Is capitalism inherently statist? - Page 9 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The 'no government' movement.
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#14370271
The entire Marxist conception of a mode of production rests on a dialectic, and thus does not necessarily limit other forms of trade or currency. Feudalism had a proletariat and merchants and traders. However, they did not constitute the dominant form of production. It was not the economic "base," of society from which the rest of the superstructure was built.

That was feudalism, that is, production from the land done by the serf who existed within a certain system.

You're using a, "stagist," form of psudo-Marxism that Marxists simply don't use. It has long been, and rightly so, been considered a liberal conception that people that don't understand dialectics or materialism try to ignorantly slander Marxism with:

Lenin wrote:Mr. Plekhanov attempts to present the fundamental theoretical prohlem of the impending revolution in Russia. He quotes a passage from Marx to the effect that the 1789 Revolution in France followed an ascending line, whereas the 1848 Revolution followed a descending line. In the first instance, power passed gradually from the moderate party to the more radical—the Constitutionalists, the Girondists, the Jacobins. In the second instance, the reverse took place—the proletariat, the petty-bourgeois democrats, the bourgeois republicans, Napoleon III. “It is desirable,” our author infers, “that the Russian revolution should be directed along an ascending line”, i.e., that power should first pass to the Cadets and Octobrists, then to the Trudoviks, and then to the socialists. The conclusion to be drawn from this reasoning is, of course, that the Left wing in Russia is unwise in not wishing to support the Cadets and in prematurely discrediting them.

Mr. Plekhanov’s “theoretical” reasoning is another example of the substitution of liberalism for Marxism. Mr. Plekhanov reduces the matter to the question of whether the “strategic conceptions” of the advanced elements were “right” or wrong. Marx’s reasoning was different. He noted a fact: in each case the revolution proceeded in a different fashion; he did not however seek the explanation of this difference in “strategic conceptions”. From the Marxist point of view it is ridiculous to seek it in conceptions. It should be sought in the difference in the alignment of classes. Marx himself wrote that in 1789 the French bourgeoisie united with the peasantry and that in 1848 petty-bourgeois democracy betrayed the proletariat. Mr. Plekhanov knows Marx’s opinion on the matter, but he does not mention it, because he wants to depict Marx as looking like Struve. In the France of 1789, it was a question of overthrowing absolutism and the nobility. At the then prevalent level of economic and political development, the bourgeoisie believed in a harmony of interests; it had no fears about the stability of its rule and was prepared to enter into an alliance with the peasantry. That alliance secured the complete victory of the revolution. In 1848 it was a question of the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. The proletariat was unable to win over the petty bourgeoisie, whose treachery led to the defeat of the revolution. The ascending line of 1789 was a form of revolution in which the mass of the people defeated absolutism. The descending line of 1848 was a form of revolution in which the betrayal of the proletariat by the mass of the petty bourgeoisie led to the defeat of the revolution.

Mr. Plekhanov is substituting vulgar idealism for Marxism when he reduces the question to one of “strategic conceptions”, not of the alignment of classes.


Further, as the manifesto states and has always been part of the conception, capitalism is a world-wide system. What was the Southern States of America? Capitalist. Were they dependent, in that particular area, on agriculture—sure—but it was still part of industrialized western society. You do not escape the economic base of society because you're not at that second working at a conveyer belt.

So yes. If you exclude form Marxism dialectics, geography, history, materialism, and maybe a few other things, and then replace them with whatever crazy things you want—then there is certainly an argument that, "The whole Marxist scheme is just so full of holes."

If you don't go to the bizarre lengths of doing so, you'll find it's reasonably sound—at the very least accepting the logic of dialectics and materialism and the like.
#14370294
Notice you evaded the question of the Soviet union. Was it a worker's State, Socialist, Communist, Bureaucratic collectivist or was it (State Capitalist) as alleged by the Anarchists, the Left Communists, CLR James, Tony Cliffe, the Chinese Communist party, Maoists and others?

Note I can't remember who it was that argued for State capitalism against Cliff when Cliff still represented Trotskyite orthodoxy
#14370326
I didn't dodge it, but it's an uninteresting question.

I would say a degenerated workers' state. This is in line with Lenin. A Stalinist and western capitalist would both agree it was socialist. Fine.

