ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the existence of a class segment rooted in slavery set in motion a chain of events that makes the idea of state autonomy highly questionable for the United States. Disagreements in American social science about the importance of "who governs" did not begin in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the sudden arrival of European structural Marxism on the scene. Organizational theory portrays action as constrained by roles that have been institutionalized and routinized. The reason why class segments are relevant to the question of state autonomy is that there is every reason to believe that some class segments are organized enough to challenge independent state managers for domination of the state. The feudal states of medieval Europe were low in both despotic and infrastructural power. The fact that social democrats have formed governments in some postwar Western European states appears irrelevant to an argument about the United States.
