NEO-MARXIST VIEWS OF THE STATE
Kasinitz, Philip
The revolution is not at hand. Although this fact is no surprise to anyone, it does merit some reflection. At the very moment when the industrialized West faces something akin to those "crises...
...The major strength of this approach is that it separates the question of capitalist domination of society (Marx's question) from that of elite domination of the state apparatus (Domhoff's question...
...He changes the state from the "tool" of conspirators to the "tool" of structures, and this is equally unacceptable...
...He sees these two spheres as autonomous with no "inherent" reason why the state should serve the class of accumulators...
...A large enough disruption can force the state to act or bring about the collapse of a particular administration or government...
...The fact is that power-structure researchers, most notably Domhoff, actually are arguing two separate points: elite overrepresentation and elite domination...
...In short, "class struggle is responsible for much of the economic dynamism of capitalism...
...1° This connection and its implications are more fully explored in Mollenkopf, "Theories of the State...
...I remain uncertain as to whether Block is an advocate of social democracy or Leninism, and whether he believes that the second must follow the first...
...They do not, however, demonstrate conscious elite domination of the state...
...155-201...
...Domhoff defines the "power elite as the leadership group or operating arm of the ruling class...
...Every step of this cycle pushes capitalism forward...
...State managers are always aware, as Block writes, that "exceptional periods are generally of a limited duration" and that they "will return to their earlier dependence on capitalist cooperation.' This explains for Block the "tendency" of state intervention to aid capital without denying the importance of conflict or "the continuous possibility of other outcomes...
...structuralist debate, viewed the state as a "relatively autonomous" institution: "autonomous," because state policy is seen as independent of the wills of capitalists...
...1969...
...In addition, such an "autonomous" state serves to disunite workers, promote the privatized citizen and undermine the politics of class struggle...
...Both capital and labor apply pressure on the state to do their bidding and to "mediate the contradictions" of the system in ways favorable to them...
...As the media's enormous coverage of the recent Pulitzer divorce attests, Americans tend to look to the wealthy for entertainment—a view asserting that they are amusing precisely because they are not very important...
...Or, for that matter, who would be surprised by the corresponding fact that the poor and the working class are underrepresented...
...The state's interests correspond to those of the dominant class and hence, since classes are in constant struggle, must be in opposition to the interests of all classes other than the dominant one...
...Ibid., p.20...
...This would be unfortunate, for if the arguments I have reviewed teach us anything, it is the futility of explaining the contemporary state by fitting it into worn-out teleologies...
...Unlike Mills, they presume the existence of a "ruling class...
...He ignores the unique character of the American, the French, or the German state...
...At the same time, he gives these bureaucrats no crystal ball in which to perceive the "perfect" capitalist future...
...At the same time we must acknowledge the indeterminate nature of politics and the unpredictability of history...
...Thus, if the New Deal was opposed by many capitalists, this represents a split between the "vanguard" of corporate capitalism (assumed to have supported, even shaped, Roosevelt's reforms) and regressive elements "still committed to the older ideology...
...Yet while many scholars look to the expanding role of the state as an explanation of the persistence of capitalism, few agree on what that role is or exactly how it is played...
...Most central is a willingness to deal with flesh-andblood people and real political events rather than with conceptual categories and scholastic abstractions...
...it seems highly unlikely that leaders within the ruling class, especially given the uncertainties of a capitalist economy, would be content to trust their fate to the workings of invisible structural restraints stressed by the structuralists...
...Domhoff's critics reflect this tendency...
...We do not need to accept the whole argument in order to learn profitably from various pieces of it...
...State managers have no special knowledge of what is necessary to make capitalism more rational...
...It is, in short, best for capitalism "when the ruling class is not the politically governing class...
...Americans exhibit a remarkable tendency to condescension toward the upper strata of society...
...Also Theda Skocpol, "Political Response to Capitalist Crises: Neo-Marxist Theories of the State and the New Deal," Politics and Society 10, no...
...In fact, the Social Register set was conspicuous in its attempts to "reform" and otherwise combat the immigrant machines...
...Fred Block, "Beyond Corporate Liberalism," Social Problems 24 (February 1977), p. 355...
