THE CRISIS IN STATE POWER AND THE REPRODUCTION OF CAPITALISM

Abstract

In advanced capitalist societies, classified by Claus Offe as tardy-capitalists, one verifies a structural contradiction among the logics concerning valorization of capital and the processes of the public-administration system. The continuous increase of work taxes in services, use values-producing work, or concrete work, usually classified as improductive work of higher value in advanced capitalist societies, according to Claus Offe, increasingly becomes a structural condition so that part of the work force may be converted into production of abstract trade/work values or into the merchandise social form. According to the Offean analysis on the growth of political-administrative systems in societies of tardy-capitalism, when organizing a portion of the work force marginally to waged-work, it becomes necessary that a part of the work force does not undergo capitalist trade relations. In that sense, so that the process or logic of capital valorization becomes able to keep going on without further adversities, it becomes necessary to collect back from the market, in an administrative manner, part of the work force of the relations of capitalist trade which have their eyes turned to the merchandise social form. In short, in the conversion process of concrete work into abstract work, one verifies a trend in the de-merchandising process of part of the work force. Such contradiction between both logics, producers of use value and trade value, are insolvable, in Offe’s analytical perspective, due exactly to the fact that such contradiction is way beyond the conscience and intentions of the individual capitalist agents, as well as that of the coordination of this process.