Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 19:14:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: The class-conscious state



Rebecca writes:

>If the state maintains its role as an "agency of class control" (your
>phrase), what will be its relation to supranational bodies like
>corporations?  As "law enforcement" (together with education,
>transportation and health care)becomes increasingly privatized, and central
>bankers negotiate directly with the IMF, what will there be left for
>parliaments?


As a cosmetic fop to the masses, I imagine that "elected officials"
(congressmen, mayors, even Presidents) will be around for awhile longer,
though of course they will have become as irrelevant to real life as the
Queen of England.  Capital allows these scumbags the luxury of stealing
whatever they can (within reason and so long as they don't come to represent
a threat to their employers ) for a pre-determined amount of time.  They are
not allowed to remain too long, nor steal more than is considered seemly for
one in their position.  And they must not entertain fantasies that they are
indispensable to the system which they've been hired to serve.  Beyond that,
the system is game for anything.

This brings me back to the point of my original post; namely, that
"organizational democracy" -- the so-called "open book" philosophy prevalent
among a growing number of corporations -- will gradually replace the
traditional norms of bourgeois "democracy".  "Corporate citizens" or
"company members" -- as opposed to "human resources" or "employees" -- will
become the new catchwords.  The state will continue to exist in some form;
in class society, how could it be otherwise?  But it will increasingly be
seen as "an authority of last resort", existing to manage an increasingly
large and explosive "underclass" that exists as an underbelly of corporate
America.  

As to Adolfo's "social fascist" thesis, I think there is much that is key in
it.  What are the "Communist" parties in the advanced states if not
"social-fascist", surrendering to capital in the economic sphere on the one
hand, while promoting the growth of the repressive mechanisms of the
class-conscious state through the maintenance of entitlement programs and
the like.  This is the crux in which the Left finds itself today, viewing
the state both as friend and foe, unable to decide whether to promote or
abolish it.  

Scarcely adequate recompense for failing to make revolution.

Louis Godena 



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---