Capital, fracciones de capital y Estado. Análisis ‘neomarxista’ del Estado sudafricano

Simon Clarke; Edith González Cruz; Panagiotis Doulos

doi:10.32399/ICSYH.bvbuap.2954-4300.2025.6.12.841

Authors

Simon Clarke University of Warwick
Edith González Cruz Instituto de Investigaciones Histórico-Sociales, Universidad Veracruzana https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6910-8349
Panagiotis Doulos Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades “Alfonso Vélez Pliego”, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9614-5129

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32399/ICSYH.bvbuap.2954-4300.2025.6.12.841

Keywords:

Poulantzas, progressivism, hegemony, overpoliticisation, class struggle

Abstract

This paper examines what has been called the ‘neo-Marxist’ or, more unkindly, the ‘vulgar Poulantzian’, approach to the state. The typical feature of this approach is a formulation of the relation between capital and the state in terms of the struggle between ‘fractions of capital’ to establish the position of ‘hegemonic fraction’ within the ‘power bloc’. The state then represents the unity of capital in relation to the proletariat and the dominance of the hegemonic fraction in relation to the other fractions of capital. Research which is guided by this view of the state tends, therefore, to examine state activity in relation to the policies proposed by various political parties and pressure groups which are said to be the ‘representatives’ of particular fractions of capital. This paper aims to develop a critique of this ‘fractionalist’ approach to the state through a critique of its conceptions of class, of class fractions and of the state. It is argued that the ‘fractionalist’ approach is ‘overpoliticised’ in seeing the state as condensation of the social, at the same time as being ‘economistic’ in directly identifying the state with capital.

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