Part Four – Ch. 2

2. The Problem of Transformation.

a. The Strategic Implications of Irreducible Agency.

In his “critical observations” on Marx’ theory,1 Mills made several relevant points,2 some of which are very similar to those argued above. Most crucially, he emphasised that,

[.....] it must immediately be said that Marx’s major political expectation about advanced capitalist societies has collapsed: the central agency which he designates has not developed as expected; the role he expected that agency to enact has not been enacted. The trends supposed to facilitate the development and the role of the agency have not generally come off – and when they have occurred, episodically and in part, they have not led to the results expected.3

By way of conclusion he stated that while Marx’method “is a signal and lasting contribution to the best sociological ways of reflection and inquiry available”, his “generalmodel of society and history” is inadequate.4

For all the similarities, Mills nevertheless lacked the conceptions of agency and its interaction with social circumstances, and the complementarity between structural and historical analysis suggested in the present text; likewise, that of the structural determination of the state would have enabled him to grasp theways in which such determination and economy, politics and ideologyinteract, and within which limits. Mills was right to criticise the positing of the capitalist class as “the ruling class” for settling the question of state power by definition rather than argument; the point made in the present text that classes are not actors further emphasises that the exercise of state power by bearers or agents of capital cannot be taken for granted.5 Nor was Mills wrong when pointing to unions and “other forces that do countervail against the naked political and economic powers of property.”6 But thus focusing on the empirical “question of economic determinism and the problem of the relative weight of upper economic classes within the higher circles”, and seeing it solely in terms of the “control over men” based on property,7 he missed thestructurally determined conditions for the material reproduction of society limiting the possible and suggesting a conception of economic determination, “economic power” and the