...These media tend to trivialize the rich by presenting them as fascinating but utterly irrelevant to "the real world...
...See also James Weinstein, The Corporate Idea in the Liberal State (Boston: Beacon, 1968...
...relative" because of the ultimately "determinant role of relations of production...
...Again, while we may disagree with him on the significance of his findings, we must credit him for providing us with the grounds for this disagreement: his work lends itself to testing more readily than does the work of most structural Marxists...
...The implicit political agenda accounts for both the theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the approach...
...Ibid., p.21...
...However, during certain exceptional periods, such as a depression or a war, when popular unrest runs high or when conscientious, willing workers are necessary to national safety, the labor veto becomes easier to apply...
...For neo-Marxist political analysis to move forward, it must not rely on old formulations about the necessary interconnectedness of state, economy, and society...
...Powerstructure research would tell us a great deal more were its proponents not out to prove so much...
...The question is, at what point does overrepresentation constitute potential domination, that is, the real ability to control the outcome of all or at least of the most significant political disputes...
...However, as I will attempt to demonstrate, this is also a central theoretical weakness—for two reasons...
...When...
...G. William Domhoff, The Powers That Be (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp...
...21 Fred Block, "Beyond Relative Autonomy: State Managers as Historical Subjects," New Political Science 2 (Fall 1981), p. 39...
...This account gives to Block's theory an uncomfortable determinism of its own...
...Skocpol shows not only that a large part of 340 the capitalist class was dragged into the New Deal reforms, but that many aspects of the New Deal (most notably the Wagner Act) were in fact profoundly dysfunctional for capitalism in the first few years...
...Rather than ask whether the ;tate can ever act against capitalist interests, Block asks why it tends to act in those interests...
...Further, in times of crises members of this class use state intervention in the economy to maintain their position...
...Domhoff, The Powers That Be, pp...
...WHAT IS NEEDED, it seems to me, is an analysis of the state that continues to ask vital "Marxist questions"—What is the relationship between economic inequality and political domination...
...Block's commitment to the class struggle as the motor of history mars his otherwise admirable attempt to develop a neo-Marxist theory that has real explanatory value for modern capitalist policies...
...Power-structure researchers have localized the concept of upper-class power...
...8 While the instrumentalists draw on Weberian sociology, their initial concepts are firmly within the Marxist tradition...
...Since history is full of examples of men and women who led revolutionary struggles against their own class interests, why should we assume that contemporary capitalists are different...
...Today, many of us on the left are struck by the fact that a probusiness administration is enthusiastically dismantling regulations we long assumed to be in the interests of business...
...14 and 13...
...Domhoff, to his credit, does not place much stock in the "small business" explanation of business conservatism...
...Why do state managers, who do not hesitate to intervene in the economy in the face of capitalist resistance, still tend to rationalize and reform capitalism rather than eliminate it...
...They grope toward effective action as best they can within existing political constraints...
...As Fred Block points out, "the heart of the theory is the idea that enlightened capitalists recognize that the crises 337 of capitalism can be resolved through an extension of the state's role.'" Beyond this, the instrumentalists take widely different, though overlapping approaches...
...Weaknesses of the Instrumentalist Approach INSTRUMENTALISTS ARGUE that since state intervention in the economy and social welfare reforms did occur, and socialism did not, therefore state intervention prevented the otherwise "inevitable" transition to socialism...
...Pluralists have tended to focus discussion on more manifestly political events and decisions...
...Second, it negates as counterproductive all the very real progress that production workers have made without revolution in bettering their lives...
...Domhoff, like Mills, generally uses the terms "elite" or "power elite...
...Is it a step toward liberation or a more insidious form of oppression...
...13 For many Americans, indeed, the primary sources of information about the upper class are the same tabloids, magazines, and TV shows that provide information about other "celebrities": movie stars and popular musicians...
...The state therefore seeks economic stability not because of any mythical structural "needs," but because of simple self-interest on the part of politicians and bureaucrats...
...It must abandon theoretical tools that obscure more than they elucidate—which is, after all, exactly what Marx himself did...
...Does anyone today really maintain that power is equally distributed among U.S...
...If the state is an instrument of a given social class, it is difficult to conceive of other groups using control of the state apparatus to exact concessions over the vocal objections of that class...
