PinkoCommie
01-01-2010, 07:40 AM
It is a mechanistic error to reduce the capitalist class to “functioning capitalists”. All owners of capital belong to it, including rentiers and all those that could live from their interest receipts, regardless of whether they work in some profession. The high income of top state functionaries and parliamentarians, as well as their opportunities for getting access to confidential information enabling risk-free speculation, almost automatically guarantees the inclusion of top politicians and top public servants in the capitalist class, regardless of background – because their position enables them to accumulate capital, which they do in most cases. As owners of capital they then have a vested interest in the preserving the foundations of bourgeois order.
In capitalist countries there are few top politicians or top public servants who, at the end of a successful career, have not become owners of substantial assets, stocks and share portfolios beyond owning their own home etc., and this “purely economically” makes them full members of the capitalist class.
If in analyzing the structure of capitalist society we do not pay due attention to this aspect tying capitalists and the state together, for fear of “vulgar Marxism” or “descriptive verbiage”, we turn a blind eye to the pivot of society, i.e. capital itself. The universalized drive for enrichment and the cash economy are not “external” or secondary phenomena of capitalism but defining structural characteristics. No group in society can permanently escape their influence, and that includes professional politicians and bureaucrats.
It is not a matter of individual corruption, but rather the inevitable effect of the intrinsic tendency of capitalism to convert every substantial sum of money into a source of surplus-value, i.e. capitalize it. Only a state in which top politicians and public servants would not receive salaries higher than the average wage of workers would evade this direct structural bind. It is no accident that Marx and Lenin made this demand as basic precondition for real workers’ power, and that it is a norm that never has been, nor will be, realized in a capitalist state. [14]
The special nature of the capitalist state is also defined by its hierarchical construction, more or less mirroring the structure of society. Key public servants are no more elected by staff at lower levels or the citizenry than company managers or employers are elected by employees, or army officers by their men. Between this hierarchical structure and great disparities in income there is again a structural nexus characteristic of capitalist society. Competition, the drive for private enrichment and the measure of success according to financial gain can hardly dominate social life while inexplicably playing no role at all in government affairs. Again, the negative test can round off the analysis: there never was, and never will be, a capitalist state where the hierarchical principle is replaced by democratic elections in all key areas (police, army, central administration). Only a workers’ state could realize such a radical revolution in the make-up of the state.
Another characteristic of the capitalist state is the selection process leading to the choice of top positions in politics and administration. This selection process – based less on direct buying of state functions, nepotism, inherited prebends or reward for service to the head of state than was the case in pre-capitalist states – is governed to a large extent by the pressure to perform and competition, which dominate economic life. It is important though to stress that in this selection process, those modes of behaviour and ways of thinking must win out which objectively make successful capitalist politicians and key public servants the instruments of capitalist class rule, regardless of their personal motivation or the self-image they happen to have.
The functional character of the bureaucracy plays a decisive role here. One could imagine prison guards who occasionally help a prisoner to escape. But it is inconceivable that wardens who did this regularly would gain posts at the summit of the justice administration. One pacifist lieutenant is possible, one might even have a few hundred of them, but a military general staff exclusively made up of committed pacifists is obviously improbable. Only those who exercise the specific functions which capitalist society requires with minimum efficiency can reach top positions. Only those who conform long-term to the prevailing laws, rules of the game and ruling ideology which the social order expresses and secures, can make a successful career in the system.
The weakest point of all reformist and neo-reformist conceptions of the democratic state (including the Eurocommunists [15]) consists in not understanding this specific character of the capitalist state apparatus, inextricably bound up with capitalist society. As an extreme hypothesis, the possibility cannot be ruled out that an absolute majority in a normal parliament could somewhere vote to abolish private ownership of the means of production. But what can be safely ruled out is that the local Pinochets would not regard it as “violation of the constitution”, “contempt for basic human rights” or a “terrorist attack on Christian civilization”. They will promptly react like Pinochet, among other things with mass murder of political opponents, mass torture and concentration camps. [16] In so doing, they would of course take care to draw attention away from the abolition of all democratic freedoms. When the stakes are high, the eternal values of capitalist society turn out to be limited to private ownership, and the necessity to defend it legitimates every violation of even a merely formal popular sovereignty, every kind of violence and even declaration of war on one’s own countrymen (in the course of history, the Thiers, Francos and Pinochets have proved this in a “purely formal” way). In this sense, it is pure utopia to try not only to use the capitalist state apparatus to abolish capitalism, but also to think this apparatus could somehow be neutralized instead of needing to be replaced by a radically different state apparatus, so that the economic and political power of capital can be abolished.
And finally, the management of ongoing state affairs should not be confused with the wielding of political power at the highest level. If in an enterprise various functions are delegated to specialist managers, this does not mean that the board of directors and the shareholders lose their power of command over the assets and the workers. In the same way, just because the haute bourgeoisie leaves the day-to-day tasks of governing to professional politicians or key public servants, this does not mean that big business also leaves the most important strategic and political decisions to them. If we scrutinize some of the crucial decisions taken in the 20th century – such as for example the decision to appoint Hitler as imperial chancellor, the approval of the popular front government in France (almost at the same time as the approval of the Mola-Franco putsch against the Spanish popular front government); the green light for the start of World War 2 in Germany and Britain; the decision to orient the USA towards participation in the war; the decision of the USA and Britain to ally with the Soviet Union and later to break that alliance; the decision by the Western powers to reconstruct the economic power of Germany and Japan after World War 2 – then we find that these decisions were taken not in parliaments or in ministerial offices or by technocrats but directly by the captains of industry themselves. When the very survival of capitalism is at stake, then the big capitalists suddenly govern in the most literal sense of the word. At that point, every semblance of “autonomy” of the capitalist state vis-à-vis business disappears completely.
