Ukraine Crisis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
26
C. Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, London: Penguin Books. 2007.
27
J. Fox, “The Rise of Religious Nationalism and Conflict: Ethnic Conflict and
Revolutionary Wars, 1945–2001,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 41, Issue 6, 2004
(715–731).
28
B. Knorre and A. Zygmont, “‘Militant Piety’ in 21st Century Orthodox Christianity:
Return to Classical Traditions or Formation of a New Theology?” in Religions, 11(1), 2.
2019 [https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/1/2]; K. Armstrong, The battle for God: A
history of fundamentalism. Ballantine Books, 2001; K. Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion
and the History of Violence, New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2014.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 499

Underlying the bigotry found in religion itself is the entrenched belief,

which all religions share, that each is the one and only true faith. Logically,
this cannot be, but the need for religion arising from different social strata,
different cultures and histories, make these multiple claims to the truth the
unavoidable existing state of affairs. This situation, however, points to cer-
tain conclusions that follow from such a belief. In claiming to be the one
and only, each faith perpetuates the bigotry, simply adding to the many
tribulations that plague the world. If all religions were willing to admit
that they have only partial truths, then, there are grounds for discussion
amongst religions to resolve the bigotry shown to each other. Our argu-
ment would suggest that their beliefs do have elements of truth in meta-
phorical forms, but that religion itself is an untruth, albeit an existing
untruth, because it is the product and necessity of a disassembled social
order and will only exist as long as these conditions persist.
The contradiction at the centre of religious hypocrisy presents religion
with its main tasks. Perhaps the most obvious one is to address the need
for solace from the effects of marketplace society, and this need appears to
close the eyes of their adherents to the most apparent criminal, deceitful,
and amoral acts carried out in the name of gods.29 Addressing this social
need, however, always begs the question of human nature, and this long
evolving concern in the sphere of religion has produced theology, the
formal study of the meaning of god and related creeds, which amounts to
the study of what it means to be human, albeit in alienated forms and
limited by the intellectual boundaries of doctrinal faith.
The other main task is to rationalize the persisting and growing inequal-
ities and social injuries of civil society, the foundation of religion and reli-
gious need. Here the ideological function of religion becomes apparent.
Ideology is the taking of what is, what exists, for the truth; and what exists
as the rationale of religion is the system of private property, the very social

29
The world’s dominant religions have made war to convert tribal social formations for
centuries. Under capitalist modes of production, religion has a long record of blessing troops
going to war, justifying the destruction of entire cultures, frustrating the legal prosecution of
church officials, and accumulating wealth at the expense of their congregations. Israel, the
self-proclaimed Jewish state, has upheld an apartheid regime and committed crimes against
the Palestinians ever since its formation in 1948, and latterly, it has been formally accused
before the International Court of Justice of the crime of genocide. S. Lendman, “Israel’s
Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine,” in W. A. Cook (ed.), The Plight of the
Palestinians, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; W. I. Robinson, “Palestine and Global Crisis,” in
Journal of World-Systems Research, Vol. 30, Issue 1, 2024 (485–498).
500 G. TEEPLE

relations that produce the objectified forms of the state and law. Spirit, in
the hands of the priests, is the sense of union with our others enjoyed in
abstraction because it cannot be realized in society as marketplace. In reli-
gion, our social relations are experienced in alienated forms, as prayers and
religious practices and rituals. Religion as ideology is the assertion of our
alienated social being in the form of a belief in a god and consecrated ritu-
als, objects, and actions, as if this were the truth, as the only way to find
solace, some sort of imaginary union with our ‘other.’ Of course, there is
some solace, but only in these alienated forms, limited to what comforts
prayer and ritual can offer. Real solace from the effects of private property
can only come with its abolition.
But the ideological role of religion is more extensive than justifying
alienated being as truth. It also goes a long way to legitimizing existing
market relations as beyond question; the inequalities and corruption are to
be accepted for what they are and not as issues to challenge or overturn.
Relief is to come from practicing one’s religion and hoping for solace in
another world, not from fighting against the sources of social misery. The
idea that the world was created by deities or some mystical forces helps to
prevent the conditions of life in this world from becoming objects for criti-
cal analysis and transformation.
Social control has always been a conscious part of the development of
religion. Already in the sixth century BCE, the idea of making the gods
‘all-knowing’ and ‘all-seeing’ were characteristics given to the gods by
men with obvious implications for controlling behaviour.30 To keep the
faithful within the envelope of religious beliefs, the world’s two most pop-
ulous religions, Christianity and Islam, also developed policies of excom-
munication for heretical beliefs or actions, powerful mechanisms for
presiding over the congregation and disciplining the heretical. And an
important part of these attributes of religion is the role they play in inhib-
iting class consciousness, maintaining social divisions, and promoting offi-
cial ideological views of life and society.31

30
M. Grant, The World of Rome, op. cit., p.189.
31
Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said during a meeting in 1806: “Je ne vois pas
dans la religion le mystère de l’Incarnation mais le mystère de l’Ordre Social. La religion rat-
tache au ciel une idée d’égalité qui empêche le riche d’être massacré par le pauvre.” [“I do not
see in religion the mystery of the Incarnation but the mystery of Social Order. Religion links
the idea of equality to the heavens, which prevents the rich from being massacred by
the poor.”]
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 501

The Separation of Church and State

Prior to the modern state, the church and state were often closely related
in the tasks of ruling and even united in the case of divine monarchies and
sacerdotal states. After the bourgeois revolutions (or negotiations), reli-
gions in most liberal democratic states were consigned to the sphere of
civil society, where they were assigned the same civil rights as other aspects
of civil society and denied many of their former privileges, although not
all. This exclusion of religion from political power became a hallmark of
liberal democracy.
Commonly referred to as the principle of the separation of church and
state, it has been the subject of considerable debate. Much of that debate
surrounds the meaning of the phrase and its relation to the First
Amendment of the American Constitution, which among other things
prohibits the establishment of a state religion and guarantees freedom of
religion. The phrase clearly implies a disassociation more complete than
found in the First Amendment, a disconnection clearly not realized given
the benefits bestowed on religions by almost all modern states.32
The First Amendment in the US Constitution was intended to prevent
the institutionalization of a state religion, such as the Anglican Church in
Britain and the Catholic Church in France at the time of the American
Revolution, and to complement this prohibition by affirming freedom of
religion. In effect, it amounted to the secularization of the modern state
by prohibiting political rights to churches while securing them civil rights.
This secularization, then, does not do away with religion; it gives religious
freedom. And it was not assumed that religion would fade away because
its rationale remained in place, the divide between the parts and the whole,
the separation of the individual from community.
The debate on this question, however, does not address the why of this
separation, or why religion should not be allowed to have a formal politi-
cal role. In principle, the liberal democratic state is supposed to be secular,
but political parties are free to declare their own platforms, which may
include religious policies. Here we have a conflict. In practice, there are
many religious parties in liberal democracies across the world, and the
party that wins power has the right to make its particular platform the
general one. In some liberal democracies, religious parties have ruled for
decades. In principle, this is anomalous because liberal democracy cannot

32
S. M. Swomley, Religious Liberty and Secular State, Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987.
502 G. TEEPLE

have two sovereigns at the same time, referring to the ‘people’ and a par-
ticular god or gods. In practice it does not seem anomalous because it is
assumed that the electorate will be religious, and the majority will belong
to the religion represented by the party in power.
Prior to the bourgeois revolutions, the personal power of the absolute
monarch was sovereign, but this claim to sovereignty was always chal-
lenged by other contenders for the throne and by the material and reli-
gious power of the church, especially the Catholic Church, which saw
itself as the incarnation of the sovereignty of its all-embracing God. In
short, there were two competing sources of power for sovereignty.33 The
bourgeois revolutions introduced a third claim, capital or nominally the
‘people,’ and the revolutions were the triumph of this claim over the ear-
lier two. The fate of the Knights Templar, the saintly bankers of the late
Middle Ages, at the hands of church and crown early in the fourteenth
century made clear the threat of free capital to both.34 The bourgeois
revolutions, however, completed what the Templars started and made pri-
vate property in the form of capital the one and only sovereign, and the
crown and church were sent to live in civil society, along with the people.35
Dual Loyalties. The separation of church and state brought the ques-
tion of dual loyalties to the fore. This question, which has a history as long
as that of the church and state, is over the pre-eminence of these two
sources of authority: the personal power of absolute monarchs and the
institutional power of the church. In the Middle Ages, there was a long
struggle over this issue, but these contests came to an end with the bour-
geois revolutions, which consigned the church to civil society, and made
the ‘people’ the ultimate authority in liberal democracies, to the disquiet
of the church.
With degrees of equivocation, liberal democratic states have attempted
to circumscribe the roles of the church in education, law, marriage and
divorce, birth and death, among other activities. Part of the church reac-
tion, especially the Catholic Church, was to condemn liberal democracy
because it made the people sovereign, treated all religions as equal, and

33
B. Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300, Englewood Cliffs: Pretice-Hall,
1964. Some of the historical debates underlying the principle of the separation of church and
state are examined by the author.
34
E. Ferris, “The Financial Relation of the Knights Templar to the English Crown,” in
American Historical Review, Vol. 8, no. 1, Oct. 1902 (1–17).
35
That is, for the most part. In the dozens of states that have an official religion or ‘pre-
ferred’ religion, this dilemma of dual loyalty still exists.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 503

removed most church privileges from public matters, leaving to the church
authorities congregational matters that were private and spiritual. In
response, the church formed political parties in order to preserve and pro-
tect or recreate their privileged positions. For the same reason, the Catholic
Church devised the doctrine of ultramontanism, the principle that asserts
the Pope’s ultimate authority over civil as well as spiritual matters, and that
the entire hierarchy of the church is subject to the authority of the Pope
and his Council of Cardinals.

The Church and Socialism

This opposition to liberal democracy, due to the secularizing principles of
such governments, lasted until the mid-nineteenth century. But during
the first half of the century, the working class had come into existence and
begun to assert its interests in the form of socialist and communist theo-
ries, demands, and organizations. The Communist Manifesto appeared in
1848. Given these developments, the Catholic Church began to recognize
in the demand for socialism a more dangerous enemy than liberal democ-
racy. Socialism represented in theory collective property and the possibility
of working people taking control over their own lives, with the conse-
quent disappearance of the need for religion and the gods. It meant the
end of a system of private property that separated the people from them-
selves and created the rationale for the existence of the state and religion
that accompanied it. From this point on, the Church softened its opposi-
tion to the liberal democracy, but then followed two paths: it gave support
to the state in opposition to the efforts of the working class to liberate
itself in the name of socialism,36 and it embarked on efforts to bring
working-­class resistance into the embrace of the Church.37
Since the late nineteenth century, the Roman Church has steadfastly
opposed socialism and supported elected governments and dictatorships
that maintained a civil society predicated on private property, the founda-
tion of the state and church separated from the people. The church has
had a more difficult time with fascist or totalitarian governments because

36
P. B. Minehan, Anti-Leftist Politics in Modern World History: Avoiding ‘Socialism’ at All
Costs, London: Bloomsbury, 2022; A. Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics, New York:
Gaer Associates, 1949.
37
G.-R. Horn, Western European Liberation Theology, The First Wave (1924–1959),
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
504 G. TEEPLE

they could assume to be not only the political embodiment of the people
but also their spiritual embodiment.38 The state, then, became a contender
for the role that the church has played. Both Nazi Germany and Imperial
Japan attempted to unite the two manifestations of the whole in the per-
son of the head of state: der Fuhrer and the Emperor.39 This arrangement
usurped the role of the church and increased the antipathy of the two sides
for each other, but this did not override extensive Catholic support for the
anti-socialism of Mussolini’s National Fascist Party and the anti-­Bolshevism
of the Nazis.40
As long as fascism in Italy, Germany, and Japan retained a civil society
in which private property remained preeminent, the possibility of retain-
ing the rationale of religion remained. Socialism, by contrast, means in
theory the end of private property in the means of production and the
introduction of common property; by socializing private property in the
means of production, the possibility for the people to take charge of their
own lives is presented, precluding the need for priests at the pulpit and
gods in the heavens.41

