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Media convergence, communications regulation 185

Marxist approaches
Marxism regards the prime function of the capitalist state as assisting the process
of capital accumulation. This then led to debates on the relationship between
politics and economics and the relative autonomy of states. In ‘orthodox’
Marxism the capitalist state is the superstructural form that corresponds to the
capitalist mode of production (the base) and so the state, and policy, serve to
reflect the class interests of the bourgeoisie and seek to sustain the capitalist
economic system. So-called Marxism–Leninism attacked the Second Interna-
tional proponents of ‘reformism’, who argued for the peaceful transition to
socialism through the electoral success of socialist parties and reform of the state
from within. Lenin advocated the overthrow of the state and its replacement by
workers’ councils. The failure of the Soviet system and other communist states to
sustain democratic involvement prompted efforts to rethink revolutionary change
and democratic rule (Hardt 1992). From the mid 1960s, with the consolidation
of welfare state systems in some Western liberal democracies and the apparent
quelling and incorporation of class-based opposition to capitalism, Western
Marxists showed renewed interest in explaining the forms and functions of the
capitalist state (Jessop 2008: 55). A second revival occurred from the late 1970s,
including efforts to examine the role of the state in sustaining relations of power
based on gender, race, sexuality and expanding the articulation of politics,
particularly through renewed attention to culture and identity. Feminists examined
the patriarchal ordering of the state, and rejected conventional demarcations of
public and private to trace social reproduction throughout, from education and
employment to the division of labour and sexual politics. This late 1970s revival
involved more theoretical currents and was more institutional in approach. It
also involved multifaceted critiques of the teleological role ascribed to the (male)
proletarian worker in revolutionary change to examine how power relations
were lived out across multiple forms of oppression and how radical politics
involving new social movements might be advanced (Laclau and Mouffe 1985).
In the earlier phase (from the 1960s) Marxist state theory advanced in two
main ways. Instrumentalist accounts such as Miliband (1973, 1977) stressed the
power of the capitalist class forged through close linkages between political elites
and economic leaders. The main alternative account was structural and func-
tionalist, proposing that the state produces policy in the interest of capitalism by
virtue of its role, rather than from the power of the capitalist class and its sup-
porting networks. In early phases, state policy is concentrated on establishing a
regulatory framework to support capital accumulation, in mature systems state
action encompasses the resources needed for growth and social reproduction,
including education. Debates on integrating agency and structure have con-
tinued since, but both main variants of Marxist state theory were regarded as
restricted and rigid as Marxism lost wider academic influence in the 1980s. In
policy analysis, Marxists tended towards ‘interest’ theories in which policies
reflected the interests of the dominant class. However, such accounts were