ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Marxist perspective and views the state as operating on behalf of capital, albeit in a complex manner, but also attempts to demonstrate that structural changes in the state apparatus, brought about by the changing needs of capital, have had a corresponding effect on class relations within the state apparatus. The development of capitalism has seen not only the monopolisation of the private sector of the economy but also the expansion of state activities. State monopoly capitalism is therefore a product of the contradictions inherent in monopoly capitalism which draw the state directly into the circuit of capital. A combination of these demands and the political ascendancy of monopoly capital saw a transformation in the form of state power. relationship between expands the new middle class in local government, a class which has no real control over policy and orientation but whose function it is to devise and supervise the demanded increases in productivity.