38
A. A. Kurtz, “God, not Caesar: Revisiting National Socialism as ‘political religion,’
“History of European Ideas, Vol. 35, Issue 2, 2009 (236–252). The concept of political reli-
gion remains imprecise, but for a review of its “career,” see: P. Burrin, “Political Religion,
The Relevance of a Concept,” History and Memory, Vol. 9, No. ½, 1997 (321–349).
39
The Japanese notion of a divine emperor finds its origins in ancient myths, while the
modern version, from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to 1946, was an attempt to unify a
marketplace society replete with class and regional divisions into an integrated whole.
K. Kawai, “The Divinity of the Japanese Emperor,” Political Science, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 1958
(3–14). A similar effort was tried by the German Nazis beginning in 1933 as seen in Carl
Schmitt’s Political Theology, a theoretical exposition of the Nazi attempt to unify the German
nation, complemented by the work of W. Stuckart and Hans Globke. See an excerpt of their
work: “Civil Rights and the Natural Inequality of Man,” in G. L, Mosse (ed.) Nazi Culture:
Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, New York: Schoken Books, 1966
(327–335).
40
D. Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism
in Europe, New York: Random House, 2014; G. J. Steinacher, “Forgive and Forget: The
Vatican and the Escape of Nazi War Criminals from Justice,” S: I.M.O.N. Vol. 9, No. 1,
2022; M. Aarons and J. Loftus. Unholy trinity: the Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss banks.
New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.
41
In theory, socialism means that the people hold ultimate power; with religion, an abstrac-
tion holds ultimate power, a metaphor interpreted by a priesthood; and in liberal democracy,
the state holds nominal power while capital or private property holds ultimate power.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 505

Ethics and Religion

The inference that the church is the source of ethics and morality42 implies
that before religion there was no ethics or morality, an obviously unten-
able proposition given that all social formations by definition have codes
of conduct of some sort, the alternative being the fictive ‘war of all against
all.’ There is nothing in religion that would allow it to be the origin of a
code of conduct; the foundation of all ethics is the prevailing form of
property. What religion provides to society by way of ethics is the formal-
ized religious version of the ethical codes that already exist. The ethics and
morality of the teachings of the church change as do the property rela-
tions and their contradictions, albeit with periods of lag.43
The ethics and morality that characterize a given social formation find
their source in the prevailing property forms, which in turn reflect the
division of labour and distribution of the social product. In other words,
the code of conduct between members with respect to the instruments
and products of production in the form of rights, claims, and entitlements
compromises the heart of an ethical system. In a capitalist society, the pre-
vailing ethic follows the prevailing private property relations—exclusive
rights to goods and services—and so it is always formal and largely about
relations between individuals, and individuals and corporations, not about
shared rights or claims.
It is the ethic of the marketplace that is implicit in modern law and its
institutions. Everyone is considered free and equal as embodiments of
private property, relations are contractual and competitive, everybody has
a price, everything is for sale, everyone works to their own advantage, and
no one is concerned about anyone else. In short, these are the ethics of the
market whose credo is ‘buyer beware,’ the ethical code that gives rise to

42
There are many attempts to draw a distinction between ethics and morality, but there is
no consensus on the many differences and similarities. Here, the terms will be used with the
following meaning: both refer to codes of conduct, specifically alluding to behaviour mea-
sured by socially determined standards of right and wrong or good and bad. The term moral-
ity is generally employed in reference to informal codes and individual interpretations, while
ethics is used with respect to formal codes and institutionalized definition and use. The
continuing debates surrounding ethics concern the nature of right and wrong, and the
source of the standards. The answer to these questions lies in the property relations of a given
social formation, as argued in Chap. 3.
43
See R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London: Penguin Books, 1948,
pp. 274–275.
506 G. TEEPLE

the need for religion and that religion must both legitimize this founda-
tion and provide solace for those who suffer it.
In general, mainstream religions give support to the status quo. They
give, for example, their blessings to war efforts, to dictatorships that main-
tain private property, and to private property as natural because this is the
basis on which religion is grounded. What is more, religions, like state-­
related institutions, assert their ethics as a form of heteronomy, moral stric-
tures imposed externally by such means as religious commandments, laws,
regulations, police, priests, parents, and teachers.
All religions, nevertheless, claim or allude to another source of ethics,
that is, from degrees of consciousness that we are sets of relationships.
This is a source of ethics that springs from humans themselves, as a form
of autonomy: morality derived from the human condition, the recognition
that we are our others. Socialization in a marketplace can and does pro-
duce anti-social behaviour, but it is also the springboard for this empa-
thetic consciousness of our other. Religion embraces this ethic as an ideal,
something to be prayed or wished for, the message of a prophet, the voice
of a god, or the goal of religious practice. In religion, then, there is a con-
flict of ethics between a defence of market ethics and an idealization of
whatever limited examples of life lived consciously as a relation, which
exists in capitalism only in marginal forms, as in love, friendship, kinship,
mentoring, among other relations unmediated by money where relations
can be expressed with honour and honesty.
Religion is divided by these two ethics—an ideal depiction of unmedi-
ated relations and support for the prevailing property relations, which
must be defended in order to maintain the system that gives rise to reli-
gion. This defining conflict is central to the hypocrisy of religion.

Liberal Democracy and Official or

Preferred Religion
Liberal democracy has always been accompanied by religion; it is, how-
ever, incompatible with an officially designated specific religion. This does
not stop a great many states from declaring themselves as democracies and
yet proclaiming a dominant or preferred religion.
To allow a particular religion to affect public policy or be the criterion
for citizenship, however, violates certain principles of the modern demo-
cratic state. A mandatory specific religion, for instance, is at variance with
the notion of privacy in civil life. A single privileged religion contravenes
the idea of religious tolerance or equal civil rights for all religions. The
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 507

sovereignty of a favoured god or gods and priesthood denies the principle

of the sovereignty of the people. The rule of religion contradicts the rule
of law, and specific religious rules and practices conflict with secular work
and educational processes.
Despite these numerous incompatibilities, the declaration of an official
religion is not incompatible with the more fundamental character of the
modern state, namely, the need for religion in a social system whose main
relations are defined by contract, the exchange of private rights to goods
and services. In a world in which the state is the alienated monopoly over
secular ‘general affairs,’ the rise of religion as the alienated monopoly over
‘spiritual affairs,’ the felt need for community as community where it can-
not be realized, is in principle not incompatible.

The Modern Democracy as Atheist or Agnostic

If the modern state and religion arise from the same conditions, then, it is
unlikely that the modern state would not have accompanying religion. If
religion and politics are always found together, there should be no exam-
ples of a modern state without religion, but it would appear that there are.
Formal religion is the institutional expression of a need for both indi-
viduals and the social unit that if not addressed as religion finds other ways
to express itself. When the state denies or discourages formal religious
practices, there are a few possible outcomes. One is that the state may
make itself into an object of veneration, as was the case in Hitler’s Germany
and Imperial Japan.44 Another is the creation of state-sponsored official
beliefs given a quasi-religious status in the form of devotion to individuals
or philosophies or objects. In the former Soviet Union and the China of
Mao Zedong, when religious practices were discouraged, disparaged, or
even prohibited, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were made into personages
with reverential qualities. Their writings, moreover, were not treated as
the work of mortals considered important for the working class, but as
dogmas, as doctrines to be learned by rote. But to make dogmas,

44
Extreme forms of invented ethnic/religious nationalism as found in the state of Israel
might also qualify here. See: S. Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, London: Verso 2020.
The ongoing rationale for Israel apartheid policies and now genocide of the Palestinian peo-
ple is in part explained in N. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry, London: Verso 2001, and
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. London: Oneworld Publications, 2023 (2007);
Ilan Pappe, The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of Gaza and the Occupied Territories,
Oneworld Publications 2019.
508 G. TEEPLE

presumed truths beyond question, out of the work of active revolutionar-

ies is to distort the original writings, which were not written as dogma but
as positions and arguments on particular questions central to challenging
the rule of capital. As dogma they are turned into justifications of the arbi-
trary state or party rule that replaced the possibility of self-rule.
The teaching of Marx, Lenin, and Mao as dogma led to their work
becoming ‘isms,’ systems of thought or sets of doctrinal principles, ‘truths’
for memorizing, secular catechisms, and even into cult-like justifications of
government arbitrariness. The reason for the transformation of revolu-
tionary writings into doctrines lies in the persistence of the separation of
the whole from the parts when the purpose of the revolution was to put
an end to that division. The new states that were created out of revolution
experimented with forms of people’s rule in their early days but kept the
state as the monopoly of ‘public affairs’ beyond the tumultuous period of
revolution. In short, as long as the separation of state and civil society
remains, so too does religion as religion or in disguised forms.
A third response to the official disavowal of religion is for it not to dis-
appear but to go underground, to be practiced in secret meetings. Yet
another is the conscious development of religious movements or schools
for political purposes, with religion as a political instrument.45

Civil Religion
The separation of the church and state does not leave the state without
religion. No liberal democratic state has declared itself atheist or agnostic,
instead, the state not only promotes religious tolerance, but also adopts a
religious attitude towards itself. Some national anthems, for example,
implore the security of a god, some currencies are dedicated to a god,
some modern constitutions solicit a god’s good will, and some make a god
the sovereign, some legislatures begin with a prayer, some public schools
begin each day with bible-reading, some law courts require an oath on a
bible, and all states foster a degree of patriotism, in short, a god’s presence
or a spiritualized sense of nation is nurtured as part of many aspects of
modern democracy.46

45
I. Johnson, A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
46
The article that began the modern discussion: R. N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,”
Daedalus, Vol. 96. No. 1, Winter 1967 (1-21). One of the better reviews of the issue: Gail
Gehrig, American Civil Religion: An Assessment, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion,
Monograph Series, No. 3, 1979.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 509

A nation-state is never without religion or a spiritualized frame of mind

about itself because what the state embodies is the estranged whole, the
very reason for the need for religion. The state and religion are two sides
of this estrangement: the secular and spiritual embodiments.47 And state
promotion of a reverential attitude towards itself is consistent with the
principle of the separation of the state and religion. State veneration in
quasi-religious ways has come to be called civil religion, the presentation
of state institutions, laws, and official positions as if consecrated. Civil reli-
gion is simply state endorsement and advancement of the principles of faith
in a god with respect to the nation. And this veneration extends to the
sanctification of rule by a state or the cult of the will of government as
opposed to rule by the people.
This question of civil religion is not to be taken as merely an exercise in
manipulation by the powers that be. The state and religion both exist as
if representing the whole society, as ‘community,’ and for this reason the
state is ipso facto invested with the trappings of the whole in a spiritual
sense, which is fitting because it is the secular embodiment of property
relations. The nature of the trappings of civil religion are always framed by
the prevailing religious beliefs in civil society.
The Importance of the Sanctification of the State. In a marketplace soci-
ety, held together by the bonds of economic necessity but riven by class
strife, social cohesion is a central problem and needs to be addressed. The
sanctification of the state is largely for the purposes of social cohesion in a
society defined by antagonistic, competitive relations.48
Because the modern democratic state rests on a civil society as market-
place and the marketplace provides no inherent source of identity or loy-
alty, the state and its various institutions and intelligentsia must provide
the substance of national identity and ideational loyalty to the nation-­
state. With the rise of the modern state also comes modern efforts to cre-
ate national identities, ideologies, and ethnic characteristics befitting the
configuration of capital and labour in these nations; it is necessary to cre-
ate a national identity in the face of a civil society as marketplace. Hence,

47
The notion of the “cult of the nation” is present from the origin of the state, and it
persists in the form of civil religion. See J. F. Strayner, On the medieval origins of the modern
state, op. cit., p. 56. And civil religion presents itself in several forms, one of which is the
notion of a self-declared consecrated or “chosen people,” which is not uncommon, but in
exaggerated form is found in Israel and the United States.
48
The conscious, deliberate use of religion by the state and social elites for purposes of
social cohesion was well known in the ancient world. See: M. Grant, The World of Rome,
op. cit., pp. 188–226. Then, patriotism and religion were, he writes, “indistinguishable.”
510 G. TEEPLE

the arguments regarding ‘imagined communities.’49 ‘Imagined’ because

the marketplace, the reality of the modern nation-state, is not a commu-
nity, and yet for the purposes of mobilizing the people of the national
territory for national capital accumulation such an identity is necessary to
construct.

