ABSTRACT
In most capitalist countries, the coercive apparatus constitutes a vast, sprawling and resourceful establishment, whose professional leaders are men of high status and great influence, inside the state system and in society. For businessmen belong, in economic and social terms, to the upper and middle classes—and it is from these classes that the members of the state elite are predominantly, not to say overwhelmingly, drawn. The power which top civil servants and other state administrators possess no doubt varies from country to country, from department to department, and from individual to individual. For the treatment of one part of the state—usually the government—as the state itself introduces a major element of confusion in the discussion of the nature and incidence of state power; and that confusion can have large political consequences. Much the same kind of business predominance over other economic groups is to be found in the financial and credit institutions of the state, and in the nationalised sector.
