The Neo-Marxist Theory of the State

The Neo-Marxist Theory of the StateAuthor(s): Robert SoloSource: Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Dec., 1978), pp. 829-842Published by: Association for Evolutionary EconomicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4224747 .

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J eI JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES Vol. XII No. 4 December 1978

The Neo-Marxist Theory of the State

Robert Solo

We are concerned here with that phenomenon of collective behavior called "the state." Although not itself written in the frame of the Marxist discourse, the focus of this essay is on Marxist thought, which has been more concerned than any other modern school with the nature of the state. Briefly, we will restate the classical Marxist conception. Then, again briefly, we will suggest those experiences in history bearing upon and challenging that conception. Finally, we will analyze work of three young Marxists in an effort to discern the character of an emerging neo- Marxist theory of the state.

As conceived in classical Marxist thought, the state, simply put, is the agency of the ruling class. It is their executive committee, their general staff, the means for making their purposes manifest. It is their most formidable instrument of class coercion, and it is the greatest barrier to revolution. Once captured by the revolutionaries, however, the state would thenceforth serve as their instrument for the fundamental transformation of society and for the effective organization, planning, and control of the economy.

Parenthetically, the most important modern conceptualizers of the state, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hegel, and Max Weber, all were German- born. Their imageries of reality were shaped by the experience of the Prussian state, the first great modern organization. That most formidable instrument of control and coercion, but also of creative change, that bas-

The author is Professor of Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

829



830 Robert Solo

tion of political reaction and a barrier to revolution implanted industrial capitalism in Germany and gave the German nation an integral political form.

The Advent of the Worker State

Exiled from Germany, forced from France, residing in London with his motley disciples, caught in the intrigues of conspirators on the fringes of the world, Marx wrote of a great and violent birth of socialism that would in its maturity attain the ultimate communist brotherhood. But all this was for him a dream, a fantasy, for in the foreboding reality he knew, there was no socialism. His concrete, whole experience was of capitalism -aggressive, powerful and triumphant, conquering, encompassing and transforming what remained of the ancient, decrepit civilizations of the world. And Marx's theory was specifically a critique of capitalism, with the capitalist state as its target.

That has changed. Now Marxist socialism organizes a third of the earth's population. In the world that calls itself Marxist, the state is the nexus of all economic choice and activity. And socialism did not come as Marx predicted. Nowhere did it come as the manifest will and conscious intent of an organized working class confronting the vested powers of the bourgeoisie. It took root not in mature capitalist economies but in technically backward peasant societies. In Russia it was installed in a power vacuum created by the collapse of tsardom, out of the struggle of revolutionary elites to capture the autonomous power of the state. In China it was installed by the peasant army of a world carrying the banners of a new faith. Nor did the state wither away. Nor did it cease to be an instrument of coercion; indeed, it coerces the working class in the interest of a credo enunciated by the state.

Moreover, the achievement of a variable socialism, let alone of com- munism, did not follow spontaneously upon the change of property (or power) relationships. On the contrary, difficult and still unresolved problems have been crucial in every socialist regime, for example, in the re- cruitment of leadership, in the reconciliation of individual and collective values, in the transferences of power, in the transformation of ideological anachronisms, in the organization of creative change or in the development of effective planning and control.

We may then ask this: What has been the effect on Marxist theory of the advent of, and experiences with, the worker state? Conversely, what has been the effect of Marxist theory on the development of the worker state?



Theory of the State 831

As an ideology for the elite (the haunting paradigm of class conflict as omnipresent, the anathema of private property, the idealization of the proletariat, and the real if distant commitment to equality and brotherhood), and as a religion of the mass, Marxism surely has had an important effect on the character of modern socialism and the behavior of the worker state.

