Coup d’État, bureaucracy and the Marxist theory of the state

Abstract

The term coup d’État is an expression commonly used by Marxist analysts to characterize a sort of phenomena. Despite being widely used, the term, however, still does not have a rigorous and consensual definition within the Marxist theory. In this sense, the aim of this article is to argue in favor of a restricted definition of a coup d’État which in our view is coherent with a Marxist theory of the bourgeois state. The theoretical treatment proposed is to take the concept of coup d’État as a political practice of a particular type in which the bureaucracy participates in the usurpation of political power in one or more branches of the state apparatus. This definition’s main implication is to attest the parliamentary coup as a theoretical contradiction, as it would not observe the structural hierarchy between bureaucratic representation and political representation within the bourgeois state apparatus. In addition to this main consequence, some analytical possibilities offered by the concept of coup as a political practice of a particular type are outlined at the end of the essay.