The Modern State

Abstract

There is one highly important set of changes occurring over the past century to which I have so far referred only in passing: the expanding role of the state in social life. The enlargement of the activities of the state can be documented in various ways. On the economic level, the state in the capitalist societies has come to play an increasingly direct role in supervising productive activity. In most such countries the state directly employs over 40 per cent of the economically active labour force, who work either within its own administrative apparatus or in nationalised industries. States have also attempted more and more to ‘intervene’ in economic activity by seeking to influence the supply of and demand for goods, engaging in economic planning, prices and incomes policies, and so on. But the state also intrudes into a variety of other aspects of social life: participating in the foundation and organisation of prisons, asylums, hospitals, and in the provision of that array of services included under the general rubric of ‘welfare’.