"the state" part two

My knowledge or awareness of politics or political philosophy is very much a work in construction and those with more experience and knowledge may well find my remarks amateurish; nonetheless, having said that....

Having just put down Professor Levine's nice book defending socialism, I realized that my earlier remarks about the state worked primarily with a rather idealistic (if traditional) conception of the state. Within that tradition a failure by the state to deliver basic services (e.g., health care) is seen as a fundamental failure that merits complaint, or, even,
replacement of one government by another.

There is, however, another view of the state which predicts such failures, and expects them. On that view (I suppose a Marxist one), the state is always the servant of the ruling class.
(A similar result, I gather, would be predicted by Foucault.)

What is the correct view of the state? In my earlier posts, I suspect there was a tension between the more cynical, but possibly more realistic view, and the other one....

Questions about the nature of the state and the need for the state are not going to be answered by me here and now. I used to tell students that we need new institutions--more democratic ones, truly democratic ones... and I suppose what I think is: now, more than ever.

Nonetheless, from my reading of Levine's book, I see now that things are a bit more complicated. What does "more democratic institutions" really mean? I don't want to shilly shally too much here, but at this point my impression is that more democracy is not where we are heading today, which also means that the present signs are that the world is actually becoming less civilized....

Reference:
Andrew Levine, Arguing for Socialism: Theoretical Consideratons; Second edition London Verson, 1988