[1] In the 1970s Western Marxism resumed the state derivation debate dominated by the works of Gramsci,[2] Althusser[3] and Poulantzas.
[4] In West Germany, however, as a result of the student movement’s political expectations of the first post-war social democratic-led government of Willy Brandt, an exclusive debate occurred, the Staatsableitungsdebatte.
[6] Given the lack of its social efficacy, the Staatsableitungsdebatte ceased to have an explanatory quality of its own to the end the 1970s when the majority of the German New Left except the Marxist Group either joined the emerging Green Party or entirely withdrew from the political arena.
[7] Rainer-Olaf Schultze has argued that the derivative-debate remains "mostly in the conceptual logical domain of the interpretation of the Marxist classics" and failed "to deliver the necessary mediation for the concrete analysis of the reality of capitalist states".
[8] Similarly, Frank Deppe suggests that the state-derivation debate 'was a typical example of a - largely detached from practice and finally only self-reflexive - "academic Marxism", especially focusing on the state - given the importance of civil society in the sense of Gramsci - involves a narrowing of the political concept".