ABSTRACT
The state today is not the state of a quarter-century ago. In the industrialized capitalist sphere a quarter-century ago the state did look a lot like its predecessor. The state in 1980 was entirely recognizable vis-à-vis the state of the late 1940s or 1950s. This raises the question of how states have been so fundamentally altered, and have altered themselves, why they have been altered, and the directions in which these alterations lead. By the same token, this transformation of the state raises the optimistic possibility of entirely different kinds of states in the near future: in fact, this book sprang partly from a conference entitled “Another State is Possible.” And yet it also puts the whole question of the state in play. What comprises the state? What is the history and geography of the state, its relevance, its social constitution? How might the state be altered? How might we conceive of the democratization of the state? What are the limits of mutability to the contemporary capitalist state? Is it too dramatic to think, as others have done, that the state might even be altered out of existence?
