>
> Flashback to the 1970s!
>
> It looks like that Carrol is bringing us back to the old debates
> concerning strcuturalist versus instrumentalist
> views of the state: Poulantzas (who was a
> disciple of Althusser) versus, say, Ralph Milliband
> or, indeed, Domhoff. I, myself, think that I am inclined
> towards the take that Richard W. Miller took in his
> book, "Analyzing Marx", called for a synthesis of
> the structuralist and instrumentalist views of the state.
Before the financial crisis I would have been inclined to endorse a structuralist theory, and say that of course governments don't see themselves as servants of capital, it just happens to work out that way for reasons beyond normal individual comprehension. But it's been really fascinating to see the public discourse among the political class, which has framed the question explicitly in terms of what's necessary to "save capitalism."