Sundays at 2:00-3:30pm ET from July 27th to September 28th, 2025
Register for the course by clicking HERE, and then hitting “Ask to join group.” A Gmail account or an email address connected to a Google account is recommended. (You may need to be logged in to a Google-associated email to register.)
This course will critically examine the relationship between state power and class interests. Rather than view the state as a mere instrument of capital, we will develop a sophisticated understanding of its indispensable role in reproducing the social relations of advanced capitalist countries. How does the state manage to organize what is often a fractious and internally divided capitalist class? What are some of the specific ways that the police and welfare agencies discipline the working class through coercive regulation of the labor market? How has half a century of capitalist globalization transformed the structure and function of nation-states around the world? What is behind the recent rise of authoritarian statism, deep-state machinations, and the increasingly frequent deployment of emergency powers? And given the immense power of the state, how might contemporary socialists apply the lessons of past struggles and go about confronting it?
We will explore these and other questions through engagement with a variety of theoretical and historical readings, the vast majority of which fall squarely in the Marxist tradition. Our discussion will largely be limited to highly developed capitalist states, with a particularly strong emphasis on the USA. Whereas the first half of the course will focus on the functions performed by specific state institutions, the second half will explore the many ways in which states themselves are currently transforming. Overall, this course will enable members to develop a greater appreciation of how political economy and politics are inextricably related.
Readings will be made freely available to participants.
1. Marxist State Theory: An Introduction
- Ralph Miliband, “Marx and the State” (1965)
- Ralph Miliband, “State Power and Class Interests” (1983)
- Leo Panitch, “The Impoverishment of State Theory”(1999)
- OPTIONAL: Ellen Meiksins Wood, “The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism” (1981)
2. Political Power, Production, and the Credit-Creation of Money
- Brett Scott, Cloud Money: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War For Our Wallets (2022)
- chapter 3: “The Giant in the Mountain”
- chapter 4: “Digital Chips”
- Ramaa Vasudevan, “The Janus Face of Public Debt” (2022)
- OPTIONAL: Robert Brenner, “Escalating Plunder”(2020)
3. Policing and the Carceral State
- Sydney Harring, Policing a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865-1915 (1983)
- Cedric Johnson, “Policing Capitalist Society” (2023)
4. Regulating the Poor
- Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1971)
- “Introduction”
- chapter 1: “Relief, Labor, and Civil Disorder: An Overview” (excerpt)
- Jamie Peck, “Regulation” (2001)
5. The Integral State and Institutional Marxism
- Stephen Maher, “The Making of the Integral State” (2022)
- OPTIONAL: Vivek Chibber, Capitalism and the State (2019)
6. Globalization and the State
- Clyde Barrow, “The Return of the State” (2016)
- Alvin Camba, “The Sino-centric Capital Export Regime: State-backed and Flexible Capital in the Philippines” (2020)
- OPTIONAL: William Robinson,“The Nation-State and the Transnational State” (2018)
7. Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Authoritarian Statism
- Nicos Poulantzas, “The Decline of Democracy: Authoritarian Statism” (1978)
- David Feldman, “Against the Global Police State” (2021)
8. States of Emergency
- Mark Neocleous, “Emergency? What Emergency?” (2008)
- Lee Jones, “From the Void to COVID: Explaining the Left’s Support for Pandemic Authoritarianism” (2024)
- OPTIONAL: Anton Jäger, “The Crisis of Coercion” (2025)
9. The Deep State
- Peter Dale Scott, The American Deep State: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy (2017)
- “Introduction: The Deep State in 2017”
- chapter 1: “The Doomsday Project, Deep Events, and the Shrinking of Democracy”
- chapter 2: “The Deep State, The Wall Street Overworld, and Big Oil”
- chapter 8: “Deep Power Takes its Toll on U.S. Presidents, 1961-1980”
- Daniel Boguslaw, The CIA’s Epstein Problem (2025)
- RECOMMENDED: The Full Evidence Epstein was a Spy, with Saagar Enjeti, Flagrant podcast (2025)
10. The State and the Transition to Socialism
- Ed Rooksby, “The Bolsheviks Did Not ‘Smash’ the Old State” (2019)
- Nicos Poulantzas, “Towards a Democratic Socialism” (1978)
- Stephen Maher and Rafael Khachaturian, “Socialist Strategy and the Capitalist Democratic State” (2021)