The Narodniks, with their subjectivist sociology, could not understand the role of these class interests in determining the actions of the state. For the Narodniks, it comes down to only wrong ideas in the heads of state officials and the intelligentsia that have wandered off from the natural path of development. Lenin says that, for the Narodniks,
“If the state assists the development of capitalism it is not at all because the bourgeoisie possess material force enabling them to “send” the people “to work” and bend policy in their own will. Nothing of the sort! It is simply that the Vernadskys, the Chicherins, the Mendeleyevs and other professors hold wrong theories about a “fatal” order, and the state “takes heed” of them.” (p 354)
Lenin quotes a passage from the Narodnik which illustrates this failure to understand the class nature of the state. The same approach is taken by modern-day statists, be they social-democrats, socialists or even those that call themselves revolutionaries.
“... cannot, finally, the negative aspects of the advancing order be softened, somehow altered or the period of its domination shortened? Is the state really something so inert, involuntary and helpless that it cannot influence its own destiny and change it; is it really something like a spinning-top, released by providence, that moves only along a definite road, only for a certain time, and performs a certain number of revolutions, or like an organism of very limited will-power; is it really directed by something resembling a huge iron wheel which crushes every audacious person who dares to seek the nearest roads to human happiness?!” (p 354)
But, of course, the question is never cannot the state act? It always can and always does. The question is in whose interests will it, and does it act? As a class state, it acts in the interests of the ruling class. Sometimes, it even does that by acting against the apparent, short-term interests of that class, in order to advance its long-term interests. Always, it acts in the interests of the dominant section of that class, as a whole, rather than in the interests of individual elements of that class. The actions of the state in relation to the Factory Acts were a case in point. The state acted in the interests of industrial capital as a whole, and particularly its dominant section, even as individual capitals sought to avoid or flout their responsibilities in that regard, as a consequence of competitive pressures upon them. As Engels points out, the state pursues such enforcement all the more willingly at the point that the large-scale producers dominate production, and who can easily absorb these costs. In fact, what these laws do is to favour the larger capitals, and, thereby, facilitate the process of concentration and centralisation.
“Being hostile to capitalism, the small producers constitute a transitory class that is closely connected with the bourgeoisie and for that reason is incapable of understanding that the large-scale capitalism it dislikes is not fortuitous, but is a direct product of the entire contemporary economic (and social, and political, and juridical) system arising out of the struggle of mutually opposite social forces. Only inability to understand this can lead to such absolute stupidity as that of appealing to the “state” as though the political system is not rooted in the economic, does not express it, does not serve it.” (p 354-5)
The small producer understands that the capitalist state is not inert but acts in the interests of big capital. Workers know that the capitalist state is not inert, but acts in the interests of capital in general, and of big capital and fictitious capital in particular. Periodically, the political regime falls into the hands of forces that attempt to modify the operation of the state. Conservative and reactionary governments, themselves representing the interests of small capitalists may, for example, introduce measures to that effect. Thatcher, for example, attempted such an agenda, in the 1980's, introducing a series of measures such as Enterprise Zones, aimed at the small business class from which she came. The growth of Euroscepticism in the Tory Party, in the late 80's, and during the 90's was part of this same trend, as is the coming to office of Boris Johnson. Similarly, progressive social-democratic governments have tried to move the lever further in the other direction. But, all of these simply represent nuance. They represent the phenomenal form of the underlying reality, by which the state acts in the interests of the dominant section of the ruling class. Its no wonder then that the state attempted to frustrate the attempts of the Tory government to implement its Brexit policy. Nor is it any surprise, at the other extreme, that the Chilean state overthrew the progressive social-democratic government of Allende.
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