The Problem of Religion in Modern Times: Political

Theology, Liberation Theology,
and the ‘New Atheists’

In the last one hundred years, there have been three significant attempts
to recast the place of religion in society: the Nazi effort to unite the role
of religion with the state to create what was intended to be a ‘total way of
life,’ the split in the Catholic Church between the hierarchy and lay com-
munities and local priests and constituencies, and the headlong attack by
public intellectuals on the belief in the existence of a god and the crimes
of organized religion.
Political Theology. In the early years of the German Weimar Republic
(1919–1933), Carl Schmitt, a well-known political theorist of the day,
among many others, was engaged in a long debate about the problems of
liberal democracy. The book by Schmitt, Political Theology (1922),50 was
somewhat different from the other contributions in that it had a singular
focus, the question of sovereignty. In the turmoil of the period, this was
an important issue to address given that aside from the existing govern-
ment, characterized by indecision51 and opposition to the left, there were
several muted and unofficial claims to political pre-eminence from the
military, churches, popular and militant political parties, trade unions, and
ambitious leaders.
Schmitt, along with others, took a position noticeably outside the
ongoing debates, a stance that amounted to a rejection of the practice and
principles of liberal democracy and a reimagining of the relations between
49
B. Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 2016.
50
C. Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, The MIT
Press 1986; see also, C. Schmitt, “Public Law in a New Context,” in G. L. Mosse (ed.) Nazi
Culture, op. cit. (323–326).
51
H. A. Winkler, “Choosing the Lesser Evil: The German Social Democrats and the Fall
of the Weimar Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25, Issue 2, April 1990
(205–227); and J. L. Snell, “German Socialists in the Last Imperial Reichstag, 1912–1918,”
Bulletin of the International Institute of Social History, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1952 (196–205).
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 511

citizenry, state, religion, and political leaders. It was an attempt to unite

these elements, to create a new ‘total way of life.’ This was a ‘totality’
directed from the top, by the ‘leader,’ with the ostensible authority of the
whole. Schmitt envisaged a rearranged divide between civil society and the
state. One side, newly defined, saw a merged secular and religious power,
including the citizenry, religion, law, and state, and sought to combine
these components under the leader to create the Volk, a united Germanic
community, membership in which was defined by an invented notion of
racial purity and superiority. On the other side, to which less attention was
paid, was the corporate private sector, much strengthened by state pro-
moted cartelization,52 and a coercively pacified labour force in which
workers were stripped of rights, unions destroyed, left-wing parties demol-
ished, and their politicians assassinated or imprisoned, and many POWs
and camp inmates made into slave labourers. The corporate sector was left
as a source of economic power as corporate private property.
This concentration of arbitrary political power meant that the ‘leader’
was able to assume supremacy over the power of capital that underlay the
system. And here was the rub: the existence of two sovereigns, capital and
the ‘leader,’ was not tenable.53 The former could tolerate the supremacy of
the latter, but only as long as the latter, the ‘leader,’ was useful. Schmitt’s

52
F. Neumann, Behemoth, the Structure and Practice of National Socialism, London: Victor
Gollantz, 1942, pp. 209–237.
53
Schmitt’s indeterminate notion of sovereignty, “The sovereign is he who decides on the
exception,” is announced as the first line of his book, Political Theology. Left as poorly quali-
fied as it is, it is certainly no definition of sovereignty for all the unexceptional decisions.
Exception is not the rule, however, as everyone knows, and in liberal democracies states of
exception or emergency are for limited periods over critical issues for which rule is arbitrary
and unaccountable. But in the context of Nazi Germany, in the midst of an economic depres-
sion and the need to build the culture of a Volk for the sake of unity, in which the missing
community spirit is fabricated and asserted as incarnate in a ‘leader,’ Schmitt’s first sentence
appears to refer to a ‘leader’ who holds peremptory powers over exceptional issues, left unde-
fined and therefore open to interpretation. Everyday matters would continue to be ruled by
everyday laws and their usual adjudicators. Here we have arbitrariness (the Gestapo) side by
side with liberal democratic legal forms staffed by Nazi judges and lawyers. This was the very
structure of what became the form of the Nazi legal system, the “dual state” as Fraenkel put
it, but which in practice was arbitrary rule by militarized police. But why political theology?
Because the rationale of the absolute powers of the “leader” lay in his presumed incarnation
of the spirit of the Volk. This was an argument that appeared justifiable in the context of
pervasive economic and political crisis. See: C. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary
Democracy, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985; and E. Fraenkel, The Dual State, Oxford
University Press, 2017.
512 G. TEEPLE

vision of the Volk led by the ‘Fuhrer’ was a conceptual model for uniting
Germany, then a country of many dialects and ethnic and religious differ-
ences and plagued by social unrest arising from the economic implications
of the Treaty of Versailles, the economic depression, and a class-conscious
working class making it politically divided along many lines.
It was also an alternative to the widely disrespected social democratic
Weimar government, a change needed to assist German capital in the
depression with militarization and mobilization for war. But during the
war, the usefulness of the leader waned once his vision had outstripped the
strength of the economy and military forces and was confronted by newly
mobilized Soviet armed forces. Despite assassination attempts on Hitler to
end his authority, it was the Soviet victory that put an end to the regime.
After the war, cartelized corporate private property was left more or less
in place but opened to American investment. On the political side,
Germany was returned to a liberal democracy, changing some Nazi laws
and institutions but retaining most of the Nazi era officials. In the postwar
era, it was a political system that was no longer the voice of the leader but
one responsive to the goals of capital accumulation and a barrier to the
people’s control of their own affairs under the guise of liberal democracy.
And the new state began to provide generous support to Catholic and
Protestant churches, which it continues to do.
The attempt to manufacture a Volk community as the spiritual union of
the state and the people, dominated by a leader, to replace class-fractured
marketplace society neglected to include the driving force in civil society,
the corporate sector. The political and the economic could find agreement
for a time, but this was no union, and ultimately the ambitions of the for-
mer outstripped the capability of the latter. As an attempt to create a
regime with preeminent political control, it revealed the secret of liberal
democracy: in the capitalist mode of production, political dominance can
only be temporary and a pretence because the political is necessarily sub-
ordinate to the demands of the prevailing economic forms, the raison
d’être of the system.
Liberation Theology. If Nazi political theory attempted to usurp religion
in the recasting of the state and civil society, the rise of liberation theology
within the Catholic Church was an attempt to change the society that gave
rise to religion and to the need for the solace that it pretended to give to
alleviate market induced pervasive social injuries.
The idea of liberation theology in Latin America is said to have origi-
nated in two texts written by church officials, Ruben Alves, Towards a
Theory of Liberation (1968) and Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theory of Liberation
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 513

(1972). Their theories, likely encouraged by the outcome of the Second

Vatican Council in 1962, rested on ideas drawn from the teachings of
Christ found in the Bible and interpreted to provide a critical perspective
‘from the bottom’ on the injustice, poverty, and state oppression experi-
enced by the peasants, workers, and indigenous peoples of Latin America.
The 1968 Conference of Latin American Bishops in Medellin, Columbia,
was the moment when the bishops agreed that the Church had to adopt a
new approach to the poor. Their theories gave shape to a political move-
ment within the church intended to combat poverty from the perspective
of the people and using the words of Christ and Christian notions of God’s
‘grace,’ ‘sin,’ and the Church’s ‘mission.’54
The idea of liberation theology became very popular and inspired a new
activist approach in the shape of small community-based organizations led
by sympathetic priests and often lay leaders to confront the injustices of
the system, assassinations by the death squads, and the brutal dictatorships
installed by successive US governments. These community-based groups,
particularly in remote areas, represented a radical change from the passive
pastoral practices of the Church in the face of abject poverty and consider-
able state and corporate violence. Over the following years in the 1980s
and 1990s, these ideas animated many thousands of such community
groups in Latin American and challenged many local established ruling
circles. The theories and the organizing around them, moreover, stretched
beyond Latin America; they inspired the development of religious-based
groups expressing a theology of liberation in the United States,55 Israel,
India, South Korea, Ireland, and Palestine.
From the beginning, however, these ideas and organizations met with
criticism and resistance from the Catholic Church hierarchy and the
American CIA.56 For the Church, liberation theology threatened all

54
G.-R. Horn, Western European Liberation Theology, op. cit. The idea of bringing the
peoples’ struggles into the embrace of the Catholic Church was not new, but in Latin
America, the movement took hold in communities where trade unions and left-wing political
parties were usually absent.
55
J. H. Cone, Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968–1998,
Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
56
S. M. Scheuren Acevedo, “The Opposition to Latin American Liberation Theology and
the Transformation of Christianity, 1960–1990,” unpublished M.A. Thesis, Florida
International University, Chap. l. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.
cgi?article=3677&context=etd; K. Barron, “Liberal Theology, the CIA, and the Vatican: A
New Direction for Latin America?” NACLA, March 14, 2013, https://nacla.org/
news/2013/3/14/liberation-theology-cia-and-vatican-new-direction-latin-america.
514 G. TEEPLE

aspects of its two main roles in society, to provide comfort or consolation

for the suffering of poverty and state and corporate oppression, and to
legitimize the very basis of this suffering. Liberation theology was shifting
the pastoral emphasis of Church teaching from ‘saving souls’ to an activist
emphasis based on community action and local leaders, and it was using
the teachings of Christ to criticize and actively oppose capitalism, the
rationale of the Church and its ministry. Liberation theology promised to
undermine or transform that foundation, to change the reason ‘souls’
needed saving. These community-based organizations, furthermore, were
making their decisions democratically, adding to the fears of the Church
hierarchy. The CIA had also recognized the threat of a theology of libera-
tion in the inspiration it gave to the increase of organized social move-
ments in Latin American and around the world.
The Church in the person of Cardinal Ratzinger, the appointed head of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, began his attack on libera-
tion theology in 1983. He had a very clear idea of its dangers for the
Church, and by the 1990s,57 he had all but silenced the debates on this
radical departure from long accepted Church doctrine.58
In the end, liberation theology was characterized by too many contra-
dictory assumptions, which hampered the growth of the movement. To
work to overcome the injustices of the system from within the church or
from its pretended teachings was to fail to see the church itself as part of
the reason for the injustices. It was also to misunderstand that the power
structure of the nation-state is comprised of integrated political, economic,
and religious institutions, all of which benefit from the oppression that
gives rise to liberation theology. To imagine that such a power structure
would succumb to non-violent protests and appeals based on Christian
teachings is to misapprehend the social significance of these teachings in
their support of the establishment that liberation theology has opposed.
“The New Atheists”. At the end of the twentieth century, the impor-
tance of religion in politics came to the fore again, this time as politically
inspired fundamentalism. In the Middle East, groups of radicalized Islamic