It is, after all, in its ideological commitment rather than its modes of production that modern socialism differs from fascism or state capitalism. And the grossest perversions of socialism have taken form from, and found justification in, the Marxist ideology and outlook, even as the hor- rible collectivism of Soviet agriculture was staged as a class war against the kulak. Nevertheless, Marxism qua theory remains a critique of capitalism, ostensibly untouched by the advent of and experiences within the worker state. It has never developed as an analytic of socialism and hence has not become an instrument for dealing with the problems or contributing to the development of the worker state (although precisely the purpose of some Soviet and East European dissent has been to develop a Marxist critique of socialism).

The Advent of the Welfare State

Nor have events in Western capitalism followed the prophecies and expectations of classical Marxism. In some societies, the party of organized labor has gained and maintained political control of the state yet has not displaced private property or replaced the capitalist mode of production. After the Great Depression and World War II, in all technologically advanced capitalist societies the state ceased to be dominated by the precepts of laissez-faire liberalism. There emerged, instead, the welfare state, which curbed the capitalists, guaranteed the development of industrial trade unionism, and transformed the status of the "dominated" classes.

We will examine the response to these lessons of history in the works of three neo-Marxists, one writing in England, another in France, a third in the United States, and all concerned with the character of the state in modem capitalism.

Ralph Miliband: The State in Capitalist Society

Miliband, a favorite student and former disciple of Harold Laski, was evidently displaced from his senior lectureship at the London School of



832 Robert Solo

Economics as part of the long-standing and thorough purge of leftists from the ranks of that institution. He now is a professor at the red brick University of Leeds.

His book attempts to defend the idea of the state as an instrument of the ruling (now called "dominant") class against the conception, popu- lar in non-Marxian sociology, that the capitalist state is an area of con- testation between "pluralist" elites.' He bases his case on several propo- sitions. The state is not synonymous with government. Rather, it is a system of power of which government, that is, the parliamentary apparatus, is one functional element. That system of power includes, in addi- tion, the civil service, the complex of public agencies, the military, the judiciary, and the police. It also includes institutions such as the churches, the schools, and the press, which serve to legitimize the system. A disproportionately large number of those who hold positions of promi- nence in the aforementioned components of the state, and among corporate officialdom as well, are born of bourgeois, property-owning families.2 These circumstances, plus the fact that there is a high degree of inequality in the distribution of wealth and income in all capitalist societies, Miliband takes as sufficient proof of the existence and solidarity of a single ruling (dominant) class.

Along with the most conservative neoclassical, laissez-faire liberals (and Keynesians as well), Miliband assumes that simple profit maximiz- ing explains the behavior of corporate enterprise, failing to differentiate, as they also fail to do, between the policy of complex organizations and the choice of the self-interested individual engaged in trade.

Finally, Miliband's argument comes down to this, that when the chips are down, no matter what party is in power, the capitalist state will protect property and profits inasmuch as these are a prerequisite to the sustained operation of the market economy. Hence, the state supports accumulation. Ergo, the state is the instrument of the ruling class.

One can hardly disagree. Given an established economic system, and given its acceptance, any state will support and protect that which is con- sidered essential to the operation of the system. To do otherwise would as much violate the conscious interest of the dominated as it would violate the interest of the dominant class. If and inasmuch as a given economic system is accepted, a rational policy must be commited to the maintenance of that which is necessary for its continued operation. Only those aspects unessential to the operation of an accepted system can be subjected to fundamental transformation or discard.

What must be explained is not why the capitalist state protects and promotes what is essential for the functioning of the capitalist system,




but why capitalism is accepted as the system. Or, if it is not accepted by the masses, why has that nonacceptance not been signaled through the agency of universal suffrage in the election of anticapitalist governments? Or why have governments controlled by labor parties and pre- sumably elected into power by the laboring masses not disposed of an unwanted system and installed one preferred by those voting masses? Miliband's answer is that, given the consciousness-forming power of those agencies that legitimize capitalism, particularly the press and the schools, and in the absence of a revolutionary leadership, the working class cannot transcend the trade unionist outlook that seeks the best possible bargain for labor within the frame of a market economy.

