This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the origins, nature, development and transformation of the state, examining the class basis of politics and the state in different societal settings.  In the Introduction to the volume Professor Berberoglu stresses the centrality of class and class relations in explaining political power and the role of the state in class societies.

Chapter 1 presents a critical analysis of the major mainstream theories of politics and the state -- pluralism and elite theory and their variants -- and Chapter 2 provides a survey of classical and contemporary Marxist theories of the state. In Chapter 3 the origins and development of the state is outlined and the relationship between the base and the superstructure is discussed in explaining the nature of the state, its class basis and contradictions in formations with different modes of production. Chapter 4 examines the nature and dynamics of the capitalist state emerging out of feudalism, and traces its development in Europe and the United States from the 18^th century to the present, and in Chapter 5 discussion and data are presented on the role of the advanced capitalist state in the world political economy at the current monopoly stage of capitalism. Chapter 6 provides an analysis of the nature and role of the state in the less-developed periphery, explicating the neo-colonial and national state-capitalist variants of the capitalist state. Chapter 7 examines the nature of the socialist state in both theory and practice, and focuses on the experiences of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China as the two classic cases of states that have historically embarked on the socialist path following a successful socialist revolution. The book concludes with a discussion on the relationship between class, state and power on a world scale and attempts to explain the politics of change as the outcome of social transformation effected through control of the state.

This book provides a concise, yet comprehensive, analysis of the role of politics and the state within the world-historical process and promises to make an invaluable contribution to political sociology and to related disciplines devoted to the study of the state.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction

1.   Theories of the State:  Pluralism and Elite Theory

2.   Marxist Theories of the State

3.   The Origins and Development of the State

4.   The Capitalist State:  Its Nature and Contradictions  

5.   The Crisis of the Advance Capitlaist State   

6.   The State in the Third World  

7.   The Socialist State

8.   Conclusion: Class, State, and Power--The Politics of Change

References

About the Author

Index  

Publication date:  1990

ISBN:  0-930390-09-1 (cloth)

0-930390-08-3 (paper)

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