...Even reference to scripture is of little help...
...Men and women are cut out of the picture entirely, and the state has no specific history of its own—as if capitalists one day simply called it into being...
...But Block must be feeling a bit far from home by now because he adds an epicycle to his formulation to give it a touch of conventional Marxist teleology...
...p. 6. Nicos Poulantzas, interviewed by Stuart Hall and Alan Hunt, in Socialist Review 48 (Nov.—Dec...
...12 (1980), pp...
...1 (1979), pp...
...Instrumentalists also assume that the mere presence of capitalists (or "elite members") or experts sponsored by capitalists within the state proves that those capitalists must rule in their own interests...
...they did...
...Domhoff and his associates have done much to pin down exactly what and whom they mean by "the state...
...While hardly representative of the total of structuralist arguments, they provide a useful contrast...
...This enables him to describe the operation of the elite while remaining theoretically committed to class analysis...
...For, where is this spiral leading...
...It would certainly make his work substantially more "neo" than "Marxist...
...That is not to say that the concessions of the New Deal did not turn out to benefit capital...
...He denies that their interests are ever at odds with those of the dominant class...
...His theory is so huge that we are left asking," What state...
...While the presumption that a ruling class exists and needs only to be found colors many of the instrumentalists' findings, their approach has generated a great deal of marvelous data...
...State officials also have their own goals: the maintenance of their rule, political stability, the steady collection of revenue, and the expansion of their own domain...
...First, if it is so, all history is predictable, so why bother to analyze specific situations (as Marx did...
...The first point is pure conjecture, although it may be reasonable enough...
...This pragmatic orientation is politically useful (for, as Saul Alinsky has pointed out, it is much easier to organize people to fight Mr...
...Anything other than "revolution" will "inevitably" be co-opted by capital...
...Domhoff, informed by his assumptions about what is important in American politics, expands his notion of the state to include interest groups, policy advisory councils, and the candidate-selection process...
...Finally, instrumentalists have also tended to underestimate the autonomous bureaucracy as an independent force in the administration of the state...
...s For Poulantzas, the central difficulty in the work of modern Marxists is the confusion between men as actors and men as bearers of structural relations larger than themselves...
...I See John Mollenkopf, "Theories of the State and Power Structure Research," Insurgent Sociologist 4 (Spring 1975...
...William Domhoff, in response to criticism on this point, protests that while he is philosophically committed to the idea of "class hegemony," he views his role as "accepting the challenge" of the "dominant social science paradigm" and demonstrating upper-class dominance as a matter of "process...
...for a pluralist critique of recent "elitist" theory, consider Andrew Greeley, Building Coalitions: American Politics for the 1970s (New York: Watts, 1974...
...Under these special conditions, the state must respond to labor rather than to capital because labor can bring down the state much faster than capital can...
...For all his Marxist faith, Poulantzas is in many ways profoundly conservative...
...This concept of power—power as always exercised at the pleasure of an elite that makes necessary concessions but remains firmly in control—underestimates the amount of real struggle by which reforms have been forced 341 upon the state from below...
...This material can be useful even to those who do not accept the instrumentalists' premises...
...For the sake of discussion, they may be loosely subdivided into two groups...
...While Domhoff sets out to prove the latter, he in fact proves only the former...
...Power-structure research tends to avoid many of the muddled generalizations and sweeping assertions that obscure much structural Marxism...
...The power-structure researchers also differ from the orthodox Marxists in that their definition of "elite" (they differ greatly among themselves on the particulars of this definition') tends to be based on a combination of status characteristics, such as social-club membership and educational and ethnic background, as well as neo-Weberian common consumption and life-style characteristics...
...In light of the profound antistatism evident in so much of the Reagan administration, this view seems highly problematic...
...One need not accept any "inevitable" teleologies to assert that reforms such as the New Deal turned out to be highly functional for U.S...
...Since in our society many sorts of political involvement are effectively restricted to those who are not pressed by the requirements of making a living, it should not be surprising to find the elite overrepresented throughout the political spectrum, and not merely on the side of the status quo...
...but it does mean that we cannot explain the function of these regulations by reference to what individual capitalists think of them...