Who would doubt that profound inertial and conservative forces are at work /n democratic capitalism, as in all other forms of society? Or that every culture is of an institutional design that serves to preserve and perpetuate itself? It must be so, since this is a precondition for any continuity whatsoever. The only cultures that are perpetuated are those that perpetuate themselves. However, there are societies (quite rare in history) that, besides being designed to perpetuate themselves, have built-in institutions that serve to explore, promote, develop options for, and stimulate systemic change. The culture and organization of democratic capitalism in Europe and the United States have such change-oriented institutions. Miliband and his book are evidence of that. It well may be that the continuity of Western capitalism is the result of the greater weight and power of those institutions that serve to conserve and perpetuate than of those that formulate options for and stimulate change. In that sense Miliband may be correct.

Even while attempting to defend the classical Marxist conception of the state, Miliband's argument fundamentally transforms it. The state has ceased to be simply the coercive instrument of the ruling class and has become instead a very complex system. Its configuration is only sug- gested and its operation is not explained by Miliband. It shades into and in part encompasses all the institutions of a society, and within its components the various interests and outlooks of society are differently weighted.

What is not acceptable in Miliband's argument is his essential but hidden assumption that there is in the wings a socialist alternative which is unequivocally and absolutely in the interest of the masses or working classes. Therefore, the failure to opt for that alternative cannot be counted as a reasoned or reasonable preference but must be explained as the consequence of a bourgeois conspiracy in that class's control over the "means of mental production." Miliband does not demonstrate, and, by



834 Robert Solo

the record of history, he cannot demonstrate, that there is in fact a socialist alternative which is unequivocally workable and, from the worker's point of view, necessarily preferable to piecemeal reforms of historically given conditions of democratic capitalism.

Miliband, although admitting great improvements in labor's material conditions under capitalism, emphasizes the worker's "subordinate status." He quotes George Orwell, who "wrote in 1937 that 'this business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people's convenience, is inherent in working class life. A thousand influences constantly press a workingman down into a passive role.' The passage of some thirty years, for all the changes in working-class life which have been so loudly celebrated, has hardly pushed that observation into the realm of history."3 True. Touche. But why need any of that be changed by installing another set of hier- archies in a centralized system of socialist planning?

Writing in 1967-1968, Miliband was sensitive to the discontents of those tumultuous days. He predicted that the state would respond to the then rampant demands for reform, but results would not satisfy expectations. This he foresaw as the consequence of fundamental functional inadequacies of state planning in a market economy. Unable to fulfill those expectations, the state would be obliged to repress those who expressed them. Enter an authoritarian regime, unless by then the working class has found its unity and acquired "the faculty of ruling the nation." On that happy day, "the socialist society . .. will not require . .. an all powerful state ... [it will] bring into being an authentically democratic social order, a truly free society of self-governing men and women, in which, as Marx put it, the state will be converted 'from an organ super- imposed upon society into one completely subordinated to it.' "4

Nico Poulantzas: Political Power and Social Classes

I find Poulantzas's book difficult and obscure.5 This is partly because it is a profoundly theological work, rooted in a faith which I do not share, dealing with a dense body of Marxist text and commentary with which I am not familiar. It commands respect, nevertheless, as the work of a wise, astute, exceedingly well-informed theologian of the Marxist persuasion. This is not said pejoratively, nor is it gratuitous. It is to state the character of his discourse in order that his arguments, his tactics, and his con- tribution can be appreciated.

