ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs a set of route maps to explore the terrain of state involvement in British society during the last forty years. It explores various explanations of the pattern of state intervention which has unfolded over the last four decades. The chapter reviews four sets of explanatory perspectives on the British state and its involvement in social and economic life. They are: reformist views of the state; the state and industrial society perspective; Marxist views of the state; and radical right views of the state. From the present viewpoint, state activities are best understood if the process of industrialization is understood. The modern state, especially in its interventionist activities in civil society, draws its authority and its legitimation from what is sometimes termed the logic of industrialism. The chapter presents systematically those contributions from Marxist scholarship which might help one understand the development of state social and economic intervention in modern Britain, and then discusses the postwar British state.
