Description
Book SynopsisThe spectacular growth in the 1970s and 1980s of the Marxist literature on politics and the state in capitalist society was hailed at the time as cumulative proof of Marxism's success in producing an effective theory of the political superstructure. More generally, it was seen as confirmation of the health and vigor of Marxist theory. Axel van den Berg questions both of these claims. Through comprehensive analysis of Marxist thought on bourgeois politics and the state, from that produced by Marx himself on, van den Berg radically challenges the viability of a distinctly Marxist theory of the state and of recent Marxist theorizing in general.
In an exhaustive review of the literature, van den Berg shows that neo-Marxist theories are, for the most part, not empirically testable. To the extent that it is possible to draw any empirical implications from these theories at all, such implications are virtually indistinguishable from those of bourgeois theories. Van den Berg proceed
Trade Review
"This work is brilliant in its polemical courage, its originality, and its detailed and revealing examination of texts. Van den Berg demonstrates that postwar Marxist political theory and sociology is not only vague and contradictory but that it actually makes critical concessions to the 'bourgeois thought' it claims to surpass. Appearing in the midst of a far-reaching reconsideration of the Marxism project in Europe, this volume crystallizes these issues for North American social science..." - Jeffrey Alexander, University of California, Los Angeles. "Van Den Berg has made a major contribution to the long overdue relegation of Marxism to the museum of nineteenth century ideological antiquities." - Dennis Wrong, Contemporary Sociology.
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1: Marx and Engels on the State and Politics; 2: Marxism and Reformism; 3: The State as the Instrument of the Capitalist Class; 4: Structural Functionalism Revisited (1): Structuralism; 5: Structural Functionalism Revisited (2): Accumulation versus Legitimation; 6: The State and the Class Struggle: Dynamics Restored?; 7: Conclusion: From the Marxist Theory of the State to the State of Marxist Theory
