1. The nature of bureaucratic power itself, that is, whether the official merely administers laws and decisions made by others, or himself affects the formulation and execution of such laws and decisions, presents some difficulties. But it seems reasonably clear that in practice the official does both, in varying degrees depending on circumstances.

2. Kocka, Jürgen, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847–1914 (Stuttgart, 1969)Google Scholar, concludes that while a large-scale private industry like Siemens became progressively more bureaucratic, economic considerations always hindered the consolidation of officials' rights on the same scale as in government.

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6. Malcolm, Neil, Soviet Political Scientists and American Politics (New York, 1984), 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The question of what Marx himself meant in this matter, at different times and in different contexts, can certainly be disputed. But his thought, with its emphasis on the economic factor as primary, leads logically to the Manifesto's compelling description of the state as the executive committee of the ruling class, and has been widely so understood.

7. Ibid., 25–28.

8. Hindess, Barry, “Marxism and Parliamentary Democracy,” in Marxism and Democracy, ed. Hunt, Alan (London, 1980), 40Google Scholar. Hunt brings together a useful group of articles by English Marxists. See also the two-part article by Gold, David A., Lo, Clarence H. Y., and Wright, Erik O., “Recent Developments in Marxist Theories of the Capitalist State,” Monthly Review 27 (10 1975): 29–43; (11 1975): 36–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This deals with Ralph Milliband, Nicos Poulantzas, Claus Offe, James O'Connor, Alan Wolfe, among others. Mention must also be made of influential theorists such as Jessop, Bob, The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods (New York and London, 1982)Google Scholar, and Poulantzas, Nicos, Fascism and Dictatorship (London, 1974)Google Scholar. Engelberg, Ernest, Probleme der Geschichtsmethodologie (Berlin, 1972)Google Scholar is based on an international colloquium held in 1970 in Berlin and deals with the relationship between theory and method as seen by Marxist German thinkers. I have not yet seen the book of the late Dorpalen, Andreas, German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach (Detroit, 1985).Google Scholar

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34. Blackbourne and Eley's stimulating study, The Peculiarities of German History, is obviously relevant here. I find myself in agreement with many of their arguments in this book, and certainly their rejection of a purely instrumentalist view of the state, —see Eley's careful analysis of differing theoretical views on state autonomy, 126–43. Blackbourne and Eley, however, are primarily interested in the putative failure of the German middle class to establish a more liberal state, while my focus has been on the bureaucracy as a profession. Their interest is in clarifying the position of the middle class in relation to the nobility, whereas I accept as given that there was a kind of coalition between middle class and nobility, and look rather to the position of the working class and lower middle class in relation to this coalition. So that our overall arguments, while I believe them congruent, are a little like parallel lines that never really meet, and it is impossible to do anything like justice to their valuable work in this article.

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