Recent developments in the Third World have been marked by the increased interventions of states in their respective economies. These developments raise the problem of explaining the causes for, and the dynamics of, such interventions. In the dissertation, I seek to develop a theoretical framework for explaining the economic policies of Third World States (TWS). I first argue that the TWS is a variant of the modern state, but with its structure defined by its own unique constitutive social relations. As a modern state, the TWS seeks to maintain, what I have called, its position of relative sovereignty in society, viz, its claim to being the supreme-rule making institution in society, and its claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of force in society. But as these claims of the state are dependent on the size of, and the state's access to, the social surplus, the economic policies of states are best explained, I argue, by the TWS's need to ensure that these conditions are met. The Third World economy is constituted by different systems of production, and its dynamics is determined by their interaction. I show that this results in specific crises of production that limit the size of the social surplus. Another important determinant of state intervention is thus the political and economic conflicts generated by the unique structure of the Third World economy. I show the validity of the theoretical approach that I develop by using it to analyze and explain the agrarian policies of the Ethiopian state during the 1941-74 period. I explain the measures that the emergent modern state took during this period--measures that dissolved the pre-war tributary system of social production, and advanced both simple commodity and capitalist systems of production--not in terms of the voluntary modernizing projects of state leaders, but in terms of the imperatives that the state faced in establishing its position of relative sovereignty in society.

What does socialism mean? This word carries many implications and in this thesis I consider how the concept of socialism was constructed within the discourses of classical Marxian economic and social theory. Socialism is understood to refer both to a general theory of historical and economic development as well as a particular post capitalist political economic system. One of the chief aims of this thesis is to examine the relationship between these two different levels of meaning of the word socialism. The classical Marxian discourse I analyze has three important levels or aspects which are combined in various ways to produce complex, though ultimately reductive, understandings of socialism. These are discourses of economic determinism, relative autonomy, and class analysis. How these modes of thought serve as the basis for policy, historical analysis and the construction of socialism as a political economic system is the principle topic of this thesis. I develop this thesis by examining three "moments" in the classical tradition: the work of the latter Engels, the period of the Second International, and Russian Marxism. Engels' work provides a basis for what follows as he subtly articulates the discourses of determinism, relative autonomy and class to produce a teleological vision of socialism. Later writers reproduce the tension created by the simultaneous use of the discourses of determinism and relative autonomy. The Second International, chiefly represented here by Karl Kautsky, use this classical conception to produce particular notions of socialist policy which I argue ultimately rely on a teleological notion of historical development. Later the Russian Marxists both extend and challenge the teleology and determinism of classical Marxian theory as they think about the nature of stages and the revolutionary transformation of societies. However, they frame what is innovative in their work within the boundaries bequeathed by Engels. In the final portion of this thesis I examine the consequences of the threads of the classical discourse on the construction of early "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union.