Two Accounts of the Class-State Relationship

State as executive committee of the dominant class

From the writings of Marx, two streams or accounts of class-state relationship emerge: (i) Communist manifesto’s executive committee view and (ii) Eighteenth Brumaire’s relative autonomy view. The first conceives the state as dependent on society/class relations and the second with a degree of autonomy from classes in society. The first view has been further developed and explained in the writings of Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and Lenin’s The State and Revolution. Poulantzas and Althusser, to account for the role and functions of the State in a contemporary capitalist economy, have used the second view. In fact, it is said that given the relative autonomy view of the State, it can be thought of as a possible arena of struggle, which can help bring change. If the state is relatively autonomous there can be convergence of forces to take it over. Eduard Bernstein has used this conception before Poulantzas and Althusser to argue for a social democratic tradition.