57
N. Kozloff, “The Pope’s Holy War Against Liberation Theology,” NACLA, April 30,
2008, [https://nacla.org/news/popes-holy-war-against-liberation-theology]. Unlike most
popes, Ratzinger was a formidable theologue and understood well the “danger” of liberation
theology to the Church.
58
For a survey and critical analyses of liberation theology, see: J. Garcia Antezana (ed.),
Liberation Theology and Sociopolitical transformation, Burnaby: Institute for the Humanities,
Simon Fraser University, 1992.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 515

militias were engaged in many small conflicts and acts of terror, mostly as
a consequence and in aid of American foreign policies.59 In the United
States, certain Christian sects resurrected a series of relatively dormant
beliefs from earlier decades that included a strident literalist interpretation
of the Bible, and unyielding beliefs in divine creation, the Virgin Birth, the
second coming of Christ, among other questions of interest to Christian
fundamentalists. They also loudly proclaimed public opposition to abor-
tion, gay and lesbian rights, and the theory of evolution, while promoting
such ideas as ‘intelligent design’ and unquestioning support for the Zionist
project in Israel. And as if to crown these examples of new religious activ-
ism, the twenty-first century opened with a terror attack on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of American imperial power,
which was blamed on Islamic fundamentalists. Despite efforts to maintain
an official narrative, the nature of this event remains wrapped in
scepticism.60
One of the reactions to these examples of the apparent irrationality of
religious fundamentalism came in the form of the publication of several
books, which were collectively labelled by the authors ‘the New Atheism.’
Their common message was a condemnation of religion and the worship
of a god or gods as illogical and groundless beliefs and behaviour. The first
several of these books became ‘best sellers’61 and started a decades-long
renewed interest in atheism.62 What is new in them is not clear, as anyone
familiar with the history of atheism will readily see, except for a more

59
S. Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,
Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2008; R. Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States
Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005; M. Mamdani,
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, New York:
Pantheon Books, 2004.
60
The 9/11 Commission Report, July 22, 2004, https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/
report/index.htm; for a review of some of the criticisms of this Report, see: Criticism of the
9/11 Commission, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_9/11_Commission.
61
S. Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York:
W.W. Norton, 2004; R. Dawkins, The God Delusion, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2006; D. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, New York: Viking
Press, 2006; V. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not
Exist, Amhurst: Prometheus, 2007; C. Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything, New York: Twelve Books, 2007.
62
It should be added that the debate, such as it was and aside from the original ‘best sell-
ers,’ has been largely confined to academic journals and the magazines of the ‘reading class.’
516 G. TEEPLE

noticeable belligerent and sarcastic tone than in the past.63 The books have
been widely reviewed, critically and favourably, individually and collec-
tively, and so our discussion will be confined to a few key points raised or
omitted in most of these contemporary forays against religion.
All these authors have a discernible emphasis in their object of attack
and that is Islam. Christianity takes second place, and Hinduism is touched
upon, but Judaism is left largely unmentioned. This is odd since the Jews
were the object of one of the greatest crimes in history, i.e., their genocide
attempted by the Nazis before and during the Second World War. And the
Israeli state is the perpetrator of one of the longest persecutions of a peo-
ple, the Palestinians, since World War II. This discrimination and abuse
has continued in the form of the attempted genocide of the Palestinians
between 2023 and 2025.64 Zionism, one of the fundamentalist and politi-
cized versions of Judaism, has made the religion into a conceit for its
adherents, a form of self-adulation, the self-imposed hubris of a belief in
ethnic superiority.65 And the great transgressions committed in the name
of this belief, the creation of an apartheid state, decades of violent mal-
treatment of Palestinians, and in the end the conscious committing of
genocide are certainly amongst the great crimes committed in the name of
religion.66
These ‘new atheists’, moreover, do not address the association that reli-
gion has with politics, the two are always found together. These authors
do not ask what that relation could mean and how it might illuminate the
nature of religion. And there is no touching the subject of the instrumen-
tal use of religion by governments for purposes unknown to those being

63
Their self-described grandiose title of “the New Atheism” was matched by their allusion
to themselves as the “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” See: C. Hitchens, S. Harris,
R. Dawkins, D. Dennett, S. Fry, The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an
Atheist Revolution. Despite the self-promotion, there was no revolution, no apocalypse, and
no ‘new’ atheism, just more criticism of religious fundamentalism.
64
“Summary of ICJ’s Order of 24 May 2024 – Request for the modification of the Order
of 28 March 2024 – Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel),” 24 May 2024 [https://
www.un.org/unispal/document/summary-of-icjs-order-24may24/].
65
Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, Santa Barbara: Veritas Press, 1988.
66
“Proceedings instituted by South Africa against the State of Israel on 29 December 2023”
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-
app-01-00-en.pdf.
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 517

used. Among those barely mentioned are Shintoism,67 Zionism,68 Hindu

‘nationalism,’69 and the resurrection of Confucianism.70
Atheism has a long history, but generally it has not been reduced to the
mere rejection of religion and is usually accompanied by a form of human-
ism. The ‘new atheism’ has presented a view of the atheist as concerned
with proving that god does not exist and that religion is responsible for
many historical and ongoing crimes and that it ‘poisons everything.’71
This narrowness does a disservice to the idea of atheism.
By dismissing religion as superstitious beliefs, the ‘new atheists’ have
missed understanding the important positive role that religion has played
in raising our awareness of ourselves. Some of the finest works of art in the
history of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature are reli-
giously inspired and have enriched our lives in marketplace society.
Theology, moreover, despite its ideological use, has always been an arena
for the search of the meaning of life in the meaningless world defined by
the market, albeit in religious guise, as the ‘mystery of the spirit.’

Conclusions
The ‘new atheism’ has resurrected many arguments for the non-existence
of a god and exposed the many criminal and violent acts perpetuated by
religious institutions. But it has missed some crucial points: despite the
‘proof’ that gods do not exist and that religion is hypocritical, these argu-
ments make us none the wiser about what religion is, why so many believe,

67
S. Shimazono, “State Shinto and the Religious Structure of Modern Japan,” Journal of
the American Academy of Religion, Volume 73, Issue 4, December 2005, Pages 1077–1098,
https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfi115; S. Thal, “A Religion That Was Not A Religion:
The Creation of Modern Shinto in the Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in D.R. Peterson and
D. R. Walhof (eds.), The Invention of Religion, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2002 (100–114).
68
U. Davis, Israel: An Apartheid State, London: Zed Books, 1987; A. Bober (ed.), The
Other Israel, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1972; N. G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah, On
the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2005.
69
C. George, “The Rise of Hindu Nationalism,” <thereader.mit.edu>; S. Sen, “Hindu
nationalists now pose a global problem,” in Aljazeera, 26 September 2022.
70
Zhao, Q. “The influence of Confucianism on Chinese politics and foreign policy”, Asian
Education and Development Studies, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 321–328. (2018), [https://doi.
org/10.1108/AEDS-03-2018-0057].
71
The subtitle of Hitchens’ book is “How Religion Poisons Everything.”
518 G. TEEPLE

and why the long association with politics. If religion is to be criticized it

must be analysed for what it is and not for its apparent illusory gods and
violations of what it purports to stand for.
Like politics, religion is a product of the marketplace and today of capi-
talism, and so, like politics it is not something that exists as a stand-alone
phenomenon. Religion as the embodiment of spirit, the human as rela-
tionship, has two sides: one is the spirit as epitomized as the ethics of the
market taken as universals, and the other is the spirit as found in human
relations marginal to the market, relations unmediated by contract or
money, idealized as life in the hereafter because they are possible only in
limited ways in the here and now. At the heart of religion is this contradic-
tion: its foundation in market relations must be rationalized for its own
existence, but this role conflicts with its ministry, which is to administer to
the needs of those who suffer the social injustices of the market. It is not
a phenomenon that will disappear under the force of a logical argument or
demonstration that no empirical referent for its beliefs exists.
The persistence of religion and its continuing growth in modern soci-
ety72 are testimony to the expansion of private property. Religion is the
acknowledgement of the ‘narrowness’ of life, of the ‘soullessness’ of every-
day existence, which follow the penetration of private property and con-
tractual relations into every aspect of life.73
Along with the expansion of market relations due to the proliferation of
neoliberal policies the world over, there has been a resurgence of belief,
72
Pew Research Center, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections,
2010–2050,” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projec-
tions-2010-2050/. April 2, 2015.
73
K. Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,” in Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, p. 175.
“It [religion] is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence
has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the
world of which religion is the spiritual aroma.
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest
against real distress. Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happi-
ness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give
up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the
criticism of the vale of tears the halo of which is religion.
… The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality
like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round
himself and therefore round his true self.”
 12 POLITICS AND RELIGION 519

which was well on the way by the time of the ‘new atheists.’74 There has
also been an increase in the instrumental use of religion,75 and an evangeli-
cal or even militant turn away from the traditional churches.76 The prob-
lem is not whether the gods exist or not, or that so many crimes have been
committed in the name of religion, as the ‘new atheists’ would have it, but
rather why the majority of world’s population continue to believe in a god
or gods and participate in politics and what this all means.

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 CHAPTER 13

The Completion of Politics and the End

of Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy, we have argued, is not an independent variable; it is a

political form whose content is the process of capital accumulation.1 This
accumulation process is the driver, the active side of this relation; it pro-
vides the impetus, the motive force of economic development and the
boundaries of what is politically possible. Accumulation and its contradic-
tions are the reason liberal democracy appears in history, changes over
time, and meets its demise.
Modern democratic systems have only ever been the political forms
belonging to marketplace societies; they have been structured to allow
competitive capital the chance to alternate control over the public purse
and policy. Initially, participation in these systems was restricted to those
with a stake in the market, meaning sufficient assets to provide a living.
This property or economic qualification produced destabilizing resistance
from those suffering insufficient assets, which gradually forced the reduc-
tion of qualifications, ultimately allowing everyone defined as a person to
participate in voting. But having the vote does not mean control of the
governing process. Here lies the second key function of liberal democracy:
universal suffrage has been a political means to obfuscate the fact that the

1
For definitions of capital accumulation, see: P. Zaremka, “Accumulation of capital,” in
B. Fine and A. Saad-Filho (eds.), The Elgar companion to Marxist economics, Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar, 2012 (1–5). As Marx defined it, see: K. Marx, Capital, Volume One,
Chapters 23–25.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 525

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5_13
526 G. TEEPLE

class that produces the wealth has no stake in the system. The working
class is declared sovereign over a system that exists by virtue of its
exploitation.
Liberal democracy is only meaningful as a political adjunct to a system
of private property. To put it another way, it has been the appropriate
political form belonging to a stage in the accumulation of capital, the stage
in which industrial capital develops as a national configuration. In the
building of nation-states, the prevailing capital evolved from its mercantil-
ist forms to industrial capital, and from this form three sets of conflicting
relations arose and came to dominate the political history of the modern
state. These were conflicts intrinsic to capitalism: the working class versus
corporate employers, domestic corporate sectors competing with each
other, and national capital formations represented by national states
against one another. These conflicts were integral to the process of accu-
mulation of industrial capital as framed by the nation-state. They have
been moderated and contained with rules and regulations, but, because
intrinsic to the system, they cannot be resolved.
The contradiction between workers and employers is fundamental to
capitalist accumulation because here surplus-value is created, but at the
same time, it is a constant source of social and economic instability. The
resulting class war has been mitigated with political and institutional
reforms—in particular, universal suffrage, union rights, and the welfare
state—that became the defining characteristics of liberal democracy.
Conflict between domestic corporations, also an integral part of accumu-
lation, has been moderated by regulations, not to mention dampened by
periodic elections allowing corporate sectors alternating access to political
power. Conflicts between states as representatives of national corporations
over the territorial expansion of their jurisdictions have been continual,
punctuated by two world wars. In the aftermath of war, a period of diplo-
macy, treaties, and international law have preceded more wars.
Conflict in these three forms is the normal state of affairs in industrial
capitalism; all three are intrinsic to the accumulation process as inter-class,
intra-class, and international wars. Peace has only been an institutionalized
pause in these wars, an armistice or a truce as respite from the abiding ten-
sions: not the end of war but a cease-fire, a suspension not a resolution. In
a world of competitive capital, war and peace are not opposites, but rather,
war is intrinsic and peace is regulated or restricted war between actual
wars. One is open conflict, the other is institutionalized or concealed
conflict.
 13 THE COMPLETION OF POLITICS AND THE END OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY 527

