3 State, Market and Social Movement

Contents

1.        Introduction

2.       Objective

3.       The Concepts

3.1      The State

3.2     The Market

3.3     Social Movement

3.4     The Triad

4.        Some Recent Examples

           Self-Check Exercise 1

5.        Summary

1.   Introduction

Concepts of agency and action are the binaries that sociologists often negotiate to analyse contemporary social dynamics. It is important in this context to take a relook at the ideas that are not only interwoven but also reflexive of the contradictions they carry. It is possible, therefore, to look into the triad of state, market and social movement as three different but interconnected issues or, to look into them as an organic whole that has immense effect on changing social formations.

The triad of state, market and social movement has an intriguing relationship from a sociological perspective. The interest is mostly embedded in the origin of each of the elements and how together they complement and contradict one another. Empirical evidences from the history of industrial society show that each element of the triad tries to enforce its control over the other two in numerous ways. It may also happen that any two of the triad (especially state and market in most cases) join hands together on one particular occasion to subvert or coerce the third one. In the course of such a movement the widespread perception of infallible autonomy of the state and the market within the capitalist mode of production has increasingly become symbolic rather than a social reality opening numerous other future possibilities. The third element of the triad, social movement, which, while it enjoys wide ranging definitional and conceptual assortments relative to the other two, is in reality closely intertwined with them. These possibilities make it important to understand the dynamics of the interrelationship between such prominent social agencies and actions especially if we try to place them in the global scenario of the present times.

Illustration I: The unity of demand of a social movement is most of the time cross-cultural in essence.

2.       Objective

The present essay attempts to look at the inclusive nature of social movement that once helped in the formation of the bourgeois state and industrial capitalist market in their progressive avatars. Consequently, the write-up is contesting the popular idea of social movement only as a reactive force against the state oppression and hegemonic power of the market. Rather, it is tried here to project the symbiotic relationship between state, market and social movement as a triad that has degenerated over space and time with the capitalist mode of production into a morphed complex of mutual antagonism.

Without delving into the question of abolitionist social movement, the discussion in general seeks to emphasize the permeability of contradictory material conditions into the collective political will as social movement that moves toward new political and economic formations first within and then beyond the state and market.

3. The Concepts

3.1 State

        In sociological phraseology, the ideas surrounding the State are conceptualized and defined in ways which are often diverse and sometimes contradictory. In a rudimentary form the state may be defined as a political and geographical entity that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign existence for an organized political community with a system of governance.1

There are types of state based on history, mode of production, political formation and space-time. For example, distinctions are made between traditional states, feudal states, absolutist states and modern states and between liberal states, social democratic states, collectivist states, totalitarian states and developmental states while some states are nowadays even described as failed or failing states.2

The state as a system of social contract was forwarded by Thomas Hobbes. He argues that from a narrow domain of self-interest human beings evolve into a collectivity that puts limit over the unbridled individual interests for the sake of a collective goal supremely guided by the state.

One of the oft used definitions of state comes from Max Weber who says that the state is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory (Weber 1946). The poignant assertion here is the overwhelming possibility of existence of physical coercion that has to be applied legitimately on the subjects of the state. The legitimacy claimed in the process may not be moral, rational, or value-neutral. The deep sense of chasm within the structure of the state in the definition of Weber only falls short of looking at the source of the legitimate power and the objective/goal of the state thus achieved.

Illustration II: Symbolisms often portray the defining identities of different states3

The Marxist definition of state compensates the hint given in the Weberian definition of state in no uncertain terms. While rejecting the social contract theory, it clearly depicts the state as the most prolific instrument in the hand of ruling class to subjugate and coerce the subservient class. As stated by Frederick Engels (1894: 177-78): the state is… by no means a power forced on society from without. It is a product of society at a certain stage of development…it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms (between its constituent classes – SB) which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state Clearly,  in  Marxist  understanding,  the  existence  of  a  state  is  incomprehensible  without  the reference to its class nature and class orientation. In reality, the life experience of the toiling masses, the subaltern and especially the working class across the geographical territories reflects this concrete,  overwhelming power exercised by  the state on behalf of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, in the capitalist world order. It is the salient agency of capital that creates an orbit of compulsion  where  the  exchange  of  labour  time  and  the  creative  value  of  the  labour  are expropriated in the name of individual ownership of private property and profit in a free market.