...Changes in the relations of production produce changes in the means of production...
...If taxes cannot be collected or if a fiscal crisis develops, it is the state that will have to cut back, its officials who will lose jobs and power...
...And the state, rather than simply refereeing the contest, is itself a third interested party...
...When the moderate wing "needs" to make co-optive concessions, he asserts, they move to ally with liberals...
...Given this, he maintains somewhat ambiguously that upper-class overrepresentation in positions of political power is a significant "indicator" of upper-class power, not that overrepresentation is power itself.' Ironically, while Domhoff has been criticized for his somewhat haphazard methodology even by his fellow instrumentalists,' he defends his stance by asserting that he is a level-headed empiricist using "the tried and true methods of sociological empiricism— operational definitions, network analysis, context analysis, disproportionate representation, and so forth...
...If, then, the instrumentalists' view of the state cannot facilitate an understanding of American politics, we must examine the more "structuralist" views...
...While both share the structural starting point of the autonomous state, they represent extremes within the structuralist camp—from the most deterministic (Poulantzas) to the least (Block...
...He notes, in anticipation of Skocpol's criticism, that during its most reactionary period (the late 1930s), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) was dominated by DuPont interests...
...This aggregate response constitutes an effective veto over state policies that are interpreted as "bad for business...
...Up to this point, Block is postulating a state that (as in Poulantzas' model) can intervene on behalf of "a more general rationality...
...It is, therefore, the task of these theorists to demonstrate that the welfare-state reforms of post-New Deal America and Western Europe have not only served the long-run interests of capital but were instigated for that very purpose by the elite or, at least, by a farsighted vanguard of that elite...
...G. William Domhoff, "Provincial in Paris: Finding 345 the French Council on Foreign Relations, Social Policy, March—April 1981...
...This view is problematic on two important counts...
...Skocpol, "Political Response...
...Jones's brutal 338 oppression than to fight "social conditions prevalent under late capitalism...
...But it would be a gross misreading of history to assert that Domhoff's selfconscious "higher circles" ever perceived the governnients of William Marcy Tweed or James Michael Curley, for example, as being in their interests...
...Ironically, while Poulantzas can accept the fact of division within the capitalist class, he postulates the state as a unified whole that acts in a unified manner...
...What follows, then, is a review of the major trends in recent neo-Marxist discussions of the state in advanced capitalism...
...Strength of the Instrumentalist Argument DESPITE THESE PROBLEMS, there are a number of appealing aspects to the instrumentalist argument as exemplified by Domhoff's work...
...He describes the tendency of capital to prevail without resorting to hypo344 thetical "real" interests (knowable only by astute social scientists) or to any mumbo-jumbo about structure...
...Domhoff also describes the mechanisms through which elites circulate and the social practices by which new members are initiated into the elite's world view...
...Is social democracy the highest form (and hence the "last stage") of capitalism...
...Both these groups address similar issues...
...By disproving the existence of equal representation in the U.S., instrumentalists have won a victory over a straw man...
...Insurgent Sociologist 4, no...
...Capitalism, for all its profound current difficulties, has outlived the Marxist predictions of its demise...
...Domhoff is so wedded to the notion of a selfconscious ruling class that he recently responded to criticism by asserting...
...5-22...
...12 Although there is some confusion on this point in Domhoff's work, in the Higher Circles (New York: Random House, 1970) he is clearly describing an elite status group as distinct from all capitalists, whereas in his later works he uses the notion of "elites" and "ruling class" almost interchangeably...
...But this does not lead to socialism because the same need for economic stability that forces the state to mediate on behalf of labor during a crisis will also force it to structure its intervention so as to appease capital as soon as the workers have left the streets and the crisis has passed...
...23 Ibid., p.26...
...However, to call Poulantzas' notion of the state "autonomous" is quite misleading...
...The power-structure theorists have consciously set out to challenge the pluralists on the latters' turf, examining the ways in which concrete decisions are made rather than the structural conditions that keep some issues from being raised.' Their task is to show exactly where and how a cohesive elite comes to dominate political decision-making...
...Much power-structure research was inspired and in many cases directly undertaken by groups associated with the New Left...