Does that ultimately matter in this debate? If you want to get all sidetracked into Leninist infighting, great. But in each case there's a method and anaylsis used. It's not simply making up new definitions of words and whatnot.
#14370362
This thread is in the Anarchism sub forum. Many self described Anarchists considered the Soviet union to be capitalist. Anarchists don't agree on what capitalism is. Marxists don't agree on what capitalism is. One right Libertarians thinks 7th century Irish tribes are the best example of classical Capitalism. I'm not playing some kind of Derrida trip on you here, there is clearly a complete lack of agreement on what the term Capatalism means. This debate like so many others in political life is futile until we have some agreed terminology.
#14370373
Except that you're trying to throw a bunch of dust in the air to obscure the fact that capitalism, as a word and concept, came about to describe something already in existence. Socialism did not.

Just because I have a black hat does not mean that all hats are black.

Nothing you brought up changes history or language so you can score a neat political point on the Internet.
#14387724
Of course it is. Who enforces the contracts and regulations that make capitalism possible? If the state crumbles, then either these contracts and regulations will not be enforced as there is no legal repercussions for not following them, leading to the breakdown of capitalism, or a corporation or group of corporations will assume the role of government, creating de facto statism.

Hierarchy tends to lead to monopolisation of power and subordination of less powerful to the more powerful. As capitalism is based on hierarchy between different classes, it leads to the aforementioned points.
#14388093
Everything is statist. To enforce any legal conventions society wide requires consistent authority over a geographical area. You can have all sorts of schemes with devolved powers, and you can have the conventions be few and sharp, but at the end of the day, all political philosophies can't please all the people all of the time, so there must be some basic level of authority which can never be conceded.

Perhaps that basic level of authority can be boiled down to who owns what, and this is the question so many political philosophies across the spectrum are based on. Capitalism is inherently statist, because it must enforce its particular brand of absentee private ownership of the means of production, but in denying this form of property, Marxists do not substitute it for nothing. Marxism itself is built on a non-private conception of property, a collective conception, which still requires some consistent geographical martialling; ergo the state.

This is why I believe that socialism is very possible and plausible, whereas pure communism, being functionally identical to anarcho-communism is impossible. Anarchy writ large, in whatever form, is an unreachable absolute. It should only be treat as some sort of perfect ideal, not a practically realizable outcome.
#14413638
It is true that for a society to be peaceful and stable, members have to share certain conceptions regarding the peaceful resolution of disputes.

That, however, is a far cry from being a "state" in many important sense.


The key difference is that while basic norms are shared within society, their enforcement need not be. Government, in fact, does worse than just monopolising the enforcement of norms. By taking on itself content-independent authority (people being expected to obey "legal" orders regardless of the content of those orders), government becomes antithesis of morality. Its agents become exempt from the norms expected of other members of society.

In a well-functioning anarchy, norms are shared and some dispute resolution mechanisms are universally accepted. But no individual, group, company or organisation is deemed to have "authority" in the sense of expecting obedience merely by virtue of having issued commands.

Traditional societies have been organised as anarchies, and it is possible to identify effective anarchies all around us. In fact, within every modern government there is an effective anarchy. The different organs of government (e.g. branches, local vs. federal, different local branches, etc.) operate, day to day, without an overarching single decision-maker above them.
#14493899
Not in all countries. In China Capitalism is statist and successful. In Russia the same but a failure. In the greatest country on earth its monopolised by the private sector. The one thing these three different countries have in common you ask? The common person is getting screwed. Signed, not a communist.
#14493923
Yes, capitalism, historically, has emerged with the help of the state. It cannot exist otherwise.

During the Early Middle Ages, rights over property were distributed among all the groups in society. That means that if a nobleman, say, wanted to use a piece of land in a certain way, then the peasants and the clergy had to approve first. Some things a given person or group might be able to do things unilaterally, and other things they might not, it all depends.

However, as time went on and the need to organize larger and larger armies became ever more pressing, the state needed to be more and more centralized and it also needed more taxes. European kings achieved this kind of unification by working closely with the nobility. The nobility acceded to greater levies, standing armies, and more taxes in exchange for obtaining all of the rights over property traditionally held by the peasants and clergy.

