This collection of new essays re-examines and evaluates central themes in the work of Ralph Miliband, a leading contributor to Marxist political theory in twentieth century. It provides an essential reference point for research within the Marxist tradition, and a valuable resource for students on a range of courses in political and social theory.

This book explores the idea of social class in the liberal tradition. It collects classical and contemporary texts illustrating and examining the liberal origins of class analysis—often associated with Marxism but actually rooted in the work of liberal theorists. Liberal class analysis emphasizes the constitutive connection between state power and class position. Social Class and State Power documents the rich tradition of liberal class theory, its rediscovery in the twentieth century, and the possibilities it opens up for research in the new millenium.

In a work of considerable analytic elegance, Caglar Keyder provides the first genuinely radical text on the political economy of modern Turkey. Keyder describes how, with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the traditional Muslim bureaucratic class of the old regime attempted to create a new nation state and effect its transition to modernity. Yet by expelling the Christian bourgeoisie between 1914 and 1924 the bureaucracy initially controlled Turkey's integration into the world capitalist system. Within the framework of the literature of peripheral development, Keyder argues that, in contrast to the Latin American experience, the lack of a dominant landlord class and the continued existence of an independent peasantry had a formative influence on Turkey's political and economic development. Keyder explains how the simmering conflict between the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie was suppressed during the successful period of import-substituting industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, to erupt again, soon after the world economic crisis of 1973. He recounts the way in which the rapid industrialization and urbanization transformed Turkey's social structure and shows how the severe economic difficulties of the late 1970s sparked off latent conflicts and led to the spread of fascist violence, culminating in the military coup of 1980. The book concludes with a look at Turkey's prospects for economic development and social change.

The 1990s promise to be a period of rapid political change, as old political boundaries dissolve and new political forces emerge. These changes throw into question our understanding of capitalism and socialism, of the character of the nation state, and of the relationship between the economy and the state. However, these changes are only the culmination of developments which have been unfolding over the past two decades. This book includes a comprehensive introductory survey, which sets the contributions collected here within the context of the wider debate.

One of the major works of the new American Marxism, Wright's book draws a challenging new class map of the United States and other, comparable, advanced capitalist countries today. It also discusses the various classical theories of economic crisis in the West and their relevance to the current recession, and contrasts the way in which the major political problem of bureaucracy was confronted by two great antagonists - Weber and Lenin. A concluding essay brings together the practical lessons of these theoretical analyses, in an examination of the problems of left governments coming to power in capitalist states.

Tracing how the emergence of global capitalism gave rise to the Thirty Years' Crisis

The intricate practices of the elite and how they maintain their dominance. In his new book, Göran Therborn – author of the now standard comparative work on classical sociology and historical materialism, Science, Class and Society – looks at successive state structures in an arrestingly fresh perspective. Therborn uses the formal categories of modern system analysis – input mechanisms, processes of transformation, output flows – to advance a substantive Marxist analysis of state power and state apparatuses. His account of these is comparative in the most far-reaching historical sense: its object is nothing less than the construction of systematic typology of the differences between the feudal state, the capitalist state and the socialist state. Therborn ranges from the monarchies of mediaeval Europe through the bourgeois democracies of the west in the 20th century to the contemporary regimes in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. The book ends with a major analytic survey of the strategies of working class parties for socialism, from the Second International to the Comintern to Eurocommunism, that applies the structural findings of Therborn’s enquiry in the ‘Future as History’. Written with lucidity and economy, What Does the Ruling Class Do when it Rules? represents a remarkable sociological and political synthesis.

An evaluation of different theories of the nature of the state in capitalist democracies.

Loïc Wacquant is one of the most influential sociological theorists of the contemporary era with his research and writings resonating widely across the social sciences. This edited collection critically responds to Wacquant’s distinct approach to understanding the contemporary urban condition in advanced capitalist societies. It comprises chapters focused on Europe and North America from leading international scholars and new emergent voices, which chart new empirical, theoretical and methodological territory. Pivoting on the relationship between class, ethnicity and the state in the (re-)making of urban marginality, the volume takes stock of Wacquant’s body of work and assesses its value as a springboard for rethinking urban inequality in polarizing times. Heeding Wacquant’s call for constant theoretical critique and development in understanding dynamic urban relations and processes, the contributions challenge, develop and refine Wacquant’s framework, while also synthesizing it with other perspectives and bringing it into dialogue with new areas of inquiry. How can Wacquant’s work aid the empirical understanding of today’s complex urban inequalities? And how can empirical investigation and theoretical synthesis aid the development of Wacquant’s framework? The diverse contributors to the collection ask these, and other, searching questions – and Wacquant responds to this critique in the final chapter. This book will be of interest to scholars engaged in understanding the drivers, contexts, and potential responses to contemporary urban marginality.