The State and the Economy: Some Theoretical Problems

Abstract

The relation between the state and the economy is the central issue for all who try to understand the upheavals of the past decade and a half. Even the most academic economic theorist, building mathematical models on monetarist assumptions, has it as a central problem (at least implicitly). Marxists address the problem without Marx himself having formulated a concept of the relation. His writings on the capitalist economy and on the state are, on the whole, separate. In Capital and Theories of Surplus Value we have the basic elements of the economy and economic ideologies but the references to the role of the state, however suggestive, do not constitute a concept of the state--a political economy in the strong sense. And writings such as The Eighteenth Brumaire which take the state as their object say almost nothing directly about the economy.