The shape of these conflicts varies, but most take place in veiled forms,
which means that they have been institutionalized: kept under control by
states through the imposition of statutes, rules and regulations, agencies,
programs, and agreements of all sorts, domestic and international. The
history of law is the history of the containment of the conflicts inherent in
marketplace society. It unfolds as increasing legalization to the point that
all essential relations are defined by legal forms: humans become persons,
material objects become commodities, social intercourse becomes con-
tract, accumulated capital becomes incorporated, and inter-state relations
become regulated by treaties, conventions, protocols, and supranational
institutions.2
This gradual legalization of all essential aspect of life produces a world
of legalities and the rise of the various branches of law—constitutional,
civil, criminal, and administrative—and the consequences of law—the
steady enlargement of the courts, judges, and lawyers, and criminal acts,
police, and prisons. The same growth of law holds for international rela-
tions, that is, connections between national configurations of capital:
international law and the conventions on diplomacy expand in concert
with and because of conflict in this sphere. But legalization is politiciza-
tion: the law regulating these conflicts is always the product of the intent
and design of class partisan governments serving some faction in the accu-
mulation process.
Even as institutionalized in law as temporary ‘peace’ agreements, these
class, corporate, and international conflicts persist as forms of war. In the
capitalist world, peace is war institutionalized; it is not the end of hostili-
ties, it is the legal limiting of conflict. Where it is not institutionalized or
when laws are ignored or overridden, conflict becomes open and lawless.
In the industrial nations,3 the institutionalization of inter- and intra-class
conflict has taken the form of the welfare state, industrial relations, univer-
sal suffrage, and corporate law. International conflicts have been provided
with an overarching legal framework in the United Nations Charter, the
International Bill of Rights, associated conventions, and numerous com-
mercial treaties and agreements, as well as the so-called rules-based inter-
national order (RBIO), grounded in the Bretton Woods Agreements.

2
In the marketplace, non-competitive, unmediated, direct relations between humans, such
as empathetic consideration, affection, altruism, and love, become incomprehensible or sus-
pect, questioned for an ulterior motive that is assumed to be there, albeit hidden.
3
For many colonial nations, the post-World War II period was an era of open war.
528 G. TEEPLE

The Completion of Politics

This pervasive legalization of class and international conflict in the postwar
era signalled the largely completed separation of the whole from the parts.
The world’s nations were resolved into two arenas: civil society, the realm
of private property and its incarnation as competing persons and corporate
units and the state, the embodiment of these relations of private property
in abstract legal forms and their various governing and enforcement insti-
tutions. Politics, as the relation between a separated state and civil society,
was reduced to a single relation of universal suffrage, exercised as one
person one vote, equally by all citizens, finding its optimal form as liberal
democracy. Persisting constitutional monarchies, theocracies, unelected
judges and second chambers, and independent central banks, however,
have continued to stand as examples of incomplete political development,
anomalies in liberal democracy, pointing to persisting forms of institution-
alized political privilege to protect the prevailing property relations.
The completion of politics finds its consummate form in liberal democ-
racy. In theory, at least, it means all essential relations (the whole) are
formalized in the form of the state, and all the social units that comprise
civil society (the parts) are stripped of political privilege and reduced to the
status of abstract equals with equal abstract political significance: universal
suffrage and one person one vote. Despite the criticisms we have made of
liberal democracy, this achievement is a genuine historical advance in the
recognition of the unity of humankind—albeit as abstract equals.
This is still a world in which we find certain ethnic groups believing in
their superiority, certain religions defining their adherents as ‘chosen,’ cer-
tain nations thinking themselves as ‘indispensable,’ one gender assuming
pre-eminence, and skin, eye, and hair colours having ascribed meaning. In
principle, however, the achievement of liberal democracy is the denial of
all such distinctions as self-aggrandizing myths, ethnic conceits, priestly
inventions, or empty attributions.
Liberal democracy, however, is not the end of politics; it is rather the
culmination of political forms. It is the exemplary form of political com-
pletion that embraces the utter separation of the whole and parts. Liberal
democracy has well disguised the conflictive nature of civil society and the
real sovereignty of capital, in part by convincing the working classes that
they are sovereign and can exercise that sovereignty by means of one per-
son one vote. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, how-
ever, the increasingly blatant corruption of politicians, the government
 13 THE COMPLETION OF POLITICS AND THE END OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY 529

disregard of street protests of unprecedented size and number, the chronic

decline in living standards, the numerous unprovoked wars by the US and
NATO, and state violations of international law have significantly under-
mined the credibility of liberal democracy and exposed the institutional
deception that it is.4
The completion of politics means that the separation of civil society and
the state is complete: formal political privileges are renounced, and no
further political development is possible. All citizens are levelled to an
abstract equal social unit, which helps to strip away many of the barriers
that divide humans, except for wealth. It is only an abstract status, how-
ever, only pertaining to humans defined as embodiments of private prop-
erty. Humans remain defined as persons, and their relations framed by law
and contract. The end of politics, by contrast, would be the end of the
separation of the whole and parts, a conscious uniting of the two sides,
with the people as the active participating subject and their joint wills as
predicate becoming simply a matter of administration, a development that
is dependent on the end of private property in the means of production
and reproduction. It is then that humans would be able to realize them-
selves not as persons but as unmediated, altruistic relations.

The End of Liberal Democracy

It is safe to say that we are not at the end of politics, but we can point to
the end of liberal democracy, that is, the end of a particular form of politics
brought on by a historical change in the development of capital. The polit-
ical form of liberal democracy is at the end of its development because its
content as capital accumulation has outgrown this political shell. The con-
tinuing accumulation process has moved inexorably in two main ways:
first, towards more monopolization and cartelization and, second, to the
transnational not national arena. Since 1945, the representatives of pre-
vailing capital have created global agencies to provide the rules and regula-
tions that facilitate the accumulation of cartelized capital in supranational

4
An opinion poll in May 2024 on how the US Congress is ‘doing its job’ registered 81%
disapproval and 13% approval rating by the American public. [https://www.statista.com/
statistics/207579/public-approval-rating-of-the-us-congress/]. The PEW Research Center
writes: “Opinions about Congress are largely negative; just 26% of U.S. adults have a favor-
able view of Congress, while 72% have an unfavorable view.” [https://www.pewresearch.
org/politics/2023/09/19/views-of-the-u-s-political-system-the-federal-government-
and-federal-state-relations/].
530 G. TEEPLE

production chains. The accumulation process in the global arena by trans-

national corporate bodies aided by global agencies and treaties amounts to
the transformation of the content of the liberal democratic form. This
political form has lost its national economic rationale.
It will be countered that the form and content of liberal democracy
persist: such states appear to carry out their functions as before and elec-
tions are still held. To this objection, we make these rejoinders. First, it is
obvious this political form still exists, but what its current role is and how
to account for it are the problems. We have argued that liberal democracy
is conflict institutionalized, but the conflicts it was intended to institution-
alize—between labour and capital, national corporations, and national
configurations—have changed, making it increasingly difficult to pretend
that it is any longer what it was in its culminating postwar form. The com-
mon element in each of these conflicts has been national capital, but the
main configurations of capital are no longer national; they increasingly
take the form of global oligopolies, cartels, labour markets, and produc-
tion chains that span the world. This change makes national elections
more like parodies than ever before, although this is not to say that elec-
toral outcomes cannot bring small degrees of meaningful change. It
would, nevertheless, be rare to find legislation that steps outside the
boundaries set by the demands of global capital accumulation. The idea of
the independent sovereignty of states, widely accepted as the foundation
of the so-called Westphalian state system, was predicated on the historical
development of national capital, during the age of nation-building, but
this age is now long past. Without national capital, the leverage power of
the working class, the electorate, has largely passed away. Neoliberal poli-
cies, prescribed by global agencies, are the main political options now on
offer; they frame the policies of national governments. The content has
transformed itself and superseded the form.
Second, the liberal democratic state has been thoroughly ‘captured.’
Although we have argued that the modern state has only ever been a facili-
tator of capital accumulation, first as national and now as global, the ‘cor-
porate capture’ of the state since the late twentieth century has been much
more direct and complete. This situation can be attributed to the wide
adoption of neoliberal policies, which reflect both the globalization and
extensive mergers of capital. Much national public policy is determined
indirectly through obligations to conform to neoliberal and austerity poli-
cies, not to mention to the assessments and recommendations of credit
rating agencies and the IMF and World Bank. The widespread privatiza-
tion of government activities in the form of direct outsourcing of the
 13 THE COMPLETION OF POLITICS AND THE END OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY 531

governing process to the corporate sector amounts to the blatant sale of

the state sector and privileging of global consultancy and management
service corporations.5 All these directives and pressures have been initiated
in the global arena. The role of liberal democracy in mitigating intra-­
corporate conflict has been by and large eclipsed by globalization of capi-
tal, widespread and continuing mergers and acquisitions, and the outright
sale of governing processes.
Third, one of the most important reasons for the persistence of the
liberal democratic state is its role in controlling the working class. In the
theory and practice of liberal democracy, the working class appears as the
electorate, comprised of the voters who embody the sovereignty of the
people by exercising the principle of one person one vote: the working
class does not appear as the working class. In constitutions, the electorate
is declared to be the subject of this political system, the principal entity that
determines policies and oversees the political process. Such illusions pre-
vent the working class from seeing itself for what it is: the majority that
produces the wealth, but without a stake in the system—even its main link
with society, the ‘job,’ is tied to employer discretion. As the working class,
not the electorate, it is an object of the political system. It is defined and
regulated by the state as an instrument of capital, the real sovereign, and
its limits of action are laid out in legislative statutes demanded by employ-
ers. From this perspective, confronted by politicians, employers, teachers,
judges, lawyers, police, and prisons, the worker does not appear as sover-
eign, and the individual vote carries little or no meaning or power.
Aside from this obfuscatory role of liberal democracy, the national defi-
nition and legalization of the working classes present a barrier to their
unity across the world, that is, their ability to follow corporations into the
global arena, their national legal existence presents significant restrictions
in their conflict with transnational capital. Of more immediate impor-
tance, their national definition is necessary for the maintenance of the tax
system, which is required to sustain the national debt for use by global
corporations, to legitimize the disguised shift of wealth from the working
class to the corporate sector via the debt and military ventures, and to pay
for the general operation of the state. It is only the working class, more-
over, that can be mobilized as a national military force for the defence of
the accumulation of global capital.