3.2 Market

In continuation of the reasoning given above, the second most important organization of the military industrial complex is the market. Hence, the system of market though appears to operate with relative autonomy in a state and across the states, in reality, is an inseparable economic and political instrument of the capitalist state. Moreover, it also ensures the continuity of class division Once again, we proceed here from the commonsensical notion of the market to a graduated definition of market as an agency involved in extraction and optimization of surplus value. Here is an organization of the industrial economy that strengthens the suppressive nature of state with normalization of exploitation with the sole objective of profit maximization at cost of the producing class.

Now, let us turn to the following definition: Market is an actual or nominal place where forces of demand and supply operate and where buyers and sellers interact (directly or through intermediaries) to trade goods, services, contracts or instruments for money or barter. Markets include mechanisms or means for (1) determining the price of the traded item, (2) communicating the price information, (3) facilitating deals and transactions, and (4) effecting distribution. The market for a particular item is made up of existing and potential customers who need it and have the ability and willingness to pay for it5.

To put in a more sophisticated way: A market is one of the many varieties of real time apportionment of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties or interest groups may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labour) in exchange for money (a negotiable symbolic instrument, or a legal currency, ratified by the state) from buyers. It can be said that a market is the process by which the prices of goods and services  are established.  Markets  facilitate trade and  enable  the  distribution  and allocation  of resources in a  society.  Markets  allow  any  item  that  can  be  put  to  trading,  to  be  evaluated and priced at later stages. It is clear therefore that market is an arena of inequality, which is always strife-torn, open to wide ranging conflicts and manoeuvring. It is one of the anticipated arenas of capitalist appropriation of use value and exchange value. For Marx, the market as understood in classical political economy serves to ‘mystify’ the class character of production which, after all, is the root of capitalist exploitation. Market mechanisms have  become  increasingly  dominant  as  a  means  of  organizing  economic  life,  and  the corresponding  hypothesis  is  that  this  has  undermined  social  institutions  and  exacerbated inequalities. In the Grundrisse, Marx argues that via the ‘reciprocal compulsion’ unleashed by competition in market, ‘capital’ itself emerges as a domineering class entity, irreducible to the ‘atoms’ of individual capitals. The position here straightaway contradicts the nominal conception of the market. By prioritizing the trust relationships between market participants, economic sociology offers little about the roots of exploitation in the way capitalist production is organized. Marxists argue that the market cannot be taken as an analytical starting point without obscuring the exploitation inherent in productionbe taken as an analytical starting point without obscuring the exploitation inherent in production (Fine and Lapavitsas 2000). In Marxist thought, by contrast, the market is where qualitatively different products of human labour are converted into quantitative ratios between things. Hence, it is where the social relations of production are concealed- or mystified. Although Marx did indeed describe  the  market  as  the  realm  within  which  the  essence  of  capital  manifested  itself,  the relationship between essence and appearance was not that of a deterministic reductionism. For realized in the interaction of particular capitals in the sphere of exchange. A market is therefore an extended social formation in which the needs of people are met by the labour of other people through a network of exchange relations connecting everyone who is part of the given market.

It was also absolutely clear to Marx that economic forces like market could not be understood in isolation from the political system, history, and social relationships. As an illustration, it can be stated that it is only in the context of politics, history, and social organization that we can understand the genesis of Dalit movement in India, the great financial meltdown of 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011.

Illustration III: The symbolisms of market depicts competition, negotiation and survival at cost of others

3.3 Social Movement

A system of unit force of opposition always exists in capitalist society in relation to the potent power of reprisal in a highly distorted market-mechanism. Degeneration and skewed distribution of resources in a deeply imperfect market based on monopoly and oligopoly give rise to numerous forms of disenchantment in the political and cultural spheres. Some of these disillusionment when get organized take the form of social movement.