Poulantzas speaks, and he is fully aware of doing so, from within a




missionary movement that is geographically diffuse and lacking in an ethnic base, a common material interest, a shared formative experience or cultural upbringing, and an instrument of coercive control. Yet, it is a movement that would, against the will and interests of the established powers, transform the world. That this mission continues to exist is itself remarkable. It finds its coherence and cohesion only in the faith of its partisans and in the shared belief that they possess and are the unique bearers of an inviolable truth. Poulantzas, fully aware of the delicate and dangerous nature of what he intends, would tamper with that truth-alter it, change it, expand it. All this must be done circumspectly and carefully, very carefully. It is not the heathen but believers that Poulantzas is ad- dressing, and his message threatens that most powerful, most fragile, and most effervescent of phenomena, a belief that gives unity and direction. So he never overtly advocates novelty, proposes alternative hypotheses, suggests a doubt; he only corrects errors. He never refers to observed phenomena or to the lessons of experience by way of proof. He finds his proof instead in the texts, that is, in the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin or in certain of their authoritative interpreters, such as Louis Al- thusser, Etienne Balibar, and Antonio Gramsci. The data of history and observation, although never brought into the discussion, are omnipresent surely in the minds of his readers. It is that muffled voice of experience that gives force to his argument. He offers an escape from dogmas that do not explain and can no longer contain those intrusive realities, via a route that believers can follow without the sense of having abandoned the essential truths of their mission.

Fortunately, when Marx wrote about concrete historical cases, as in The Eighteenth Brumaire, "The Civil War in France," or "The Class Struggle in France," the spectrum of variables that had to be, and that were, taken into account, implicitly or explicitly, is sufficiently wide for a practiced exegete such as Poulantzas to find all the precedents his purpose requires. With these he justifies modifications and extensions of the Marxist conceptions of the state, the character of social change, and the Marxist theory of social classes. In so doing, he covers a wide terrain of non-Marxist scholarship, sometimes in the spirit of confrontation, but always open to absorb that which might deepen and extend the Marxist analytic.

It is the essence of his argument that that analytic need not and should not be bound by any prefiguration of causality or any prescribed se- quence of events. It requires only, given the capitalist mode of production, that actual or potential class struggle be understood as the central reality for Marxist concern and as the focus of the Marxist inquiry. It



836 Robert Solo

suffices to conceive of the state as one element, affected as well as affect- ing, of that which determines the conditions of class dominance and influence and as an instrument for the potential transformation of the system. Society itself is a complex of interacting structures. "The constitution of class is not related to the economic level alone."6 Rather, it is the "result of an ensemble of structures and their relations, firstly at the economic level, secondly at the political level, and thirdly at the ideological level,"7 a nexus of "the global effects of structure in the field of social relations."8

He postulates a matrix of relationships between classes: classes that are active and articulate, classes that are dormant but distinct with respect to function and interests, classes that are or are not actualized in the realization of class interests and made manifest as a party in the field of political action. There are autonomous factions of classes, categories, and strata that can merge, dissolve, or be fused for a diversity of pertinent effects. To support this dissolution of old dichotomies, he quotes Marx from The Eighteenth Brumaire: "Insofar as millions of [peasant] families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from other classes . . . they form a class. Insofar as ... the identity of their interests begats ... no political organization among them, they do not form a class."9

Within this matrix of social relationships, institutions are conceived as nodules of power; it is through their existence and instrumentality that social classes exercise influence and express their will and interest. These institutions, nevertheless, possess an "autonomy and structural specificity which is not immediately reducible to an analysis in terms of power."'" The state is one such institution, but with these particular characteristics: There devolves upon it responsibility for the cohesion of the global whole and the function of maintaining the integrity of the social system. Thus, "the state has the particular function of constituting the factors of cohesion beween the levels of social formation" and regulating "its global equilibrium as a system."'1 By reason of its role vis-a'-vis the system, the state is a potential instrument of revolutionary transformation, that is, it becomes "possible to aim at the state as the factor for producing a new unity and new relations of production."'92 The state also is "the structure in which the contradictions of the various levels of formation are con- densed."13