-Ernest Mandel, 1980
http://eprints.cddc.vt.edu/marxists//archive/mandel/1980/xx/hismatstate.htm
In capitalist countries there are few top politicians or top public servants who, at the end of a successful career, have not become owners of substantial assets, stocks and share portfolios beyond owning their own home etc., and this “purely economically” makes them full members of the capitalist class.
If in analyzing the structure of capitalist society we do not pay due attention to this aspect tying capitalists and the state together, for fear of “vulgar Marxism” or “descriptive verbiage”, we turn a blind eye to the pivot of society, i.e. capital itself. The universalized drive for enrichment and the cash economy are not “external” or secondary phenomena of capitalism but defining structural characteristics. No group in society can permanently escape their influence, and that includes professional politicians and bureaucrats.
It is not a matter of individual corruption, but rather the inevitable effect of the intrinsic tendency of capitalism to convert every substantial sum of money into a source of surplus-value, i.e. capitalize it. Only a state in which top politicians and public servants would not receive salaries higher than the average wage of workers would evade this direct structural bind. It is no accident that Marx and Lenin made this demand as basic precondition for real workers’ power, and that it is a norm that never has been, nor will be, realized in a capitalist state. [14]
The special nature of the capitalist state is also defined by its hierarchical construction, more or less mirroring the structure of society. Key public servants are no more elected by staff at lower levels or the citizenry than company managers or employers are elected by employees, or army officers by their men. Between this hierarchical structure and great disparities in income there is again a structural nexus characteristic of capitalist society. Competition, the drive for private enrichment and the measure of success according to financial gain can hardly dominate social life while inexplicably playing no role at all in government affairs. Again, the negative test can round off the analysis: there never was, and never will be, a capitalist state where the hierarchical principle is replaced by democratic elections in all key areas (police, army, central administration). Only a workers’ state could realize such a radical revolution in the make-up of the state.
Another characteristic of the capitalist state is the selection process leading to the choice of top positions in politics and administration. This selection process – based less on direct buying of state functions, nepotism, inherited prebends or reward for service to the head of state than was the case in pre-capitalist states – is governed to a large extent by the pressure to perform and competition, which dominate economic life. It is important though to stress that in this selection process, those modes of behaviour and ways of thinking must win out which objectively make successful capitalist politicians and key public servants the instruments of capitalist class rule, regardless of their personal motivation or the self-image they happen to have.
The functional character of the bureaucracy plays a decisive role here. One could imagine prison guards who occasionally help a prisoner to escape. But it is inconceivable that wardens who did this regularly would gain posts at the summit of the justice administration. One pacifist lieutenant is possible, one might even have a few hundred of them, but a military general staff exclusively made up of committed pacifists is obviously improbable. Only those who exercise the specific functions which capitalist society requires with minimum efficiency can reach top positions. Only those who conform long-term to the prevailing laws, rules of the game and ruling ideology which the social order expresses and secures, can make a successful career in the system.
The weakest point of all reformist and neo-reformist conceptions of the democratic state (including the Eurocommunists [15]) consists in not understanding this specific character of the capitalist state apparatus, inextricably bound up with capitalist society. As an extreme hypothesis, the possibility cannot be ruled out that an absolute majority in a normal parliament could somewhere vote to abolish private ownership of the means of production. But what can be safely ruled out is that the local Pinochets would not regard it as “violation of the constitution”, “contempt for basic human rights” or a “terrorist attack on Christian civilization”. They will promptly react like Pinochet, among other things with mass murder of political opponents, mass torture and concentration camps. [16] In so doing, they would of course take care to draw attention away from the abolition of all democratic freedoms. When the stakes are high, the eternal values of capitalist society turn out to be limited to private ownership, and the necessity to defend it legitimates every violation of even a merely formal popular sovereignty, every kind of violence and even declaration of war on one’s own countrymen (in the course of history, the Thiers, Francos and Pinochets have proved this in a “purely formal” way). In this sense, it is pure utopia to try not only to use the capitalist state apparatus to abolish capitalism, but also to think this apparatus could somehow be neutralized instead of needing to be replaced by a radically different state apparatus, so that the economic and political power of capital can be abolished.
And finally, the management of ongoing state affairs should not be confused with the wielding of political power at the highest level. If in an enterprise various functions are delegated to specialist managers, this does not mean that the board of directors and the shareholders lose their power of command over the assets and the workers. In the same way, just because the haute bourgeoisie leaves the day-to-day tasks of governing to professional politicians or key public servants, this does not mean that big business also leaves the most important strategic and political decisions to them. If we scrutinize some of the crucial decisions taken in the 20th century – such as for example the decision to appoint Hitler as imperial chancellor, the approval of the popular front government in France (almost at the same time as the approval of the Mola-Franco putsch against the Spanish popular front government); the green light for the start of World War 2 in Germany and Britain; the decision to orient the USA towards participation in the war; the decision of the USA and Britain to ally with the Soviet Union and later to break that alliance; the decision by the Western powers to reconstruct the economic power of Germany and Japan after World War 2 – then we find that these decisions were taken not in parliaments or in ministerial offices or by technocrats but directly by the captains of industry themselves. When the very survival of capitalism is at stake, then the big capitalists suddenly govern in the most literal sense of the word. At that point, every semblance of “autonomy” of the capitalist state vis-à-vis business disappears completely.
-Ernest Mandel, 1980
http://eprints.cddc.vt.edu/marxists//archive/mandel/1980/xx/hismatstate.htm