Class Division and Social Transformation

Abstract

The preceding chapter raises a cluster of different issues, some of which, although I hope they will prompt the reader’s interest, I shall have no space to discuss in any detail in this book. There are three themes raised thus far upon which I want to focus particular attention, however. One is that of the significance of class analysis for the study of the industrially advanced societies today. Developments have not followed the lines Marx anticipated. But should we therefore declare his ideas to be no longer of any importance for analysing contemporary societies — as the theorists of industrial society are prone to claim? This question will be my main concern in the present chapter. The second theme concerns the nature of the state. According to the theory of industrial society, and according to liberal political theory more generally, the state is arbiter of the interests of the community in general. In Marx’s view, by contrast, as Miliband makes clear, the state is a ‘capitalist state’: that is to say, the state is in some sense (which, as we will see, needs elucidation) an expression of class rule, reflecting an asymmetry of class interests.