5
G. Hodge, “The ‘consultocracy’: the business of reforming government,” in G. Hodge
(ed), Privatization and Market Development, Elgar Online 2006.
532 G. TEEPLE

The form of liberal democracy remains, but the content has changed
and so its functions have been transformed. And this is the case because
the historical stage during which the accumulation process needed this
political form to develop the laws to facilitate its growth in competitive
national markets is over. During this nation-building period, legal systems
covering workers’ rights, mechanisms for settling corporate disputes, con-
ventions for international relations and diplomacy, and military organiza-
tions to defend the accumulation process in the international sphere were
all developed. But with capital now in the form of transnational cartels,
oligopolies, and production chains across the world, the accumulation
process no longer needs laws as much as it once did. States may continue
to try to use the law to control labour, maintain corporate competition,
and protect national enterprise, but laws and competition are more hin-
drance than assistance to the global accumulation process. What transna-
tional corporate cartels need is unrestrained access to labour, material
resources, and markets across the globe. They need to be free of the
restrictions of law and liberal democracy. And the only agent-general
authorized to carry out this seemingly self-negating task is the liberal dem-
ocratic state.
 Index1

A American War of Independence

Absolute monarchy, 1, 92, 111, 112, (1776-1781), 133
117, 119, 121, 124, 126, 127, Amnesty International (AI), 251, 409,
144, 174, 272 409n120, 476
Accumulation of capital/capital Arbitration, 202–207, 238, 250, 394,
accumulation, viii, viiin10, ix, 16, 396, 397n92, 407
17, 19n54, 23, 26, 51n61, 70, Aristocracy, 11, 12, 94, 101, 126
92, 95, 96n13, 108, 110, 120, Aristotle, 34, 58, 220, 220n8,
124, 127n101, 130, 133, 141, 221n12, 350, 366n36, 387n72,
167, 179, 180, 188, 190, 192, 421, 421n5, 435n41
195, 200, 202, 208, 231, 247, Assassination, 8, 187, 239, 240n51,
256, 267, 273, 275–278, 280, 289, 293n66, 297n81, 313,
276n20, 279n29, 284, 287, 366n37, 397, 406n113, 410,
295–297, 310–314, 311n100, 512, 513
317, 318, 339, 360, 361, 391, Athens, 10–12, 11n40, 81, 82, 221,
394, 400, 405, 423, 433, 434, 374n47, 384, 436n42,
436, 445, 470, 474, 482, 512, 451n6, 475n56
525, 526, 529, 530
Administrative law, 237, 241,
284, 285, 374–376, 379, B
404, 479 Bank of England, 133, 136n127
African Union (AU), vin3 Bank of International Settlement
Althusser, Louis, 49, 50, 50n55, 52 (BIS), vin5, 179, 196, 248, 462

1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 533

Switzerland AG 2024
G. Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was, Marx, Engels, and
Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68020-5
534 INDEX

Behavioral studies, 38, 44 Christianity, 100–103, 108n44,

Bolshevik Revolution, 2, 286, 108n47, 500, 516
408, 468 Church and socialism, 143, 503–504
Bourgeois revolutions, 88, 95, 99, Churchill, Winston, 192, 287n47
117n72, 127–131, 127n101, Citizenship, 164, 249, 302, 342, 377,
136, 140–146, 155–158, 419–445, 449, 506
158n12, 171, 172, 174, 234, decline of, 443–445
243, 271, 272, 325, 327, 329, definition, 434, 435n41, 436n42,
420, 431n25, 501, 502 437, 440
Bretton Woods, 23n63, 56, 179, 181, relation to marketplace society,
182, 182n58, 185, 186, 188, 434–436, 443, 444
198, 199, 281n31, 312, 313, weaponization of, 440–443
362n28, 407, 527 Civil code/codified law, 234,
BRICS, vin3, 362n28, 411 373, 373n46
Bureaucracy, 5, 21, 26n70, 81, 87, Civil religion, 508–510, 509n47
102, 106, 118, 122, 126, 181, Civil rights, 38, 44, 163, 164,
191, 238, 274, 284, 290, 292, 169–172, 189, 203,
298, 298n82, 299, 302–311, 206–209, 224, 247, 294,
304n90, 306n92, 307n93, 501, 506
462n29, 463n30, 467 as corporate rights and individual
rights, 170–172, 179, 181,
186, 208, 209
C Civil society, viii–xi, 48, 53, 56–58,
Capital accumulation, viiin10, 16, 17, 79–81, 84, 85, 91, 121n86,
19n54, 23, 26, 51n61, 70, 108, 142–144, 142n139, 142n140,
110, 120, 127n101, 130, 133, 155, 158, 185n63, 219, 229,
141, 167, 179, 180, 188, 190, 231, 232, 235, 245, 259, 267,
195, 200, 202, 208, 231, 247, 270n5, 274, 299–302, 304–309,
256, 267, 273, 275–277, 325, 341, 350, 353–355,
276n20, 279n29, 284, 287, 353n11, 367, 374–377, 400,
295–297, 310–314, 311n100, 402, 406, 409n121, 410,
318, 361, 391, 394, 400, 419–423, 427, 429, 430, 433,
423, 433, 434, 436, 445, 434, 443, 449–483, 490, 493,
470, 474, 482, 512, 525, 493n12, 494, 496, 499,
529, 530 501–504, 508, 509, 511, 512,
definition of, ix 528, 529
as rationale of modern state, 530 Class struggle, 1, 52, 54, 167, 203,
“Capital”, (Marx’s book), 92, 160n19, 217–220, 247, 278n27, 286,
169, 170n39, 277 359, 383n63, 450n3
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Cold War, 56, 186, 190n74, 192, 193,
194, 292–294, 317, 469n39, 287, 289, 293, 312, 316,
513, 514 462, 469n39
 INDEX 535

Colonial system, 121–126, 133, 290, 303n89, 314, 316,

141, 190 350–352, 355–357, 365, 375,
Commodification, 275, 283–285, 375n48, 378, 381–383, 389,
374n47, 379, 380, 444 390, 398, 399, 402–404,
Commodity fetishism, 86n31, 359 403n104, 436, 445, 451,
Common law, 119n79, 204, 234, 238, 470n44, 474, 475, 507, 518,
349n2, 353, 368–374, 527, 529
395, 395n87 Corporate capture, x, 185, 187,
Communist Manifesto 1848, 328, 503 198n89, 254, 361, 405n110,
Completion of politics, x, 525–532 474, 530
Concept of the people, 334, 339, 340 Corporate crime, 21n58, 204n103,
Congress of Vienna (1815), 174, 177 243, 391, 392, 394
Constantine, 99 Corporate “takeover” or “capture”,
Constitution/constitutionalism/ 50, 129, 140, 185n63, 196, 251,
constitutionalization, vi, viii, xi, 6, 279, 286n43, 329, 353n11,
10–13, 25, 33, 35, 36, 134, 136, 361, 496n20
138, 139n135, 140n136, 141, Corporate welfare state, 19n54
157, 159n13, 168, 169, 183, Corporatism, 48–49, 56
190, 222n14, 248, 267, 268, Corruption
268n1, 270, 273–275, 285, corporate, 21, 139, 369, 481
285n40, 288, 288n49, 296n78, political parties, 473–476
318, 331–333, 335, 340–345, state, 35, 54
352, 357, 362, 365, 368–374, Countervailing property and the law,
389n75, 400, 409n120, 433, 241, 362, 378–382
453n9, 453n10, 456, 467–473, Credit, 109, 111n54, 115–117, 120,
481, 482, 491, 508, 531 120n85, 122, 128, 130, 131,
Constitutional dictatorship, 257 135, 346, 359, 383, 411, 462,
Constitutionalism, definition, 462n28, 481, 530
222n14, 223 Crime and punishment, 349,
Constitutionalization of political 390, 394n85
parties, 470, 483 Critique
Constitutional monarchy, x, 136, 232, definition of, 24
233n30, 270n5, 296n78, use of, 25
434n37, 528 Crusades, the, 93, 98, 104n35, 109,
Constitutions, study of, 33, 111–117, 111n54, 113n60,
220–222, 257 119, 498
Contract, 33, 52, 58, 69, 70, 84,
84n30, 85, 87, 94, 113, 113n60,
116n70, 141, 142, 145, 155, D
157–163, 165, 169, 171, 203, Dicey, A. V., 227, 234, 240–242
203n100, 204, 204n103, 224, Divine right, 126, 156
242, 243, 275n19, 277, 283, Division of labour and property, 69n11
536 INDEX

Domhoff, G. William, 46 Forces of production, 67, 67n6,

Dominion of Canada (1867), 139 68, 71, 75
Dual loyalties, 502, 502n35 Franchise, 34, 129n105, 218,
Dutch Wars of Independence 328–331, 366n37, 420, 420n1,
(1568-1648), 131 422, 424–427, 425n14, 429–431,
432n26, 434, 437, 438n45
French Revolution (1789-1799),
E 110n50, 136, 137n128,
Edict of Milan, 99, 102 137n130, 140n136, 174,
Elite-stratification theory, 45–46 312n103, 453n9
Empiricism, 37, 61
End of liberal democracy,
468, 525–532 G
End of politics, 87, 528, 529 General Agreement on Trade and
English Civil Wars (1640-1688), Tariffs (GATT), 179,
132, 244 179–180n52, 407, 462
Ethics and religion, 505–506 German Nuremberg Laws of
Eurocommunism, 54, 54n65 1935, 439n48
Executive, 23, 137n130, 140, 157, Germany, 2, 3, 26n70, 52, 125,
158, 180, 183, 184, 227–229, 127n101, 174–176, 190, 191,
236, 238, 238n46, 244, 258, 249, 287, 288n49, 290n55,
267–319, 325, 329–332, 338, 310n97, 327n3, 352n10, 362,
345, 349, 363–365, 368–374, 401n100, 411, 424n8, 439n48,
376, 386, 389, 392, 397, 467, 504, 507, 512
406n112, 410, 459, 463–467, Global public-private partnerships
463n30, 473, 477–480 (GP3s), 250–253
powers, 268–286, 270n7, 271n9, Global value chains (GVC)/global
271n10, 287n45, 291, 292, production chains, vin5, 22, 201,
297, 299, 311–319, 326, 329, 208, 210, 253, 254n79, 280, 405
331, 406n112, 422, 464 God, 108, 108n46, 110, 143,
temporary and permanent, 306 143n141, 145, 226, 226n19,
Expansion of executive powers, 278, 227, 232, 258, 421, 438, 491,
281, 284, 285, 317 493, 493n13, 494n15, 495–500,
496n19, 502–504, 506–508,
510, 513, 515, 517–519
F Gorbachev, Mikhail, 6, 54
Fascism, 3, 48, 176, 466, 468, 504 The Great Depression, 2, 176
Feudalism/feudal era, 91–146, 96n13, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 168,
97n15, 98n18, 116n72, 155, 254n79, 277, 277n23,
174, 270, 325, 326 278, 278n28
First historical act, 66–75 G7-(acronym for the largest 7
Fiscal-military state, 116–122, 126 industrial nations), vin3
 INDEX 537

