jei 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 trans-
formation 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-
bom. Their imageries of reality were shaped by the experience of the
Prussian state, the first great modem 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 con-
scious 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 prob-
lems 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 develop-
ment 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 brother-
hood) , and as a religion of the mass, Marxism surely has had an impor-
tant effect on the character of modem 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 capi-
talism, ostensibly untouched by the advent of and experiences witbin 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 de-
velop a Marxist critique of socialism).

The Advent oj the Welfare State

Nor have events in Western capitalism followed the prophecies and
expectations of classical Marxism. In some societies, the party of or-
ganized 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 techno-
logically 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 "domi-
nated" 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 appa-
ratus, 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 cor-
porate officialdom as well, are bom of bourgeois, property-owning
families.^ 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 vio-
late the interest of the dominant class. If and inasmuch as a given eco-
nomic 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.
 Theory of the State 833

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 govem-
ments? 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 in 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 con-
tinuity whatsoever. The only cultures that are perpetuated are those that
perpetuate themselves. However, there are societies (quite rare in his-
tory) 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 per-
petuate 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 com-
ponents 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 social-

ist 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."^ 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 expecta-
tions. 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 ex-
pressed 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.' "*

Nico Poulantzas:
Political Power and Social Classes

I find Poulantzas's book difficult and obscure.' 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 charac-
ter 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
 Theory of the State 835

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 intmsive 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 pur-
pose 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 produc-
tion, 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 influ-
ence 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. "^ Rather, it is the "re-
sult of an ensemble of structures and their relations, firstly at the eco-
nomic level, secondly at the political level, and thirdly at the ideological
level,'" a nexus of "the global effects of structure in the field of social
relations."*
He postulates a matrix of relationships between classes: classes that
are active and articulate, classes that are dormant but distinct with re-
spect 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 perti-
nent eflects. 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 organi-
zation among them, they do not form a class."*
Within this matrix of social relationships, institutions are conceived as
nodules of power; it is through their existence and instrumentality that
social classes exercise infiuence 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 co-
hesion beween the levels of social formation" and regulating "its global
equilibrium as a system."" 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."^^ The state also is "the structure
in which the contradictions of the various levels of formation are con-

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
 Theory of the State 837

the state in capitalism has been controlled by a class (or faction) other
than the bourgeoisie. The absolutist states under whose regime the capi-
talist 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 rela-
tionships 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 pro-
letariat.
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 can
in no way be introduced inside the capitalist mode of production."^*
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."i»
This petty bourgeois ideal has a counterpart in American Populism.
It was expressed by Justice Louis Brandeis in Curse oj 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 com-
petition. 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 modem 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 appro-
priate 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."^* 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."" The legiti-
macy 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 domi-
nating.
Although Poulantzas does not address the question, he must certainly
believe that if the dominated classes were aware of tbeir true self-interest.
 Theory of the State 839

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."^*
This is possible because the juridic-political structure isolates individ-
uals, 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 individ-
uals, 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.^* 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 sec-
tor 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 produc-
tivity; 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 pre-
requisite 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 ad-
vance 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 expecta-
tions 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 infiation, 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 indus-
trial 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.^^ Sampling work from the spectrum of neo-Marxist
thought, we have tried to deduce and to articulate an emerging concep-
tualization of the state. This concept is one very important component
 Theory of the State 841

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 differ-
ently endowed, motivated, and oriented parts. And it evolves quite
different policy sets and institutional formations in relation to the particu-
lar 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
multifaceted economic system. Because the state is committed to main-
tain the operating integrity of a system in which the bourgeois capitalists
play a dominant role, ipso jacto 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 capi-
talism.
The capitalist state functions as a field of power balance and confiict
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 individ-
ual. Thus is engendered the consciousness of individual rather than col-
lective group or class choice and values. The imagery of individuals inter-
acting 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
andNicolson, 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 lit-
erature" in general or of the whole content of those three books in par-
ticular.