State intervention into the ownership, financing, and regulation of various industries and sectors of the capitalist economy is a phenomenon as old as capitalism itself. In the last 15 years this topic has become a focal point of vigorous interest among social scientists. Given the manifest problems to be found within current political-economic relationships, it is not surprising that a great deal of this attention has been focused on the contemporary scene. Nevertheless, a small number of works have undertaken the explanation of the historical development of state intervention. Unfortunately, the historian in search of explanatory guidance is confronted here with a series of less than comprehensive analyses which move at descriptive and explanatory cross-purposes. The first tasks of the social scientist or historian who wishes to address the development of state intervention therefore must be to classify and clarify the accounts which have been proposed.