Abstract

The title of this article, “The State at Dusk,” was adopted from the famous image of Minerva’s Owl in the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I chose it to capture the current mood of despair and foreboding about the state, both in its growing failure to protect individuals from the ravages of capital and in its malevolent capacity to destroy all life on earth. The threat of nuclear holocaust and the question of whether the welfare state has a future are now urgent topics of political debate. Notwithstanding a few significant victories, however, the so-called New Right has achieved nothing like total success in its war against public-financed health care, education, and civil liberties, to name only a few of its targets. Moreover, despite the obvious madness of the nuclear arms race and two terms under the most reactionary of all modern U. S. presidents, the planet survives. As darkness gathers around the late twentieth century state, its outline appears much the same as it was at the outset of the conservative attack a decade ago.