Critical Evaluation of the Orthodox Marxian Theory

This in brief is the orthodox Marxian position on the role and nature of the State both in its oppressive form and after it being taken over by the proletariat. However, a variety of developments have brought this thesis into doubt. It is said that the State is neither exploitative in the capitalist economy nor did it wither away even when the proletarian revolution ushered. We may examine this doubt in brief as follows:

• The development of the positive and welfare view of the State within the liberal tradition has already accepted some of the critical inputs which Marxian theory highlights. Issues of equality, social provisions and employment have been, in fact, the basis of state policy in all capitalist economies. This has led to revision in the very operation of the state in the capitalist economies and the welfare state has emerged.
• In many countries, including developing countries like India, the State itself is the largest employer and also has a role in economic activities. In fact, in many capitalist countries, nationalization of means of production has taken place. This, in some way or the other, has mitigated the distinction between base and the superstructure; the State itself is producer.
• It is also said the basic Marxian thesis of class antagonism is misplaced. In capitalist economies, there are more than two classes and the operation of the economy instead of leading to sharpening of the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as Marx predicted, has resulted in broadening of the middle layer. Capitalist ownership has got diluted due to public ownership (pubic equity holding of companies), as Raymond Aron says, or shifting of power to a new managerial class (the entire affairs are managed by non-owner managers/board), as James Burnham says. Further, the proletariat has risen to the level of middle class due to economic prosperity. This, added with the welfare revisionism of the state in capitalist economy, has changed the nature and role of the State.
• It is also argued that even the State in the socialist countries existed and represented the same bureaucratic interest that Marx, Engels and Lenin decried so much. Milovan Djilas’s The New Class (1957) and R. A. Medvedev’s On Socialist Democracy (1975) amply demonstrated the bureaucratic nature of socialist states in Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries in the second half of the twentieth century. Djilas showed the emergence of the privileged class within the socialist countries and Medvedev argued the impossibility of the State withering away in Soviet Union due to emergence of an alienated statist class. Djilas, Medvedev and Stojanvic argued that the State in the socialist countries could not wither away, because of its degeneration into a bureaucratic socialist state.

Orthodox Marxian perspective on the State came in doubt not because of its misplaced analysis and understanding of the nature and role of the State but because of the protean character the State is taking in the liberal capitalist society. A new group of theorists sought to analyse this protean character by focusing more on the relative autonomy perspective hinted by Marx.