Marxist State Theory Introduction 4: Contemporary Debate — Poulantzas vs. Miliband, Is the State an Instrument or a Structure?
Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: April 20, 2026
Series Order: [1 — Marx and Engels's Theory of the Class State](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-01.md) | [2 — Lenin and the Smashing of the Bourgeois State](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-02.md) | [3 — Gramsci: Hegemony, Civil Society, and the War of Position](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-03.md) | 4 — The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate | [5 — The Character of the South Korean State (forthcoming)](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-05.md)
1. 1968–1969: The Revival of Marxist State Theory
After Lenin's The State and Revolution (1917), Marxist political science experienced half a century of stagnation. Stalinism reduced political science to a subfield of "scientific communism," while social democracy treated the state as a "neutral instrument" devoid of class character. It was two works published in quick succession in 1968 and 1969 that filled this void.
- Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (Pouvoir politique et classes sociales), 1968
- Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, 1969
These two works sparked a public debate carried out in two rounds on the pages of New Left Review. This was no mere academic dispute. How to analyze the bourgeois state is directly bound up with what strategy the working class must adopt.
2. Miliband's Instrumentalism: "The State Is an Instrument in the Hands of the Ruling Class"
Core Thesis
Miliband's position is known as instrumentalism. He empirically demonstrates why the capitalist state serves the interests of the ruling class. Rather than abstract structural analysis, he traces who actually runs the state.
Miliband identifies three pathways.
First, the homogeneity of social backgrounds. The class origins and educational backgrounds of state elites (ministers, senior bureaucrats, judges, military brass) closely resemble those of the capitalist class. The same schools, the same clubs, the same social networks. This homogeneity converges policy direction in a pro-capital direction without the need for conscious conspiracy.
Second, the organized pressure of capital. The capitalist class systematically influences state policy — individually, collectively, and through business associations and lobbying groups. Trade unions also exert influence, but capital's organizational capacity and resources overwhelm them.
Third, the objective power of capital. The state gravitates toward cooperation with capital because of the structural power capital wields. Faced with the threat of investment withdrawal, capital flight, and job losses, the state internalizes the pressure to maintain capital's "confidence." This is not a conspiracy but a structural pressure arising from the logic of capitalism itself.
Methodological Characteristics
Miliband's analysis is thoroughly empirical. He traces the composition of state elites in Britain, the United States, France, and West Germany with concrete evidence, presenting specific cases of collusion between capital and the state. He directly refutes the pluralist proposition (Dahl, the pluralists) that "the state is a neutral arbiter among competing interest groups."
3. Poulantzas's Structuralism: "The State Is the Condensation of the Class Structure"
Core Thesis
Poulantzas's position is a structuralist theory of the state. Building on Althusser's structural Marxism, he shifts the unit of Marxist analysis from individuals or elite groups to social structures.
Poulantzas's key point: whether members of the capitalist class directly occupy the state apparatus is not the decisive question. The capitalist state serves the interests of the capitalist class not because the ruling class "manipulates" the state, but because the very structure of the capitalist social formation compels the state to function that way.
From this follows his central concept: relative autonomy.
What Is Relative Autonomy?
In capitalist society, unlike feudal society, the economic and political spheres are formally separated. Whereas the lord directly extracts surplus in feudalism, under capitalism exploitation takes the form of a "free market contract," and politics and law appear as an autonomous sphere separate from the economy. This separation provides the material basis for the state's functional specificity — its relative autonomy.
The relative autonomy of the state takes concrete form in three functions.
| Function | Content |
|---|---|
| Capital-Unification Function | Derives and coordinates the common interests of the divided fractions of capital (industrial, financial, commercial, etc.) |
| Popular-Division Function | Conceals class domination, individualizes workers as "citizens" rather than as a class, and diffuses antagonisms |
| System-Maintenance Function | Provides the material and legal conditions that ensure the smooth functioning of the capitalist reproduction mechanism |
In conclusion, the state may act against the interests of an individual capitalist or a specific fraction of capital. Yet it structurally serves the interests of total capital (capital in general). This is the meaning of "relative" autonomy — neither fully free nor fully subordinate.
4. The Development of the Debate: Critiquing Each Other
Poulantzas's Critique of Miliband
Poulantzas charges Miliband with conducting the debate on the terrain of the pluralist adversaries. When the pluralist says "the state is a battlefield of diverse forces," Miliband replies "No, one class wins." But this response itself already accepts the pluralist problematic.
More fundamentally, Miliband tends to reduce the state and class to relations among individuals. Who attended which school, who plays golf with whom. This dissolves social relations into interpersonal interactions — a humanist error. Structures operate independently of individual intentions or backgrounds.