Illustration IV:A schematic flow-chart and the dimensions of an art depicting social movement complement each other

 Social movements are generally seen as phenomena of the modern era and industrialized society whether located in the “First” world or not (Hobsbawm 1959; Tilly 1986). Industrialization and urbanization, technological advancements and on-going democratization allowed people to push for change collectively from the margins of the polity, from outside of less-than-open institutions. Sociological definitions of movements stress qualities like collective and innovative behaviour, extra-institutionality, their network character and multi-centeredness, the shifting and fluid boundaries of movement membership, and the willingness of members to disrupt order a little or a lot (Gerlach and Hine 1970)

The theorization about social movement in sociology is, once again, quite diverse: ranging from conservative protectionism (of social order) to radical transformation of the social system. Weber, for instance, looks at the possibilities of social movement against formal order within informal groupings. As aptly pointed out by Michael Burawoy (2015), Max Weber was only too clear that the rise of formal rationality, whether in the form of bureaucracy, the law, or mass democracy does not compensate subject populations for their economic and social oppression. Rather, formal rationality that extends equal rights to all perpetuates the injustices they experience. The only way this might be challenged, says Weber, is through informal means, what he sometimes called “Kadi-justice”. However, these informal means, whether they be public opinion or communal action are manipulated and staged from above. Weber was very suspicious of what today we would call social movements which he saw as arising from an “incoherent mass” driven by “irrational sentiments.” His theory of collective action belongs to the first wave of social movement theory that stretches from Durkheim and Weber to Parsons for whom collective action was an irrational response to social change6.

The corresponding alternative positions, however, are more nuanced, critically involved and try to combine the concept of social movement with macro social formations like state and market not simply as a reactive entity but as a presence of a continuous line of resistance to all forms of social, cultural and economic exploitation. For the current conjuncture is saturated with protest, with massive demonstrations and sometimes armed conflict erupting across North Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Latin America with significant echoes elsewhere. It seems appropriate, therefore, to ask whether there are significant connections between these eruptions of popular protest. Large numbers of those actively participating from Cairo to Athens, from New York to Santiago think there are strong connections between social movement and marginalisation. And the connections they draw concern a combination of austerity, rising inequality, dispossession of rights and entitlements and a democratic deficit which enables the imposition of all these by tiny élites against a background of the world economy’s biggest crisis since the 1930s (Barker et al. 2013)

Illustration V: The cold-war thinkers generally depicted social movement as structural causation

Marxism, as an integrating perspective on social relations, does at least have the merit of being able to pose such questions. It also invites us to think about a number of matters of some significance. If the ‘working class’ was largely written off, there was not much point in exploring the nitty-gritty of actual forms of current worker resistance as part of ‘social movement’ concerns. It could be left to ‘labour process’ specialists, as could strikes and forms of workplace resistance. This fragmentation was celebrated by Foucauldians and in cultural studies, where everyday resistance was valued but the prospect that it might escalate to something producing substantial structural change was anathema. At its worst, social movement studies could become what Touraine called a ‘natural sociology of [movement] élites’, adequate to understand the routine operations of movement establishments – how NGOs seek to position themselves within the US media or the EU’s institutional labyrinth, for example – but with no ability to explain how and why these situations are reshaped and transformed. The parcelling out of trade unionism and strikes to ‘labour studies’ or ‘industrial relations’, of everyday resistance to ‘cultural studies’, or of revolutions to a specific branch of political science, ignores the crucial role that strikes may play in social movements7.

Indeed, the financial crash of 2008 was itself widely held to confirm the basic analysis of the ills of neoliberalism. Although élites have regained confidence and attempted to define the crash as the fault of excessive state spending rather than of unbridled finance capitalism, popular resistance to austerity measures – from Iceland to Greece and from Spain to the UK – suggests that this is a shallow hegemony indeed. Elsewhere, movements in Latin America have challenged US geopolitical hegemony and the Washington Consensus in a wide range of ways, going far beyond any isolated identity politics or cultural radicalism, combining extensive popular alliances, systematic analyses of the roots of injustice and, in some cases, serious attempts to remake the state.

3.4  The Triad

The socio-economic and power agencies within industrial society since their inception are fraught with cultural, political and economic turbulences. The contexts of the evolving macro organizations like state and market in an industrial capitalist formation were fundamentally different from the pre-capitalist mode of production. These are the major archetypal organizations conceived as order-making systems in an otherwise laissez-faire societal conditioning. However, these important political and economic entities, in their evolutionary path, have had to negotiate a wide array of deformations and power inequalities, some of which were already inbuilt within their existence. Hence, from the conceptual level to the structural conditioning till the point of reflective understanding, general social formations like state and market are always pitted against severe questioning, serious opposition, and risk of volatility. The space created in these sub versions of the order is mostly occupied by the action formations of cross section of the population that is broadly known as social movement.