In the instance of modem capitalism, the state is critically instrumental in maintaining the dominance of the owning class in the field of economic relations, but this does not require or imply that the bourgeoisie is also politically dominant. It has, on the contrary, frequently been the case that




the state in capitalism has been controlled by a class (or faction) other than the bourgeoisie. The absolutist states under whose regime the capitalist mode of production came into being were under the domination of nobles, both in the polity and the economy. In Great Britain, a landed gentry through the appropriation of land rents eliminated an independent peasantry and became the nucleus of an industrial bourgeoisie, while the aristocracy retained dominance in affairs of state. The political structure did not change its feudal character, while at the level of economic relationships the incremental accumulation of juridical decisions evolved a basis for capitalism in the common law. In Prussia, industrial capitalism was installed directly by a state constituted of and controlled entirely by an aristocracy. Only in France did an already formed bourgeoisie expro- priate the aristocracy and replace it as the politically dominant class, yet France was precisely the most laggard in establishing the capitalist mode of production, hampered by the continued existence of a massive small- holding peasantry and a petty bourgeoisie whose power was required as a counterweight to an already important and politically aggressive proletariat.

But while capitalism evolved spontaneously, and the preeminence of the bourgeoisie developed within the frame of feudal structures and under political regimes ruled by aristocracies, Poulantzas maintains that nothing of the sort could happen for the establishment of socialism. It cannot develop as a mode of production within the frame of a political regime dominated by the bourgeoisie. Socialism requires "the taking over of the means of production by the producers themselves, a process which car in no way be introduced inside the capitalist mode of production."''4 Poulantzas is here concerned to refute a notion that there exists in Jaco- binism qua ideology of the bourgeoisie a seed that, as Jean Juares be- lieved and as young Marx thought, would ripen into socialism. This supposed "seed" of social democracy, he holds, is the ideology proper to the petty bourgeoisie that projects as its ideal a society made up of small-scale independent producers, farmers, and artisans, each owning his own field, workplace, shop, or stall, and each able to support his family without recourse to wage labor and without being exploited by "the very rich."''5

This petty bourgeois ideal has a counterpart in American Populism. It was expressed by Justice Louis Brandeis in Curse of Bigness, and it is reflected in those antitrust laws (such as the Robinson-Patman Act) that would protect the competitor rather than preserve the intensity of competition. Poulantzas is certainly correct that capitalism will never be transformed into socialism via the path of Populism. Anything but! The



838 Robert Solo

more relevant argument to which he does not respond is that of Joseph Schumpeter in Socialism, Capitalism and Democracy, namely, that the transformation to socialism would occur through a simple, inexorable, but continuous shift in the modern autonomous corporation's locus of responsibility and answerability for the effects of actions and for the character of its policies, a shift from shareholders to the agencies of the state.

The autonomy of the capitalist state, hence its capability for acting in opposition to the manifest public sentiments of the bourgeoisie, even against their short-run interests, "imposing sacrifices upon them," is not, Poulantzas holds, the anomaly it appears. It is a consequence inherent in the capitalist mode of production. This is so for two reasons. First, it is the very essence of capitalism that the state should be removed from the operations of the economy, hence its detachment and independence. Sec- ond, that outlook of total, ruthless, and competitive self-seeking appropriate to success in the market game, bred into the bourgeois ideology by the exigencies of bourgeois experience, is peculiarly inappropriate as a basis for the political behavior and collective response of a class. Their ideological commitment renders the bourgeoisie inept in the conduct of state affairs or in realizing their collective interests.

Moreover, the modern capitalist economy consists not of one but several coexisting modes of production. For each there are nodules of power and loci of domination. Each has an interest in, and a need for, a power so exercised as to assure its cohesion and protect its systemic integrity; in other words, each one requires its own state. Hence a form of state evolves appropriate to each; the state becomes, in effect, a cluster of states. "As we know," Poulantzas observes, "a historically determined social formation is dependent on the coexistence of several modes of production. In this sense the state of such a formation results from the combination of several types of state, the product of different modes of production."'6 In this multifaceted or, if one prefers, hydra-headed center of power, which state, or class, will exercise hegemony?