...Indeed, that some of America's wealthiest people share summer retreats with conservative political leaders, that nonelected policy councils dominated by big business continue to have high-level input into foreignpolicy decisions, and that 25 percent of our cabinet members in the 20th century have been listed in the Social Register—all these are significant observations...
...Therefore, the state will intervene to restore economic stability, if necessary, at the expense of capital...
...Yet in the history of urban American politics, this often has happened...
...Fred Block, "The Ruling Class Does Not Rule," Socialist Revolution 33 (1977), p. 23...
...State managers can make all kinds of mistakes, including excessive concessions to the working class...
...For an analysis of various definitions of the term "elite," see Harold Kerbo and Richard Della Fava, "The Empirical Side of the Power Elite Debate," Sociological Quarterly 20, no...
...Control of the state apparatus is maintained, nevertheless, through the formal and informal ties of the upper class to the state...
...Hence, for Domhoff, a professor who is both 339 a millionaire's brother and a millionaire's son, remains a member of the elite, rather than becoming merely another wage slave...
...Hence he is defining his "Higher Circles" as those people who belong to certain clubs, are listed in the Social Register, attend specific prep schools, or have both a father who was a millionaire entrepreneur or a high-level executive or lawyer and appropriate educational credentials...
...and the resulting research systematically confuses function and intent...
...Either capital or labor (even movements of poor people outside the mainstream economy) can disrupt the economy...
...Domhoff recently complained that critics and friends alike have tended to trivialize certain aspects of his work, most notably the fascinating description of social clubs in The Bohemian Grove and Other Resorts (Harper & Row, 1974...
...As might be expected, this research is sometimes crude and generally "action-oriented...
...see also Richard Zweigenhaft, "Who Represents America...
...Following John Mollenkopf and Theda Skocpol,' I shall describe the writers I consider "instrumentalists" or "structuralists," with the "structuralists" further divided between the functionalist approach of the late Nicos Poulantzas and the class-struggle approach in the recent work of Fred Block...
...This much of his analysis I find quite appealing...
...When they wish to reject the state's further growth, they "sit silently" while the ultraconservative wing, generally a secondary sector, leads the opposition...
...Several pluralist theorists, in refuting elite domination of American politics, are careful to point out that they by no means suppose that power is distributed equally...
...This "decisionist" view of power, emphasizing the ability of actors to effect political decisions, is best exemplified in Robert Dahl, Who Governs...
...Consider the fact that the late Arthur Bloomingdale received more notoriety for his sexual exploits than he ever got for his economic or political influence...
...What structural factors reduce the likelihood of state managers turning against the dominant class...
...As Marxist writers shift their attention from the question of how revolutions come about to that of why capitalist societies endure, the structure, history, and current problems of the welfare state take on a new importance...
...But who would be surprised by the fact that the wealthiest members of society are disproportionately represented in positions of power...
...Capital, however, can disrupt the economy far more easily than labor...
...Similarly, even though the reforms of the Great Society were clearly not intended to challenge the economic order, it is also clear that a significant sector of American capital perceived these reforms as threatening...
...While one may question the significance of the details of his anthropology, he certainly grounds his notions about class cohesion in demonstrable instances of mutual association...
...For example, one need not accept that an elite consciously "dominates" the state apparatus in order to appreciate the importance of policy councils, industry groups, and even social clubs...
...Following Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire, he also wants to explain division within the capitalist class...
...Even were one to prove that the state was staffed exclusively by those on the payroll of the corporate elite, it does not follow that they would rule in the interests of the elite...
...This "diminishes the capacity of workers to win wage gains...
...He blames himself for paying too much attention to the anthropological exotica of the ruling class...
...Clearly, Domhoff assumes that the decision to delegate authority is a decision that capitalists are able to make...
...This does not necessarily mean that we were wrong in our original assumption...
...Many of these efforts were successful but, significantly, many were not...
...Also Ted George Goertzel, Political Sociology (New York: Rand McNally, 1976...
...3 (1975...
...From Domhoff's point of view the question of how the ruling class might lose political battles and be forced into arrangements that turn out to help it in the long run cannot even come up...
...Thus the state in the modern world is in a uniquely vulnerable position: if the economic sector fails, it is the government, not generally the economic system, that will fall...