The  initiation  of  social  movement  in  contemporary  society  has  two  mutually  exclusive dimensions: one, it is formed within the broad structural framework of the societal order seeking amendment within the order itself; two, at a cognitive plane of the collective, social movement takes place as a cumulative build-up of a paradigm to alter or replace the existing order fully or partially with a new system. As a result, the need for a better state, an improved society and an equitable market systems, though remain as objectives and aspirations at the preliminary level of a formative  movement,  beyond  that  starting  point  every  social  movement  has  the  potential  to convert the nascent dynamics into a greater point of bringing in systemic change. If these are the spiralling possibilities of social movement, there is also a flip side. Most often the quantitatively determining elements of a social movement, if it takes place without reference to the qualitative shift, are in effect drawn from the supra-organic entity of the state only to be supplied by the overarching  market.  Numerous  examples  can  be  cited  here  to  show  how  it  takes  place. Nevertheless, the single instance that is hard to miss is how ecological movement across the world is patronized, absorbed, reified and showcased by the state and corporate agencies on an equal footing, mostly in the name of “green-future” and “sustainability”. It is analytically important therefore, to remain conscious about the class nature of a movement at the interface with the state and market.

Example from another front may explain the dynamics within the triad more expressively: a religion centric social movement today, if majoritarian in nature, is most likely to garner some passive or active support from most of the secular states across the world to highlight the movement’s objective; once the position of the state vis-à-vis the movement becomes apparent, the media would try to facilitate or impede the movement with positive and negative publicity in its niche market looking to satisfy the tastes of its diverse clientele. Another socio-religious movement facing stiff opposition from the same state machinery would still draw media attention in the name of liberal democracy, human rights, and civil society aspirations. As a result, in the end, the original objective of each of the movement, their content, and the idea of democracy may get usurped by the political and economic hegemonies in the society, viz. the state and the market.

4.       Some Examples: Past and Present

Starting with the Quit India movement of 1942 with the objective to achieve complete independence from the British imperialism, mass movement in the Indian subcontinent had experienced certain qualitative-shift. For instance, the class factor started to take the centre stage in the movements of rights and autonomy. The ruling class of India faced its first litmus taste right before the independence in 1946 in the form of Tebhaga peasant movement in eastern India where share croppers demanded two-third of the produce from the generally absent landlords. The volatility of a transitional state in the aftermath of a global imperialist war (WWII), the compulsion of higher revenue generation, and the instability in an otherwise aspiring market of agrarian produce consolidated the farmers without land to put their legitimate claim forward. The movement, though confronted suppression and betrayal from the state and the political parties, nevertheless had achieved seeds of long-term changes in the form of a slew of policy measures to initiate rudimentary land reform in the post independent West Bengal.

The Telangana bonded labour movement starting in the same year 1946 that continued till 1951in full swing had an escalated experience over Tebhaga with more intensity of organized confrontation, guerrilla warfare, and establishment of village commune with a broader question of accession of Hyderabad then under the rule of Nizam in India. The fiercely rebellious movement had compelled the neophyte independent State of India and its ruling class to make its first military move to control the movement of its own people in the name of inclusion of Hyderabad within its territory.

The disillusionment that had generated from the experience of independence, the repressive nature of the state, and the infirmity of the market based on mixed-economy – all these factors contributed enormously in the proliferation of these important social movements. The 1974 Railway strike and Jayaprakash Narayan’s total revolution against the authoritarian democratic regime at the centre and particularly against declaration of Emergency in 1975 can also be seen as the two important extensions of the previous genre of social movement including the Naxalbari peasant uprising. It is important to note that these last two movements could effectively diminish the nationalistic euphoria created around the military victory over Pakistan in 1971 on the issue of independence of Bangladesh.

Looking at the world today, one can see wide arrays of social movements that are taking place in an increasingly large number of societies across the continents. Some of these are local, some national, and a few are international in nature. However, all these movements, in spite of their tendencies and contradictions, are effectively pointing to the growing economic, political, environmental and cultural turbulence the human society is suffering from.

