It is often remarked that critical – and especially Marxist – state theory began to lose its central place in the study of comparative politics in the 1980s. Ironically, this shift occurred just as neoliberal policies were transforming the social form and spatial scales of the state, radically restructuring the practices of state economic intervention, and extending the capabilities of the coercive arms of the state. This volume addresses the ‘impoverishment of state theory’ over the last decades and insists on the continued salience of class analysis to the study of states. The book’s title, State Transformations, reflects several central themes in the comparative study of states: the neoliberal restructuring of capitalist states, the changing economic and political architecture of imperialism, and the prospects of a democratic transformation of capitalist states. The essays collected here on these themes are in honor and memory of Leo Panitch, whose influential body of work has shaped debates on the state, imperialism, and socialism over the past four decades.
Contributors are: Clyde W. Barrow, Caio Bugiato, Frank Deppe, Ruth Felder, Ana Garcia, Sam Gindin, Doug Henwood, Martijn Konings, Colin Leys, Sebnem Oguz, Bryan D. Palmer, Dennis Pilon, Larry Savage, Charles Smith, Michalis Spourdalakis and Hilary Wainwright
Greg Albo, PhD, Carleton University (1994), teaches Political Economy in the Department of Politics at York University. He has recently co-edited Divided Province: Ontario Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism (2018); Beyond Market Dystopia (2020); and Beyond Digital Capitalism (2021).
Stephen Maher, PhD, York University (2020) is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Ontario Tech University. He is assistant editor of the Socialist Register, and co-author with Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin of the second edition of The Socialist Challenge Today (2020).
Alan Zuege is an assistant editor of the Socialist Register and co-editor of the Socialist Register Classics book series with Haymarket Books. He has also co-edited Phases of Capitalist Development; Value and the World Economy Today; and The Globalization Decade.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction State TransformationsIntroduction: State Transformations Greg Albo, Stephen Maher and Alan Zuege
part 1 State Theory and Capitalist Democracy 1 From the Canadian State to the Making of Global Capitalism
Clyde W. Barrow
2 Beyond the Impasse of State Theory
Martijn Konings
part 2 Imperialist Restructuring and Global Capitalism 4 Globalization as Internationalization of Capital Understanding Imperialism and State Restructuring Sebnem Oguz
5 The State and Imperialism in International Relations Theory
Ana Garcia and Caio Bugiato
6 Bringing Class Back in The State, the ‘Pink Tide’, and the Case of Argentina Ruth Felder
part 3 From Neoliberalism to Political Crisis 7 The Rebirth of Nationalism and the Crisis of the European Union
Frank Deppe
8 The UK’s Organic Crisis
Colin Leys
9 The Coronacrisis A Body Blow to the Rotting American State Doug Henwood
10 The State, Trade Union Freedoms, and the Impasse of Working-Class Power in Canada
Charles Smith
part 4 Transforming Class Politics and the State 11 Transformative Agency from a Time of Revolt to a Time of Pandemic
Hilary Wainwright
12 Class Politics and Strategies for Party Building
Michalis Spourdalakis
13 Notes toward a Plausible Socialism
Sam Gindin
14 Between the State and the Streets A Study in Socialist Sobriety Bryan D. Palmer
This text will be of interest to researchers and students in political science, sociology, geography, democratic theory, and Canadian politics, and in particular to students of critical theories of the state.