...Indeed, Poulantzas goes on to assert that under the modern capitalist system the state is likely to function best when capitalists are not directly involved...
...they hold the power to decide whether or not they will "trust" someone else...
...He still needs to explain what he perceives as the dominance of capital...
...State bureaucrats "unlike the individual capitalist . . . do not have to operate on the narrow basis of a profit maximizing rationality...
...The political machines were not, to be sure, any real threat to capitalism...
...For them, classes are not only national entities cut off from local roots, but also local elites with locatable needs and regional interests...
...Is incremental reform necessary and progressive, or does it merely rationalize the system that must be smashed by a vanguard party of some sort...
...Unlike Poulantzas, he recognizes that these same capitalists are under constant pressure from workers who have their own goals...
...Kerbo and Della Fava, "The Empirical Side...
...9 and 23...
...On the other hand, the first-generation entrepreneur, raised in poverty, who has no elite trappings and few elite associates, is not a member of the elite, regardless of how large a share of the means of production he may own (although he can later buy his children a place within the elite...
...It is very difficult for labor to disrupt the system since this requires putting thousands of workers out on the streets and keeping up a sustained pressure...
...they merely shift investment from productive, job-creating, stability-producing areas to savings and luxuries: Krugerrands, paintings, or rare wines...
...Here again, where a split in the ruling class becomes obvious, it is always between a forwardlooking sector that understands the "needs" of the future, and a backward-looking sector that is doomed by the "inevitable" progress of history...
...Block starts from the idea that modern capitalism consists of a division of labor between the rulers and the accumulators...
...In his reading of Marx, it is the structure of capitalist society and its culture that makes the state an executive committee of the bourgeoisie, not the decisions or actions of individuals...
...It is rather to question whether a vanguard of capitalists actually saw it that way at the time...
...Given the expanding role of the state in capitalist societies (not to mention the overwhelming and often terrifying role of the state in noncapitalist societies), we can hardly afford to underestimate the state's independence or to conceive of it as a reflection of anything...
...is seen as evidence that labor must have been somehow co-opted by class-conscious capitalists...
...The instrumentalists' method is basically to tease out the workings of this "ruling class...
...As Skocpol points out, one might as well assert that the Communist Manifesto was in the interests of capitalism since at the time he wrote it, Marx was being "sponsored" by the son of a wealthy capitalist, one Friedrich Engels...
...While he denies that short-sighted capitalists understand their own long-run interests, he gives a remarkable crystal ball to short-sighted bureaucrats...
...citizens...
...Class struggle is also, Block maintains, functional for capital in that every workers' victory forces capital to improve methods of production and control...
...How is one to know when one places pressure on the state whether one is creating the groundwork for revolution or merely allowing the state to mediate social contradictions...
...Since the capitalist state was created by capitalists, the state's structural interests simply are the interests of capitalism, whether or not contemporary capitalists and contemporary bureaucrats realize the identity...
...This is true for all capitalist states, but the veto works best in peripheral ones from which investors can easily shift their assets to other countries (witness Chile under Allende...
...This approach has recently been criticized on historical grounds by Theda Skocpol...
...All capital needs to do is to refuse to invest...
...0 Nicos Poulantzas, "The Problem of the Capitalist State," New Left Review 58 (Nov.—Dec...
...In this respect they draw extensively, if not always faithfully, on such non-Marxist American sociologists as C. Wright Mills, Floyd Hunter, and Digby Batzell, as well as on Marxist sources...
...Domhoff, "Provincial in Paris...
...Hence the question is reversed...
...The common starting point for this loose grouping of writers is the refutation of pluralist theories of politics...
...for, like all holy texts, Marx bears a variety of interpretations...
...State bureaucrats must transcend the short-sighted interests of individual capitalists 342 in favor of the general interests of capitalism...
...However, his work differs from Mills's precisely in that he maintains he has "grounded the power elite in a social class...
...These are not at all the same thing...
...New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961...
...For example, the mere absence of a socialist labor movement in the contemporary U.S...
...It also humanizes and at the same time rationalizes and reinforces capitalist domination...
...More generally, however, the refusal to invest does not mean that the capitalists will themselves suffer from the resulting economic stagnation...