The radical Islamic movement that we see today is a perfect sample of the anti-imperialist congregation of some severely contradictory class interests. And the same applies, albeit to a differing degree, to the environmental, gender based, human rights, and youth-centric movements around the world. For example, the mostly urbanized students of Jadavpur University and Jawaharlal Nehru University extend their enthusiastic support to the on-going anti-caste struggle at the Central University of Hyderabad, especially since the death of Rohith Vemula, a dalit research scholar. The movement in general, however, does not represent a cohesive political entity fighting the state and the market per se, but on the contrary, with all its diversities in place, tries to redefine a more perfect state and a more equitable market for all. Nevertheless, in the process, the movement gets used to a power milieu, an amalgamation of state and the market, which is inherently inequitable, divisive and totalitarian, and is allowed to operate somehow within their ambit even under a rightist political regime. Such attempts of cooptation by the power milieu and inherent weaknesses of the fledgling social movements are not the ends in themselves. Rather, with the sharpening of the material contradictions within the big states and the intensely integrated market mechanisms, it may as well be expected that the task of formation of a class organization for social movement would take the centre stage, especially under the shadow of a third global imperialist war.

5. A few Quantitative Examples of Connections between State, Market and Social Movement I. World Social Forum Statistics (2001-2009)

The data show graduated fading away of an international platform of reform with increasing instability in the global State and Market. All the countries represented here are now embroiled in socio-cultural and political-economic turmoil. Post 2008 economic meltdown, the numbers are either stagnant or reducing. Reform needs economic and political stability.

     The rate of growth of investment (mostly calculated in percentage) in the given technology is in decline over the period. Even the projections of post 2013 FYs (as the data is published in June 2013) indicate stagnation in the market. Directly it reflects some sort of saturation in the arena of telemarketing. There is also a world-wide possibility of stagnation or decrease in the teledensity in spite of the fact that an increasing number of women gaining access to cellular services. The possibility of market stagnation becomes more apparent particularly in the context of existence of the dwindling and unexposed markets in the Middle East and Africa. 

It is time to demand pay-parity as an intervening stage within the new-social movement aiming gender equality. The World Bank statistics is not beyond doubt as in most societies even today the women enter into the paid labour market slightly late and leave early than the men. Hence, the projected red bars are likely to be smaller. Both state and the market can be forced to make necessary corrections to provide healthy QWL (Quality of Work Life) for the women.

5.   Summary:

Development of a monopolistic market and financialization of capital are the two salient features of capitalist mode of production since the beginning of the past century. These are the two intrinsic factors of a complex dynamics which also spell out the elementary nature of capitalism: exploitation of every possible resource to consolidate private property, and maximization of surplus value at any cost in the organizational level. A combination of these two factors, in face of the problems of overproduction and market saturation, transformed once a radical relation of production into an intransigent system of imperialism.

The hidden tyranny of such a production relation is bound to seek refuge under the rubric of an enormous political entity, a supra-organic structure, abstracted from the body-social, the state, as an executive machinery to protect the class-specific interests of capitalism. As an expected countervailing effect to such a predatory and retrograde system, almost always, social movement takes place. It is reasonable therefore to look into the process of social movement in conjunction with the political economy of state and the market. It is a triad that may get transformed into a historical evidence of a long drawn night of civilization. Finally, it is only the progressive social movement that holds the key to transform the fractured societal existence of the present day world into a new dawn of human society.

Note:

1. https://sociologytwynham.com/2013/06/01/defining-the-state accessed on 16/10/2016
2. “Failed states, the dark mirror image of a successful state, lose control over the means of violence, and cannot create peace or stability for their populations or control their territories. They cannot ensure economic growth or any reasonable distribution of social goods”, Rosa Ehrenreich Brook (2005).
3. An undeniable political reality is the class identity of the state embedded as the class symbol in national flag and state emblems. The meaning and significance of these symbols are nuanced but definitive about the class orientation (even with deviation) they depict. David Goodman (2015: 282) has made a detailed discussion on this issue.
4. Commenting on this definition, V.I. Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution (1992: 1), [T]his expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
5. The definition given here tries to show the vagueness of the predominant capitalist views on the market taken from www.businessdictionary.com/definition/market.html accessed on 21/10/2016
6. The explanations here are taken entirely from Burawoy, M (2015) as published in Rhuthmos Accessed from rhuthmos.eu/spip.php?article1486 on 21/10/2016
7. Cited from Colin Barker et al. (2013). The essence here is to break the reified idea of economic determinism proposed by the postmodern and cultural studies theorists with dialectical exposition of the material condition.

• ## All the graphs and slides incorporated in the essay are sourced from Google Images at https://www.google.co.in/imghp between 15 and 25 October 2016.