Without a strong centralized state, it is not at all likely that our modern notions of private property would have ever taken hold in Europe.
#14572114
Piccolo wrote:Kevin Carson has an interesting article regarding the essentially statist nature of capitalism throughout its entire history. This is different from the usual right-libertarian argument that “corporatism” or “crony capitalism” is some kind of distortion of capitalism.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/27/ ... rporatism/

Any thoughts on this subject?

It's one thing to say that capitalism has been to date statist, and another to say that statism is "essential" to capitalism. The former claim does not entail the latter.

I take it the free-market libertarian espouses a "purer" form of capitalism than any that has been (or is likely to be) realized in practice. To paraphrase Chomsky -- that sort of "right libertarianism" would lead, in any plausible scenario, to domination by the wealthy, a de facto plutocracy seeking to legitimize itself with the propaganda of "economic liberty". But that is not the only conceivable form of capitalism, and the form of capitalism we're in fact subject to today is bad enough in that regard. With respect to the dependence of this form of capitalism on the state: I believe Chomsky has pointed out that the profits of US financial institutions are primarily or entirely achieved by way of state subsidies.
#14572289
Capitalism evolved in the direction it did through necessity. An appeal to a purer form of capitalism is a-historical. Such relatively more "pure" forms existed in the nineteenth century. They were superseded by modern forms, and represent a dead-end development. Even if they could be resuscitated, the same forces that obviated them would eventually kill them off once more. Free-marketism has devolved into a rhetorical gambit, like family values for conservatives. The elite of capital have always longed for power as much as they do for money, and the latter exists to guarantee the former.
#14572795
quetzalcoatl wrote:Capitalism evolved in the direction it did through necessity. An appeal to a purer form of capitalism is a-historical. Such relatively more "pure" forms existed in the nineteenth century.

This way of speaking smacks of the nineteenth-century, is reminiscent of Hegelian teleology. We may yet find ourselves returning to the Stone Age: There's nothing "ahistorical" about such a claim, and I'm not sure what "necessity" has to do with it, so far as our political conversation is concerned. We may, we may not. That's all. You can't trace the outcome in a logician's notebook.

quetzalcoatl wrote:They were superseded by modern forms, and represent a dead-end development. Even if they could be resuscitated, the same forces that obviated them would eventually kill them off once more.

Are we supposed in our discourses to search for an eternal form of government? Nothing is permanent, certainly not anything like a biological species or a human culture. It all leads to "dead-ends" if you keep a long enough time horizon -- which is to say, things keep changing. But there is more than one direction for change, more than one "tendency" at play.

In short, I'm not sure how such talk is relevant to our discussion about directions of social change, types of government, political ideals, and so on. That qualification aside:

quetzalcoatl wrote:Free-marketism has devolved into a rhetorical gambit, like family values for conservatives. The elite of capital have always longed for power as much as they do for money, and the latter exists to guarantee the former.

We may be in agreement on some important points.

Still, I'm not confident that, if a purer form of capitalism emerged today, it would be "obviated" by "the same forces" as before. The world is not the same today as it was a hundred years ago. In fact, it seems we are already in the process of a trend toward a "purer form of capitalism" worldwide, though admittedly not the purest conceivable. Suppose that trend continues another generation or two, perhaps approaching something relevantly like the purer forms you indicated. What were the "obviating forces" in the old days? Mass discontent and outrage at the plight of the many under the abuses of the capitalist class and the exigencies of the "business cycle" and financial crises... strikes, riots, protests, unions, labor parties, rebellions.... socioeconomic reforms (with or without political revolutions). Arguably, the conditions required to support the political efficacy of that sort of discontent and that sort of popular disruption of the socioeconomic order -- that sort of incentive for popular reform -- may be slipping away from us. The very foundation of popular sovereignty -- the right and capacity to protest and revolt -- is arguably trending toward irrelevance, outmoded by the growth of global capital and technology. If so, it's reasonable to expect there is a threshold beyond which the old "obviating forces" lose their efficacy, which conceivably entails the opening of a new moment in history in which "purer forms of capitalism" have another go, in a more globalized and more technological world.

In that event -- what use would the corporatocracy have for "the state"?
#14603388
It is. The only way that the private property can be deffended and promoted is with millitar power.
Of course, most pigs are too naive and greedy, and are blind to this. They dont realize that the only reason that keeps miserables ppl from not taking their resources, is bc theres legal and violent consequences.
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