When Marxists put forward a radical critique of instrumentalist views of the state, they usually do so to justify reformist socialist politics. When one argues that the ruling class is diffused, lacks class consciousness and political sophistication, it seems to follow that if socialists could gain control of the levers of the existing state, they would be able to use the state to effect the transition to socialism. The logic is impeccable - if the state is not inherently a tool of the ruling class, then it can be turned into a tool of the working class. This reformist view shares with instrumentalism a personalistic reductionism - either the ruling class controls the state personally and directly or it does not control it at all, in which case the state can be used for other purposes. Neither view recognises the structural mechanisms that make the state serve capitalist ends regardless of whether capitalists intervene directly and consciously. However, once these mechanisms are understood, it is possible to construct a critique of socialist reformism that is far more powerful than the critiques derived from the instrumentalist tradition.
Fred Block, 'The ruling class doesn't rule', p. 15.
