I have read the essay you refer to in the collection Le Stalinisme. I can find nothing in it that resembles these statements:
"Pierre Frank’s Le stalinisme set out a principle the Trotskyist tradition has not always lived by: the class character of a state is determined by the process that produced its institutions, not by the property forms in isolation."
"This is the principle most often forgotten by readers who turn Frank’s framework into a property-form-as-decisive position. He was arguing the opposite. Property forms are necessary but never sufficient. The agency that produced them, and the class process through which they were established, is what determines what they are."
Your claim about Frank's positions may be true, but it is not borne out by the publication you cite. Can you elaborate on your claim and its sources?
That's a great catch Alex: thank you. My formulation ('the process that produced the institutions, not the property forms in isolation') pushes Frank toward a position where agency is the primary criterion and property forms are secondary. That is closer to a workerist or council-communist reading than to Frank's actual argument. Frank's position holds both property forms and the process to qualify. I'll edit the article now to clarify and add a postscript. I linked to the one part of the book I could find online as a service to readers, but my analysis is based on the whole and a transcript of a talk he gave to FI leaders on the class nature of the workers' states.
I have read the essay you refer to in the collection Le Stalinisme. I can find nothing in it that resembles these statements:
"Pierre Frank’s Le stalinisme set out a principle the Trotskyist tradition has not always lived by: the class character of a state is determined by the process that produced its institutions, not by the property forms in isolation."
"This is the principle most often forgotten by readers who turn Frank’s framework into a property-form-as-decisive position. He was arguing the opposite. Property forms are necessary but never sufficient. The agency that produced them, and the class process through which they were established, is what determines what they are."
Your claim about Frank's positions may be true, but it is not borne out by the publication you cite. Can you elaborate on your claim and its sources?
That's a great catch Alex: thank you. My formulation ('the process that produced the institutions, not the property forms in isolation') pushes Frank toward a position where agency is the primary criterion and property forms are secondary. That is closer to a workerist or council-communist reading than to Frank's actual argument. Frank's position holds both property forms and the process to qualify. I'll edit the article now to clarify and add a postscript. I linked to the one part of the book I could find online as a service to readers, but my analysis is based on the whole and a transcript of a talk he gave to FI leaders on the class nature of the workers' states.