Date: 10 Feb 97 03:14:59 EST
From: Chris Burford <100423.2040-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-TH: The state and markets


Justin's arguments about the historical emergence of English 
Common Law were interesting and complement the points about
the role of the state in the modern capitalist economy.

To avoid reductionism we are talking about a  complex 
interaction of processes, however carefully we try to analyse them
separately in abstract. 

I would however stress even more the different layers of social
control and regulation, *which still remain available now*.
It certainly has the ring of truth that in the 16th and 17th 
century in England the Crown system of regulating Common Law was 
a cheaper and more effective way of resolving disputes and 
social transgressions, but some forms of spontaneous justice and
regulation would still have remained.

I read Marx's description of the emergence of the commodity -
dominated economy from the earliest exchange as not only 
ontologically compelling but to have historical validity. I assume
that wherever two or three humans customarily gathered to barter
use values, conventions started to emerge. It was a matter of time
before they were codified, whether that was done by the local 
barrack room lawyer, elected market mayor, or representative 
of the nearest available body of armed men capable of enforcing
rules against threats of physical violence.

Why is an understanding of layers still important? Not everything
goes through the state now. The right-wing bourgeois politicians have
a point here. For example chlorine-containing aerosols were rapidly 
withdrawn from supermarkets a few years ago by agreement among the 
main companies which was in a sense only facilitated by the
government.

Then again this morning of course another news item about members of 
the public worried about law and order and objecting to hearing about
young offenders being sent on holidays overseas. The point is that
the effective regulation of the misdeeds of young people cannot rely
on a distant state alone, plus soft hearted social workers. Community
policing makes more sense. The local police should be an arm of 
the local community, should rely on the local community to identify
the small number of people in each area responsible for most of the 
crime, should talk with their families, and re-inforce their own
self-regulating moral codes plus provide more of an outlet for
youth clubs and employment. At some stage of course this would involve
the local police taking sides against the inhuman workings of capital
which pitylessly throws young people into the reserve army of labour.
But that would be an interesting debate that I think marxists could
handle more effectively by argument than by reductionist dogmatism
about the state being merely a monolith by which one class oppresses 
another.


Chris Burford
London.


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