Miliband's Critique of Poulantzas
Miliband strikes back, calling Poulantzas's position structuralist abstractionism. Poulantzas's theory has no point of contact with historical reality. Can one say that the British Labour government and Pinochet's regime in Chile "structurally perform the same function"? To ignore the differences among the diverse forms of the bourgeois state — parliamentary democracy, fascism, Bonapartism — is not only a theoretical error but also politically produces an ultra-left deviation.
Poulantzas's Self-Correction
Through the debate, Poulantzas carried out a certain self-criticism of his early structuralism. In his later works, he redefines the state as follows:
“The state is the condensate of the relations of force between contending classes.”
This formulation is decisive. The state is neither a simple class instrument nor an automatic function of structure. The state is a field in which class struggle is internalized and condensed. The hegemony of the ruling class is contested within it; the resistance of the dominated classes is partially accommodated; and these relations of force determine the state's form and policy.
5. After the Debate: New Directions
The United States: O'Connor's Theory of Fiscal Crisis
James O'Connor sublates both instrumentalism and structuralism, focusing on the two contradictory functions of the state.
- Accumulation function: social investment and social consumption that support the private accumulation of capital
- Legitimation function: social expenditure that maintains social harmony and secures mass loyalty
The problem is that these two functions produce a structural contradiction. The fruits of accumulation are privately appropriated, but the costs are socialized (taxation). Welfare spending for legitimation continues to rise. Result: fiscal crisis. The capitalist state sinks into a chronic fiscal deficit, unable to perform its functions.
West Germany: Offe and Hirsch
Claus Offe analyzes the capitalist state as operating through selection mechanisms that systematically exclude anti-capitalist interests. The state does not directly enforce class domination — it reproduces capitalist logic by structurally excluding certain interests and selecting others as legitimate.
Joachim Hirsch goes further, attempting a materialist derivation of the state form from the reproduction process of capital. The state's fiscal crisis is a re-presentation of capital's reproduction crisis in the political sphere — economic crisis and political crisis are not separate events but different expressions of the same contradiction.
6. Significance and Limits of the Debate
Significance
The Poulantzas-Miliband debate deepened Marxist state theory in two directions.
First, the recognition that the state's class character is structurally reproduced, not merely a matter of the ruling class's conscious intentions or elite composition. Pro-capital policy does not necessarily require a capitalist's "order" — this insight leads today to the concepts of "structural power" and "investor confidence."
Second, the recognition that the state is not a simple class instrument but a battlefield where class relations of force are condensed. This insight allows the theory to accommodate contradictions and fissures within the state, as well as the possibility of partial victories for the dominated classes.
Limits
First, both sides of the debate insufficiently address the gender, racial, and colonial dimensions of the state. This is the source of the charge of class reductionism.
Second, structuralist state theory tends to underestimate the role of agency. If structure functions, where does transformation begin?
Third, Miliband's instrumentalism is empirically rich, but weak in explaining why such a structure persists. Does replacing the elite change the structure?
7. Implications for Today: How to View the South Korean State
This debate offers concrete analytical tools for Korean society.
The Milibandian question: To what extent is there class homogeneity between South Korea's state elites and capital elites? How does the SKY-educated network of bureaucratic, corporate, and political elites operate? What are the links between Samsung and Hyundai's lobbying and policy decisions?
The Poulantzian question: Does the South Korean state function in a pro-chaebol manner simply because it is an "instrument of the chaebol," or because of the structural logic of the social formation — an export-led developmental state? Would a progressive party in power not face the same structural pressures?
The late-Poulantzian question: What class relations of force are condensed within the South Korean state? Which demands of the working class have been partially accommodated by the state, and which have been systematically excluded?
These three questions are not mutually exclusive. In Part 5, we will apply these theoretical tools to debates on the South Korean developmental state, welfare state, and class state.
Summary of Key Concepts
| Concept | Theorist | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Instrumentalism | Miliband | State = tool manipulated by the ruling class; elite composition, lobbying, objective power of capital |
| Relative Autonomy | Poulantzas | State structurally serves the interests of total capital but is autonomous vis-à-vis individual capital fractions |
| Condensation of Relations of Force | Poulantzas (late) | State = battlefield in which class relations of force are internalized; domination is the outcome of struggle |
| Fiscal Crisis | O'Connor | Contradiction between accumulation function (private profit) and legitimation function (public cost) → structural fiscal deficit |
| Selection Mechanisms | Offe | State operates as a filter that structurally excludes anti-capitalist interests |
Next installment: Part 5 — The Character of the South Korean State: Developmental State, Welfare State, Class State — theories of the developmental state (Johnson, Amsden), the welfare state debate, and the application of Marxist state theory.