ABSTRACT
As the first step to construct an alternative theorisation of the developmental state beyond statism, two Marxist approaches to the capitalist state are identified. This chapter discusses one, more traditional, perspective, referred to as ‘class content analysis’, which finds the essence of the capitalist state in its function or role serving the interests of the capitalist class (instrumentalism) or helping maintain the capitalist mode of production structurally (structuralism). The chapter argues that ‘class content analysis’ fails to grasp the fact that the (modern) state is the political form of capitalist society and, as a result, fundamentally shares the mainstream (statist) framework in which the apparent dichotomy of state and market is either taken for granted or inadequately theorised in relation to the capitalist mode of production. On the basis of a critical appraisal of key premises of the Miliband-Poulantzas debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two authors who represented instrumentalism and structuralism, respectively, the chapter assesses how the instrumentalist and structuralist accounts are reflected in the discussions of the (Korean) developmental state in the works of Vivek Chibber, Paul Cammack and other Marxists. It is argued that the limitations of the traditional theoretical frameworks are reproduced and magnified in this more recent body of work.