...Further, while arguing that the state will endeavor to restore business confidence, Block denies Poulantzas' claim that the state always does what is "necessary" toward this end: This pattern is not a smoothly working functional process always producing the same result [Block writes...
...Power for Poulantzas is the "capacity of a social class to realize its specific objective interest...
...However, it does not follow that either Domhoff's "elite" or the greater part of Radosh's "capitalists" realized this at the time...
...Poulantzas' emphasis on objective structures implies an actorless notion of power and an ahistorical notion of the state...
...The central difference between Domhoff and the pluralists is that while they share a method, they tend to look for evidence in different places...
...But this flair for detail would be universally applauded were he investigating the Kikuyu or the contemporary urban "underclass...
...Divisions within the upper classes are often explained in teleological terms...
...Hence Poulantzas is able to explain what happens in those situations where state intervention in the economy is needed to accomplish things that the nature of the competitive market prevents capitalists from accomplishing for themselves...
...If wages go up, capitalists have to develop more capital-intensive technology...
...First, power-structure research has tended to reduce class relations to those of individuals...
...3) The second group contains such power-structure researchers as G. William Domhoff...
...1979), p. 67...
...These reforms, they maintain, not only "saved" capitalism but were instituted by self-interested capitalists...
...The research question then becomes "when" and "how...
...Nevertheless, he perceives a split between a "moderately conservative wing" of the American ruling class, represented by the Business Roundtable and the Conference for Economic Development, and an ultraconservative wing represented by the NAM...
...The view that credits too much agency to individual actors is, he argues, a non-Marxist view...
...It is merely the aggregate of the individual capitalist responses to what is perceived to be a poor climate for investment...
...The model here is of a collection of individual decision-makers, not of a class in the Marxian sense...
...Ronald Radosh, "The Myth of the New Deal," in Radosh and Rothbard, eds., A New Leviathan (New York: Dutton, 1972...
...capitalism...
...By thus restricting himself (primarily) to the American case, he is able to avoid the all too common error of imposing European theoretical notions on American reality...
...Instrumentalist researchers credit capitalists with being incredibly longsighted (could they have anticipated World War II or the position of labor in the prosperous 1950s...
...But he has enough of a sense of history to want to leave room for struggles whose outcomes are not known in advance...
...This means that direct participation of capitalists in the state, while possible, is not at all necessary for capitalist control of the state: this is only one possible arrangement and, moreover, a "chance and contingent one...
...Still other analysts have pointed to the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte as evidence that Marx himself, when not committed to the angry polemics of the Manifesto, saw the state as something more than an executive committee...
...Witness the glee they are currently bringing to the job of dismantling them...
...While these are extremely diverse, I will follow Skocpol's analysis and describe two distinct trends within the structuralist argument: what Skocpol terms "political functionalism," best exemplified by the early works of Nicos Poulantzas, and the "class struggle" position best seen in the recent works of Fred Block...
...Both have, not surprisingly, generally found what they were looking for...
...All instrumentalists seek to demonstrate the continuing tendency of the upper class to dominate the state apparatus, while conceding that in "normal times" this class may be somewhat disunited and its members at cross purposes...
...Popular culture frequently portrays the rich as frivolous remnants of a dying class or as "eccentric" millionaires...
...This has not led to the progressive "immiseration" of the masses (at least in the industrialized nations)—and while capitalist societies may have changed greatly since Marx's day, reform, not revolution, has been the primary force in that transformation...
...See, e.g., David Riesman's classic statement on "Veto Groups" in The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961...
...By whom...
...Further, as both Block and Poulantzas have pointed out, the instrumentalists have tended to reduce the whole relationship of state and economy to that of capitalists and bureaucrats...
...In the long run, all nonrevolutionary change seems to be functional for the owning class...
...Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London:Verso, 1973), pp...
...By focusing entirely on upper-class concessions rather than workingclass victories, Domhoff underestimates the power to force changes, or at least to disrupt the system, that labor and other interest groups may exert, particularly in times of economic and social upheaval...
...It also has some scholarly merit...
...At the very moment when the industrialized West faces something akin to those "crises of capitalism" that Marxists have talked about for so long, almost everyone is finally admitting the obvious...