"The capitalist state presents this peculiar feature, that nowhere in its actual institutions does strictly political domination take the form of political relations between dominant and dominated classes."''7 The legitimacy of the modem capitalist state is based on universal suffrage. Its authority rests on the consent of the governed, which is to say on the voluntary, the willing support of the dominated as well as of the dominating.

Although Poulantzas does not address the question, he must certainly believe that if the dominated classes were aware of their true self-interest,




if they were "scientifically" enlightened, they would not support the state that upholds a capitalist system but would opt for the socialist alternative. It is not, however, on the basis of scientific truth but according to the stars of ideology that social classes behave. It is the pervasive power and illusional force of ideology (understood as a rationalization operating on the plane of the imaginary) that finds its expression in, and provides perpetuation of, the capitalist state. Hegemony in the capitalist state belongs to that social faction committed to and able to articulate the ideological imperatives of nationhood and unity through "institutions [wherein] everything takes place as if the class struggle did not exist."''8

This is possible because the juridic-political structure isolates individuals, individuates roles and values, producing a condition of competition that masks class interests and conceals the realities of the class struggle. What surfaces to consciousness is the image of a community of individuals, each in isolation, competing within market parameters, hence operating within and requiring the uninterrupted functioning of the capitalist system.

James O'Connor: The Fiscal Crisis of the State

O'Connor, a leading light among current American neo-Marxists, stands in curious opposition to Poulantzas.'9 He is the brash American priest pounding pavements, joining a dozen betterment and liberation bandwagons, having no truck with the mysteries of dialectic, out to do a job, in sharp contrast with the subtle Latin monsignor who takes as his task to guide and redirect an unbroken stream of thought unfolding in a world discourse whose coherence and continuity depend above all else on faith and commitment to the invisible church that underlies it. For O'Connor's uncertain Marxism, the symbolic garb-cassock and cross- the familiar pejoratives, and an interest in the relationships of power suffice. There is no proof by scripture for him. Only once in his book do the words of Marx appear, and then as a quotation from an American textbook on public finance. Nor is mention made of Lenin or of the other great Marxist disciples and interpreters. It is his former mentors in the American academic establishment, Keynesian and neoclassical econo- mists, that O'Connor is out to impress, to defy, to teach a lesson.

He divides the economy into three parts. The monopoly-capitalist sector consists of large corporations and trade unions. The state sector is composed of public employees, including those engaged in education. The competitive sector consists of small enterprise, including agriculture.



840 Robert Solo

The three sectors are understood according to familiar, but in my view quite misleading, stereotypes. Despite all the wickedness the title implies, the monopoly capitalists are the good guys, the strong, progressive group. They provide the dynamic for technological advance and rising productivity; through a pact with trade unions, higher productivity is at once transformed into higher wage incomes in return for labor peace. The state sector is a bureaucratic neuter. The competitive sector is socially backward, technologically laggard, unproductive, and poverty ridden.

The state is committed to maintaining an economic balance, which is understood as satisfying expectations by reference to some standard of equity in the distribution of income among these three sectors, as a prerequisite for social stability and political consent. These standards of equity and indices of legitimate expectations are, in turn, determined by those rising income levels that are produced through technological advance as a consequence of higher productivity in the monopoly-capitalist sector. Hence, remuneration for employees in the public sector, where productivity does not increase, follows the rise in wages and income in the monopoly-capitalist sector, where it does. With reference to that same standard, the state attempts to satisfy minimal but forever rising expectations in the competitive sector through transfers and welfare guarantees. That surplus which can through taxation be siphoned off from the monopoly-capitalist sector, and redistributed elsewhere, does not satisfy the expectations of those in the public and competitive sectors. Pressed to do so, the state incurs deficits, which produces inflation, which gen- erates frustration and the other manifestations of financial crisis.