H International Covenant on Economic,

Habeas corpus, 164n28, 239, 273n14 Social and Cultural Rights
The Hague Conferences, 175n45, 177 (ICESCR), 162n23, 188
Hamilton, Alexander, 135, 222n15 International governmental
Hanseatic League, 118, 120, 121 organization (IGO), 173n42,
Heresies, 106, 107 251, 255
Hierarchy, 5, 74, 77, 83, 97, 101–103, International law, vii, x, 9, 23n65,
143, 209, 210, 297, 300, 301, 172–177, 199–202, 222n14,
304–306, 427, 472, 490, 497, 236n38, 242, 243, 255, 285,
503, 510, 513, 514 295, 297, 351n7, 360, 388,
Historical stages of this relation, 400, 406n113, 410, 526,
494–497, 532 527, 529
Human rights, 5, 34n8, 88, 155–210, International Monetary Fund
223–225, 272, 277n21, 363n30, (IMF), vin3, 179, 180n53, 194,
425, 475n56 248, 248n63, 251, 407, 462,
Human Rights Watch (HRW), 481, 530
251, 476 International Trade Organization
Hundred Years War, 111, 117 (ITO), 180n52
Investor-state dispute settlement
(ISDS), 205, 249
I Italy, 2, 3, 127n101, 131, 138,
Ideology, 37, 55, 225, 402–404, 455, 175n45, 176, 287, 461,
499, 500, 509 467, 504
Ideology and the franchise, 429–431
Imperative mandate, 229, 229n22,
233, 330, 334–336, 345, 433, J
444, 454, 454n12, 460n24, 476 Japan, vin5, 2, 3, 5, 176, 178, 190,
Indulgences, 97, 104, 118, 128 191, 197, 248, 287, 290n55,
Industrial reserve army, 168 373n46, 411, 461, 463n30,
Inquisition, 107 494n15, 504
Institutionalization, xin16, 13, 15, 16, Jessop, Bob, 52n64
82–86, 83n25, 91, 108, 156, Judicialization of political parties, 469
163, 178, 209, 219, 231, 259, Judicial justice, 387, 388, 393, 395
275, 289, 436, 501, 527 Judicial review, 389
International Centre for Settlement of Judiciary, x, 228, 238n46, 241,
Investment Disputes (ICSID), 244, 302, 310, 349–411,
181n56, 205 464n32, 468
International Court of Justice appointment of, 238, 364n32,
(IJC), 499n29 389, 470
International Covenant on Civil and independence of, 238, 363, 364,
Political Rights (ICCPR), 364n32, 364n33
162n23, 188, 189 Jurisprudence, 349, 349n1, 350
538 INDEX

Justice, 33, 34, 185, 203, 203n100, Lawlessness/lawfulness, 235n36, 242,

228, 250, 274, 349, 350, 394n85, 406, 409–411, 410n122
366n37, 371, 372, 377, and statutory lawlessness, 409,
383–385, 383n62, 384n63, 388, 410, 410n122
388n73, 388n74, 390, 393–395, League of Nations (1919-1945),
393n84, 395n86, 397, 175–177, 178n49, 179, 183
406n112, 409 Legalization, xin16, 279, 404, 527,
distributive, 384, 385, 387, 388 528, 531
economic, 383–385, 383n63, 388, Legislature, x, 70, 168, 183, 184, 227,
390, 393 228, 230, 234, 238n46,
244–246, 270, 285n40, 299,
318, 325–346, 349, 364, 365,
K 368, 369, 372, 376, 387, 394,
Kennan, George, 192 420, 422, 423, 429, 433,
Keynes, John Maynard, 434n37, 444, 453, 454, 459,
175n46, 177n47 460n22, 464, 477, 478, 480, 508
Keynesianism, 4, 195, 284, 315, 455, Legitimation, 99, 277, 332, 402,
456n14, 457, 458 474n54, 497–500
Keynesian welfare state (KWS)/the Legitimation and solace, 497–500
welfare state, v, x, 4, 5, 9, 18, Liberal democracy, v–xi, viiin10, 1–5,
18n53, 22, 26, 26n71, 34, 7, 9, 10, 13, 16–17, 19, 19n54,
50n56, 56, 57, 166, 168, 169, 20, 24–26, 31, 34, 35, 37, 46,
182, 195, 197, 198, 246, 279, 47, 55, 57, 62, 70, 71, 87, 143,
279n29, 280, 283, 284n37, 314, 146, 162, 163, 175, 183,
315, 339, 375, 377, 378, 382, 188–190, 193, 195–199, 207,
384, 385, 390n77, 404, 406, 219, 220, 223, 227, 229–234,
407, 411, 433, 443, 444, 455, 237, 239, 241–243, 246, 257,
456n15, 457, 463, 471, 526, 527 258, 269–273, 270n5, 277,
Kingdom of Italy (1861), 138 277n21, 283, 288, 288n49,
Knights Templar, 115, 502 297–299, 297n81, 302–303n88,
305, 306, 309–319, 328, 330,
331, 333, 334, 336–338,
L 339n19, 340, 340n20, 341, 343,
Law 345, 357, 357n17, 360, 361,
and class, 244, 356–362 363, 364n31, 365, 366, 372,
definition, 354 377, 378, 383n63, 386, 387,
and ideology, 402–404 387n71, 389, 398, 401, 402,
and private property, 81, 84, 118, 404, 405, 406n112, 410, 420,
126, 244, 354–356, 363, 421n5, 424, 426n16, 427n19,
365, 399 429, 431–434, 437–440, 443,
and social power, 356–362, 365 450n1, 452–453n9, 453–455,
Law Merchant, 119n79, 156 458, 460, 461, 463, 463n30,
 INDEX 539

464, 466, 468–472, 474, 475, 159n14, 160, 160n19, 169, 170,
477, 480, 482, 491, 492, 170n39, 171n40, 224, 277,
501–503, 510, 511n53, 512 278n27, 311, 328, 352, 355n14,
crisis of, 2n2, 20–24 359, 507, 508
definition, 240, 268n1, 296n77, Mercantilism, 93, 96, 97n15, 111,
400, 421 115–117, 119, 121–126, 128,
end of, 433, 468, 525–532 134, 158, 172–174,
and official religion, 506–507 217, 273–275
use of, 14, 257, 471 Militarism, 283, 295–297, 296n79
Liberalism, 14–17, 33, 41, 46–48 Militarization of police, 7
classical, 14, 41 Mills, C. W., 45, 46, 47n41
modern, 14, 15 Mode of production, vii, 1, 21, 22,
Liberation theology, 510–517 25, 34, 35, 42, 51n61, 52, 53,
Limits of the law, 404–411 55, 60, 67, 67n6, 68, 72, 75, 88,
Lobby, the, 196, 476–478 91–97, 96n13, 133, 159,
159n14, 160n19, 162n22, 200,
225, 269, 274n17, 275, 275n19,
M 277, 277n23, 278, 278n28, 283,
Magna Carta, 169, 239, 326, 327n2 311, 332, 333, 373n46, 381,
Manufacturing, as early subordination 384, 385, 398n94, 438, 459,
of production to capital, 133 474, 512
Marketplace society, 11, 13, 14, 34n8, Modern citizenship and the working
40–43, 69, 70, 77n22, 80–86, class, 342, 437, 441
83n26, 100, 101, 109, 122, 140, Modern democracy as
140n136, 143, 144, 157–161, atheist, 507–508
162n22, 163, 221, 224, 225, Monarchy, x, 1, 92, 107, 111, 112,
232, 272, 304, 307, 337, 340, 117, 117n75, 119, 121, 122,
340n20, 352n10, 356, 357, 359, 124, 126, 136, 144, 174, 217,
374, 375, 378, 382–384, 232, 235, 270n5, 271, 272,
383n61, 385n67, 388n74, 390, 296n78, 298n82, 326, 327,
391, 393, 394, 398, 402–404, 434n37, 496, 501, 528
423, 427, 429n22, 430, Money-lending, 98, 106,
433–437, 434n39, 436n42, 443, 116n70, 117
444, 474, 492, 493, 495n17, Mussolini, Benito, 2, 176, 504
497, 499, 504n39, 509, 512,
517, 525, 527
Marshall Plan, 193, 287n45 N
Marx, Karl, xvi, 17n51, 50, 50n55, Napoleon, and French
51, 51n61, 53, 55, 65–69, 65n1, Revolution, 174
67n6, 69n11, 69n13, 71, 72n17, National debt, state indebtedness, 130
73, 86, 88, 91–93, 95, 96n13, National Security Act (NSA), 287n45,
108n47, 120n85, 121n86, 130, 291, 292, 317, 319
540 INDEX

National Security State (NSS), 292, Patriarchy and the law, 378–382
311, 317 Peace of Westphalia, 118, 173, 174,
Natural law theories, 350–351 177, 183
Neoliberalism, vin4, 5, 56, 197, 252, Personification of
254, 443, 456, 457, 459, 460, commodities, 160–162
462, 471, 482 Plea bargaining, 237, 238,
Neo-Marxism, 49–53 396, 397n92
The New Atheists, 510–517, 519 Police, enforcement of law, 398
New Deal, 2, 290 Political, vi, 1, 31, 65, 91, 155, 217,
Noble lies, convenient fictions, 267, 326, 328, 349n1, 419,
223, 223n16 449–483, 490, 525
Nomination and appointment, 300 rights, 20, 41, 163–165, 167–170,
Non-government organization 172, 173n42, 184, 188, 189,
(NGO), 173n42, 219, 251, 255 217, 230, 328, 343, 344,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization 369n41, 421, 424–429, 431,
(NATO), vin3, vin5, 24n67, 190, 432n26, 433, 449, 453,
191, 193, 193n82, 198, 248, 481, 501
270n5, 281n31, 282n33, theology, 510–517, 511n53
296n77, 312, 313, 362n28, Political parties
366n37, 406n112, 406n113, and the executive branch, 463–467
411, 444, 462, 529 and representation, 461
why, origin, 451–452
Political theory
O ethical questions, 33, 34
Ombudsoffice, the, 479–481 normative, 33
Origins of human rights, 159, 162–170 Politics
Overdetermination, 50 definition, 31, 32, 36, 37, 42,
47, 61, 66
everywhere, 31, 32, 39, 41,
P 44, 56, 117
Pappe, Ilan, 507n44 lack of definition, 39
Parenti, Michael, 46 as power, 43–44
Parliament, 113, 120, 122, 127, 133, as ubiquitous, 24, 39–43, 357
133n115, 137, 231n25, 233, working definition, 10, 13,
233n30, 234, 242, 271n9, 326, 93, 349n1
327, 327n2, 449, 496n20 Poulantzas, Nicos, 47n42, 50–52,
Parliamentary socialism, 16 51n61, 51n62
Party types/formats The Powell Report, 4
brokerage, 339, 455–462 Pre-political, 75–77, 82, 84, 85,
dual parties, 298–306, 464 492–494, 492n11
one-party dominance, 455–462, Primitive accumulation, 92, 130
466, 467, 471 Privateer, 123, 124, 124n95
 INDEX 541

Private law, 374–378, 399 354–359, 362n29, 363, 365,

Private property, viii, 11–13, 16, 17, 366–367n37, 367–369,
26n70, 40, 45, 46, 70, 74, 368n39, 372, 374, 374n47,
80–88, 93n6, 95–97, 99, 109, 375, 378–387, 385n67, 389,
113, 115, 118, 122, 123, 390n77, 391–393, 395, 398,
124n95, 126, 130, 136, 138, 399, 403, 404, 422–424, 427,
140–144, 142n139, 155–210, 429, 429n22, 434n39, 437,
217–219, 221, 224, 225, 230, 438, 449–451, 451n4, 458,
232–235, 235n36, 239–245, 464, 474, 475, 482, 492n11,
256, 258, 269n2, 270n6, 493, 493n12, 494, 496, 497,
272–274, 298, 299, 302, 306, 499, 500, 502–506, 504n41,
308, 309, 325, 327–333, 335, 511, 512, 518, 526, 528, 529
337, 339, 340n20, 341–345, public, 354, 367
351n7, 352, 354–359, 362n29, and social power, 68–71
363, 365, 366–367n37, Protestantism, 107, 110, 110n50,
367–369, 368n39, 372, 373n46, 132–133n115, 489n1
374, 374n47, 375, 378–387, Proto-political, 77–80, 82, 494, 495
385n67, 389, 390n77, 391–393, Proximate sources of law, 368–374
395, 398, 399, 403, 404, Public law, 374–378, 399
422–424, 427, 429, 429n22,
434n39, 437, 438, 449–451,
451n4, 458, 464, 474, 475, 482, Q
492n11, 493, 493n12, 494, 496, Queen Elizabeth I, 124, 132n115
497, 499, 500, 502–506,
504n41, 511, 512, 518, 526,
528, 529 R
Property ‘Rechtsstaat,’ 235n35
collective, 240, 329, 331, 332, 337, Redistribution, 13, 16–18, 20, 22,
427, 503 166, 167, 275, 279, 279n29,
definition, 70 315, 377n51
private, viii, 11–13, 16, 17, 26n70, Referendum/plebiscite, 229, 233n30,
40, 45, 46, 70, 74, 80–88, 400, 478–479
93n6, 95–97, 99, 109, 113, Relations of production, 51n61, 67n6,
115, 118, 122, 123, 124n95, 68, 76, 77, 86, 88, 159n14
126, 130, 136, 138, 140–144, Relative autonomy, 50, 51, 353n11
142n139, 155–210, 217–219, Relative surplus population, 168
221, 224, 225, 230, 232–235, Religion, 74, 76–78, 77n22, 82,
235n36, 239–245, 256, 258, 84n30, 87, 99–110, 101n26,
269n2, 270n6, 272–274, 104n32, 108n47, 142, 143, 308,
298–300, 302, 306, 308, 309, 309, 309n96, 340, 430, 431,
325, 327–333, 335, 337, 339, 436n42, 441, 464n31,
340n20, 341–345, 351n7, 352, 489–519, 528
542 INDEX

