What is state autonomy?

In the extensive and complex literature on the nature of the capitalist state one finds a prominent and long held debate on the question of the capitalist state’s ability to act and formulate interests of its own independently of and even against dominant groups (classes) and societal interests.

This ability is referred to as “state autonomy”. In this debate there are two clear oppositional’ approaches: on one side there are those theorists who, upholding a “society-centered” view, give ontological primacy to civil society and argue that the capitalist state is, and can only be, relatively autonomous.

On the other side, there are “state-centered” theorists postulating that the capitalist state is organizationally autonomous and independent of society. The concept of state autonomy also has been used to explain the nature of the state in dependent and peripheral societies.

State-Centered theorists consider the state as an institution, and its activities the primary and starting point of inquiry. To them, the proper explanatory direction is from the state and its bureaucratic organization to civil society, and not vice-versa. To state-centered theorists the state is at the same time embedded in the structural relations of capitalistic social formation, and an independent organization which has a monopoly on coercive power, and a life and form of its own.

Max Weber. States, Weber argued, “are compulsory associations claiming control over territories and the people over them. In conceiving the state as such, Weber (and the neo-Weberians) can postulate that the state may pursue goals and plans that do not reflect the demands of powerful groups or classes.

Unlike Marx, Engels and Lenin, Weber did not consider forms of state organization as ‘parasitic’ and the “direct product of the activities of classes”. The “modern state is not, Weber contended, an effect of capitalism; it preceded and helped promote capitalist development”.

Fred Block. The neo-Weberians, most of whom are identified incorrectly as neo-Marxists 3 , argue on one hand that states inherently are organizationally autonomous from dominant classes, and the other that they necessarily function to guarantee capital accumulation and maintain class domination.