...G. William Domhoff, Bohemian Grove and Other Resorts (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), and Domhoff, The Powers That Be...
...Second, the instrumentalists have tended to accept a highly deterministic longrun view of history...
...Political Functionalism: A Relatively Autonomous State THE LATE NICOS POULANTZAS, whose debate with Ralph Miliband was the starting point for much of the instrumentalist vs...
...How can we change the status quo...
...It must view these interconnections afresh in light of the dynamic nature of capitalism as it is today...
...Poulantzas criticizes Miliband (he could have made an even stronger case against Domhoff) for not seeing classes as "objective structures and their relations as an objective system of regular connections, a structure and a system whose agents, men, are in the words of Marx 'bearers' of it...
...It is criticized in Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London and New York: Macmillan, 1974), as a "one-dimensional view of power...
...The notion of the state as the "executive committee" of the bourgeoisie has been interpreted to mean both that members of the bourgeoisie must participate directly in the governance of the state—and also that they need not do so because the state by its nature "functions" as an arm of the proprietary class...
...They tell us a great deal about the real distribution of power in America...
...Although he never makes the distinction precise, he seems concerned with the social cohesion of the elite at times, while at other times exploring the political influence of capitalists (not necessarily elite members by his own criteria...
...Domhoff and others have discovered a great deal about upper-class definition, cohesion, and crystallization...
...Domhoff never documents how many graduates of elite prep schools went on to become SDS activists or Marxist professors...
...A Fully Autonomous State FRED BLOCK-WHILE ACKNOWLEDGING the contributions both of the instrumentalists and of Poulantzas—attempts to come up with a theory of the state capable of explaining class domination without reducing the state to a permanent conspiracy or a wholly determined structure...
...In light of these facts, it is not surprising that "theories of the state" now are the major growth industry in Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship...
...This second group has concerned itself with teasing out elite influences on the governmental process as well as documenting class cohesion among the elites, something that more orthodox Marxists take for granted...
...Rather than speak of "the state" in general terms, as if all capitalist states were the same, Domhoff deals specifically with certain agencies of the American government and describes how they are influenced by the specific needs of specific members of the elite...
...This demonstrates a view of historical causation that is mainly a matter of faith...
...Hence the state may enforce necessary concessions, engage in long-term planning, and defend the interests of capitalism over those of particular capitalists...
...The first consists of the historians of "corporate liberalism," notably James Weinstein and Ronald Radosh, who are concerned with tracing the evolution of the "corporate capitalist state" as a structure for mediating the contradictions of capitalism...
...104 and 120...
...His formulation is based more upon its own internal logic than upon any concrete history...
...It follows that not all capitalists are elite members, nor are all elite members capitalists...
...It ignores the possibility of outcomes that are neither desirable for capital nor revolutionary...
...Perhaps he feels that to abandon this notion would place him outside the Marxian tradition...
...But this surely contradicts what we know of the history of state intervention in the economy...
...2" Poulantzas, "Problem of the Capitalist State," p. 73...
...There is, however, nothing trivial about his findings...
...For while he grants autonomy from class domination, he nevertheless paints a picture of a state utterly determined by structural imperatives, where all outcomes other than "revolution" are entirely predictable...
...Unequal distribution of political resources is the very cornerstone of the pluralist argument that Domhoff is supposedly trying to refute...
...Instrumentalism "INSTRUMENTAL" VIEWS are those that tend to describe the state as the instrument of a specific social class...
...Normally, this capital veto cannot be matched by labor...
...Rather than presume a community of "real interests" based solely on class position, Domhoff attributes collective interests only to groups where a collective identity can be clearly demonstrated...
...This requires no conspiracy...
...Radosh, Weinstein, and others describe the antistatist elements in American business during the New Deal and since as the smaller, more competitive sectors of American capital...
...Like Poulantzas, Block sees capitalists as 343 concerned primarily with short-term profits...
...The real power of unionized civil service workers to shape policy and even bring the state to a point of fiscal crisis (as in New York City in 1975) cannot be explained by the instrumentalists' approach—for it is a strange "tool" that starts to exact its own demands of the user...
Vol. 30 • July 1983 • No. 3