Religion and politics, 492, 507 S

the relation, 491, 492 Sacraments, 104, 107
Rent, 17n51, 18, 96–98, 103–105, Saints, 105, 108
109, 128 Second chamber, x, 341–345,
Rent-seeking, 96, 97, 97n15, 99, 104, 434n37, 528
107, 109n48, 127, 398 Separation of church and state, 491,
Representation, 77n22, 78, 120, 180, 492, 501–503
181, 187, 208, 229n22, 232, Separation of powers, 223, 243–246,
251, 268, 302, 325–327, 329, 268n1, 292
333–341, 344, 345, 359, 420, doctrine of, 243–245
422, 423, 428, 430, 432, 433, Separation of the whole and parts, 58,
452–455, 453n9, 454n12, 75, 163, 307, 308, 464, 492,
458–461, 463, 472, 473, 476, 493, 495, 508, 528, 529
477, 482, 483, 495, 496 Shadow links, 481
See also Imperative mandate Shock therapy, 6, 7, 7n15
Reproduction of the working class, 17, Social contract theories, 33, 58, 224,
18, 166, 170, 278, 279 275n19, 350, 351, 451
Retrenchment of legal process, 407 Social democracy, 16, 18, 362n29
Revolving-door, 180, 199, 233, Social fragmentation, 80–82
269n3, 300, 343, 410 Socialism, 2–5, 15, 54, 55, 143, 167,
Rigged elections, 9 179, 182, 183, 186, 190n74,
Right to vote, xi, 15, 19, 144, 327, 192–195, 280, 282, 286–289,
329, 342, 420–429, 420n1, 383n63, 456, 456n14,
424n8, 427n19, 431, 432n26, 503–504, 504n41
434, 438n45, 442 Social justice, 383n63
Rodinson, Maxime, 98n18, 110 Social power/or power, x, 1, 35,
Roman Catholic Church, 93, 99, 142 43–44, 68–71, 85–86, 91, 162,
Roman society, 100 217, 243–246, 268–276, 326,
Rule of law/rule by law, 141, 143, 353, 356–362, 422, 449,
144, 162, 164, 164n28, 188, 490, 526
193, 223, 226n19, 234–245, Social rights, 70, 163, 165, 167–170,
255, 272, 292, 297n81, 360, 188, 189, 195, 209, 235n36,
362–367, 367–368n39, 370, 279, 407, 436, 437, 443, 444
371, 376, 386, 387, 408, Solon, 11, 11n40, 12, 13n45, 34, 82,
408n118, 410, 422, 221, 221n12, 222, 431n25, 435,
473, 507 451n6, 469
Rules-based international order, a his reforms, 11, 11n40, 221,
poorly defined reference 221n12, 431n25
to the economic and political Sovereignty, vin3, x, 26, 43, 93, 112,
organizations set up by the 132, 156, 173, 183–185, 202,
US after World War II) 206, 227–234, 232n26,
(RBIO), 247 247–250, 252, 254, 258, 268,
 INDEX 543

292, 364, 365, 372, 423, 429, Suffrage, 165, 328, 419–445, 449,
433, 444, 502, 507, 510, 468, 495
511n53, 528, 530 property qualification, 165, 342
capital, 233, 247, 511, 528 synonymous with franchise, 331,
monarchs, x, 156, 232, 502 420, 420n1, 422, 424–427,
of the people, 223, 227–229, 429–432, 434, 437
231–233, 268, 365, 367, 387, universal, 2, 4, 16, 146, 165, 328,
444, 502, 507, 531 329, 331, 342, 344, 424, 429,
Stages of political development, 75 431–434, 441, 443, 525–528
The state, vii, viiin10, 2, 5, 7, 16–21, Surplus-value, 17, 17n51, 18, 20, 94,
18n53, 25, 26, 35–37, 39, 41, 98, 171, 273n13, 274, 276, 278,
42, 43n33, 44, 47–58, 50n56, 314, 398n94, 526
51n62, 60n75, 69–71, 73, 74,
79–81, 84–86, 84n30, 91–146,
156–158, 164–168, 172–174, T
173n42, 176, 177, 179n51, Taxation/taxes, 18, 18n53, 19,
180–182, 180n52, 184–186, 19n54, 21, 93, 94, 98, 101, 105,
195–200, 199n91, 202–209, 113–116, 116n72, 118–123,
220, 227, 230, 233, 234, 125–132, 134–140, 134n118,
235n36, 239, 250–253, 258, 135n123, 144, 145, 166, 167,
271n9, 274–276, 275n19, 278, 172, 181, 182, 197, 198, 206,
279, 279n29, 281, 281n31, 284, 208, 242, 250, 271n9, 274, 279,
290, 302, 304n90, 305–307, 279n29, 280, 282, 295, 307n93,
309, 309n94, 309n96, 310, 309n96, 314, 326, 369, 377n50,
310n98, 314–316, 329, 336, 399, 438, 471, 491, 531
338, 339n19, 349–356, 349n1, Tax evasion, 6, 19, 138, 398
350n3, 352n10, 358, 360, 363, avoidance, 19
368n39, 375, 377, 377n50, 380, Tenure, 164, 300, 303–305, 370,
384, 385, 385n67, 399, 401, 372, 386, 471, 472
401n100, 408, 409, 419–423, Thatcher, Margaret, 197, 362n29
420n4, 429, 431, 434, 436, 438, Thirteen Colonies, 134, 136,
443, 443n57, 449–483, 140n136, 217, 270n6
490–497, 493n12, 500, 503, Thirty Years War, 118, 173
504, 504n41, 507–512, 507n44, Timocracy, 431n25
509n47, 509n48, 528–531 definition, 435
State funding of parties, 467–473 Tort, 196, 203, 203n100, 204,
State illegalities, 400–401 204n103, 375n48
Statelessness, 438, 439, 439n47 Torture, 8, 164n28, 187, 240n51,
Structural adjustment policies (SAPs), 243, 273n14, 297n81, 366n37,
407, 407n115 397, 410
Substantive law, 240–242, 363, 365, Total new value, 17, 17n51, 278,
367, 368, 374, 388, 402 278n27, 280n30
544 INDEX

Totemism, 77n22, 78, 495n18, Universal enfranchisement, 1, 420,

496, 497 420n2, 422–424, 426, 427,
Totems, 76, 77n22, 495–497, 495n18 431, 433
Trade union rights, 166, 231, 235n36, significance, 431
240, 381, 382, 390n77, 423, 445 Universal suffrage, 2, 4, 16, 146, 165,
Trade unions, xin16, 15, 23, 37, 39, 329, 331, 342, 429, 431–434,
41, 54, 55, 74, 142, 167, 191, 441, 443, 525–528
231, 236, 249, 279, 289, 293, UN Security Council (SC),
307n93, 310, 341, 355, 366, 183–185, 184n61
375n48, 378–382, 397n92, 403,
410n123, 411, 427n18, 427n19,
440, 459, 468, 471, 510, 513n54 W
collective bargaining, xin16, 166 Warfare, 95, 295, 408
Transnational corporations (TNCs), vi, war, viin9, xi, 3–5, 7, 12, 13, 38,
vin4, 22, 56, 186, 200–202, 41, 44, 54, 71, 82, 86, 93, 95,
205–207, 210, 248, 256, 358, 97–100, 109n48, 111–120,
361, 410, 476 122–124, 123n91, 127, 128,
Transparency International, 131, 133, 134, 135n123, 137,
233n27, 234n31 138, 140, 144, 167, 172–181,
Trial by jury, 164n28, 238, 238n46, 175n45, 175n46, 178n48,
395–398, 395n89, 396n90, 407 183, 185, 188n69, 191–195,
The Trilateral Commission, 4, 196 191n76, 198, 208, 221, 243,
248, 267, 270, 272, 275, 277,
278, 278n27, 280–296,
U 282n33, 283n34, 286n44,
UN General Assembly (GA), 183, 184 287n45, 287n47, 288n49,
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 290n55, 292n63, 293n66,
(USSR), 2, 3, 5–7, 6n12, 7n15, 296n77, 296n80, 297n81,
26n70, 50, 54, 55, 167, 176, 298n82, 311n101, 312–314,
184n61, 190n74, 191–194, 314n106, 316, 317, 317n113,
286n44, 287–289, 287n47, 330, 326, 327n3, 352n10, 384,
456, 468, 507 425, 435, 444, 457, 460, 467,
United Nations (UN), 9, 176, 498, 499n29, 506, 512, 526,
182–185, 182n58, 184n61, 527, 527n3, 529
185n63, 187–189, 192, 192n80, Warfare state, 285, 285n39, 285n40,
205, 248, 251, 255, 281n31, 289–295, 315
312, 313, 362n28, 405n109, Wars of succession, 111–116, 123n91,
478, 490 128, 131
Universal Declaration of Human expansion, 111–116
Rights (UDHR), 88, 162, religion, 111–116
162n23, 164, 188–190, 193, Weaponization of the law, 406,
209, 425 407, 409
 INDEX 545

Weimar Germany, 512 Workplace rights, 171

White man’s law, 378–382 World Bank, vin3, 179, 194, 248, 251,
Wilson, Woodrow (President) 14 407, 462, 481, 530
points, 178n49 World Economic Forum (WEF),
Women’s suffrage movement, 424 185n63, 254, 255, 256n85
Working class, xi, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, World Trade Organization (WTO),
14–23, 18n53, 26, 53–57, 145, vin3, 179, 179n52, 407
146, 165–169, 171, 172, 175, World War II, viin6, 3, 5, 7,
180, 195, 197, 208, 220, 222, 22, 23, 31, 35–37, 41, 45,
231, 235n36, 241, 243, 246, 247, 56, 162, 166, 167, 176–178,
256, 272, 274, 278, 279, 279n29, 178n48, 183, 186, 192, 205,
282, 287, 296, 296n78, 296n79, 247, 248, 270, 280, 281,
296n80, 297, 303n89, 306, 281n31, 284, 285, 287,
307n93, 309, 309n95, 310, 314, 287n47, 290, 312, 313, 315,
328–331, 336, 340–345, 361, 316, 396, 400n97, 404, 407,
366, 366n37, 367, 367–368n39, 425, 439n48, 455, 462, 467,
372, 381–384, 384n63, 385n67, 479, 516
406, 407n115, 422–424, 429n22, Worship, 101, 103, 108n47, 493,
430, 433, 437, 438, 440–445, 497, 515
449, 450, 451n4, 451n5, 453n9,
455, 456, 456n14, 463, 465, 466,
468, 471, 482, 483, 503, 512, Y
526, 528, 530, 531 Yeltsin, Boris, 6, 7