The Marx And North: A Comparative Study Of The Theory Of The State

At different stages of development in human history, face a variety of economic development, Marx and North study the state problem from respectively path. Marx inspects the internal mechanism of the political power and economic development, from the dialectic relations of the economic base and superstructure in terms of the historical materialism. North uses new institutional economics methodology to link property, system and order to the state, to analyze the function of the state to the economic development. Based on the role of the state at the economic development, this paper compares the two state theories from four aspects:the origin, the nature, the function and the role in economic development of the state, thereby understand the state's role in economic development in depth. There are great theoretical and practical significance for developing the state theory of Marx, improving the socialist market economic system, building a harmonious society, and further promoting the reform.The results through the combing systematically showed that both of them believe the state has a dual role for economic development; the reason of this dual role comes from the dual nature of the state. There are many differences between them:Marx believe that the dual role of all exploitation states is rooted in dual origins of the state; The state role in promoting economic production depends on the nature of the governing class state and national functions which is in accordance with the direction of productivity; The solution is that going with the socialization of productivity, and the proletariat becoming the ruling class. The North believes that the dual role of the State from the assumption of limited economic man hypothesis and the contractualism, the dual role of the State will live forever. The role of national economic development depends on the property, institutional and order, which is forming after gaming between hierarchy, bureaucratic government and interest groups; the evolution is that make the limited access orders evolve to the open access orders.The comparative study, revealing that Marx's theory of the state understand the true face of the state in depth, profound analysis the dual role of roots of the capitalist countries scientifically, but the theory loses sight of the analysis of the differences within state, missing the of the role of the reality socialist state in economic development.The contribution of North State Theory is that build a state model, including ruling circles, bureaucratic government and interest groups,connect the property rights, institution and order with the state as the endogenous capacity to into the analytical framework, thus research the State's dual role in economic development.But it is harder to explore the role of the state's economic development in depth because of the doctrine of political transaction costs and contract, and the state's model is abstraction out of the constitutional social, can not effectively explain the Chinese socio-economic. Combining the Chinese actual conditions, this paper believe that critically referencing North state theory, investigating how the bureaucratic autonomy bring about the double role of state, is one direction of developing Marxist state theory.