From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: corner store capitalists
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 23:31:28 -0500


Tahir Wrote:
> > This happens where big capitalists lean on the state to serve their
> interests, which they are able to do through the economic power they
wield.
> Even here I think it is correct to speak of a ruling class alliance -
state
> bureaucrats wield power on behalf of themselves and on behalf of the
> interests of the big financial and industrial capitalists. But they are
not
> identical and they do sometimes come into conflict.

commie00 wrote:
> marx explained this conflict as one between capitals, not between the
state
> buearucrats and the corporate or whatnot heads. that is: marx analyzed the
> state as the collective voice and will of the ruling class, which is
> necessarily tenuous because of the divergent and conpetitive interests of
> the ruling class.

This is a slippery formulation.  Marx first analyzed the state as 'the
illusory community', as a way of creating unity among all classes.  But even
more so, I think we cannot treat the state in such a manner if we want to
understand it.  If we start from the state as having a 'function'
(collective will and voice of the ruling class) and hen move to understand
contradictions in the state by reference to 'divergent and competitive
interests of the ruling class', we lose sight of the state as a product of
class struggle.  If you take the binary notion of class struggle seriously,
then I think we have to recognize that first, conflict between capitals and
capitalists is not a class struggle.  Rather, it reflects the location of
one or another group of capitalists trying to exploit labor power in a
concrete form: the production of certain types of commodities.  The state is
a product of class struggle, of the need to suppress the working class which
forms itself in a particular way because of the separation of exploitation
(the point of production) from the process of social control (the state), a
separation which, IMO, reflects the separation of the market (the realm of
free exchange) from the realm of production (exploitation).

Your approach here can very easily take the view that the state is defined
by a function, rather than being a social relation which does not simply
come into being but which is always struggled over (hence crises of
legitimation, as one example).  The state does not and cannot always
represent all of capital at once in its particulars because not all labor is
exploited equally and not all workers respond equally.  It is actually class
struggle which shapes the state, not the functional needs or 'different
interests' of this or that section of capital.  I am adamant about this
because otherwise we grant the state the status of a thing, rather than a
social relation, an aspect or mode of existence of the capital-labor
relation.

The result is to assume that the state can always carry out its functions,
or that the state changes due to conflicts between capitals, rather than to
the different needs of different capitals exploiting different workers.

Tahir wrote:
> > Marx (Idon't have references right now - sorry) wrote on the political
> role played by the petty bourgeoisie in certain situations and it seems to
> me if one is to explain the likely political dynamics in any situation one
> needs to explain these kinds of differentiated political behaviours, which
> can only be done through a more nuanced class analysis.
commie00 wrote:
> i agree that a more nuanced analysis is need. but so is an up to date one.
> and marx (and for the life of me i can't remember where) pointed out that
> capital would eventually do away with the middle class, which would be
> proletarianized for the most part (the rest being absorbed into the
> bourgeoisie).

I will raise again the idea that capital necessarily generates mediatory
layers, and the small shop owner or non-market peasant is not the only
example, nor the most important anymore.  rather, a major transformation of
the middle class took place in the 20th century, as a larger and larger
section became professionals and managers who mediated the relations between
capital and labor.  Capital, as a social relation, exists only in relation
to labor, as a capital-labor relation.  But it does not do so in an
umediated way, without layers and layers of people who serve (and are
subordinate to) capital, but who exist only to maintain the domination of
the working class.  This is not the clear-cut middle class of the 19th
century, but a product of a whole history of class struggle, engendered in
increased centralization, mechanization, corporatization, statification,
etc., all related to the struggle by capital to revolutionize the means of
production in order to use dead labor against living labor, to replace
insubordinate labor with inanimate labor.

I actually agree with the binary approach as the central aspect of the
capital-labor relation, but I will argue that it cannot be a relation
unmediated by a middle class whose existence is dependent on both capital
and labor (hence part of the reason middle class ideology tends to see
itself as universal and non-class, when in fact it is simply neither fish
nor fowl.)

Cheers,
Chris



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