O'Connor proposes, as a possible (although unlikely) way out of this crisis, the formation of a working partnership between the state and monopoly capital, a social-industrial complex modeled after the military- industrial complex. Its purpose would be to accelerate the rise in industrial productivity (hence making a larger surplus available for redistribu- tion) and greatly expand employment opportunity in the monopoly- capitalist sector.

Conclusion

We have not attempted to review the literature on the Marxist concept of the state, nor has this article been a review of the three books given particular attention.20 Sampling work from the spectrum of neo-Marxist thought, we have tried to deduce and to articulate an emerging conceptualization of the state. This concept is one very important component




of the paradigm within which the neo-Marxist discourse is developing, and it is summarily described below.

The state is conceived as a power center that, although operating in the context of class interests, nevertheless possesses a significant degree of freedom and autonomy. This is in sharp contrast to the classical Marx- ist conception. As an autonomous system, the state is composed of differently endowed, motivated, and oriented parts. And it evolves quite different policy sets and institutional formations in relation to the particular needs and crises of those different sectors of the economy (each with its distinctive mode of production) to which the functions, responsibil- ities, and power arrangements of the state relate.

The central function and responsibility of the capitalist state is to maintain the coherence, cohesiveness, and stability of a complex and multi aceted economic system. Because the state is committed to maintain the operating integrity of a system in which the bourgeois capitalists play a dominant role, ipso facto the state is committed to protect and preserve the essential role, position, and power of the dominant classes. This is so even when power in the state is not exercised by those classes or on their behalf, and even though particular policies and purposes of the state run counter to the manifest will and interest of bourgeois capitalism.

The capitalist state functions as a field of power balance and conflict resolution and as an instrument for achieving cross-class equilibrium. With the legitimacy of its authority based on universal suffrage, it obtains the consent of the governed, hence the acquiesence of the dominated as well as the dominating classes, by seeking to satisfy at least the essential or minimal expectations of all functional groups through income transfers and welfare guarantees. It also obtains consent through an apparatus of acculturation, socialization, and education that inculcates ideologies of individualism and nationalism, and of a juridical system that emphasizes the values and enforces the rights and prerogatives of the isolated individual. Thus is engendered the consciousness of individual rather than collective group or class choice and values. The imagery of individuals interacting competitively is reenforced as being the natural and necessary character of economic life, with values of the collective conceivable only in the unity of nationhood.

This reconceptualization of the state is, in our view, a reasonable ac- commodation to the experience of postmodernity and an important and enlightened development in the evolution of Marxist thought. While it is pertinent to an analytic of class struggle, it does not require or imply a



842 Robert Solo

Marxist focus of inquiry, nor does it preclude a non-Marxist orientation. So-called bourgeois social scientists and institutionalists who view the state from a different perspective and ask a different set of questions about.it will find this conceptualization enlightening and relevant to their own scholarly endeavors.

Notes

1. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969).

2. This is true, alas, for revolutionary parties as well. 3. Miliband, The State, p. 263. 4. Ibid., p. 277. 5. Nico Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: Sheed

and Ward, 1973). The original French version was published in Paris in 1968.

6. Ibid., p. 69. 7. Ibid., p. 63. 8. Ibid., pp. 67-68. 9. Ibid., p. 79.

10. Ibid.,p. 115. 11. Ibid., pp. 44-45. 12. Ibid., p. 45. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., p. 160. 15. Ibid., p. 179. 16. Ibid., p. 144. 17. Ibid., p. 188. 18. Ibid., p. 183. 19. James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's

Press, 1973). 20. Anything more than an attempt to deduce historical change in the con-

ception of the state, from an examination of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics, and J. M. Clark's Social Control of Business, would have been either a review of "the literature" in general or of the whole content of those three books in particular.



The Neo-Marxist Theory of the State

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