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I don't think that it is correct to say that because the state does not foresee and plan for every possible outcome of its immediate plan that it is not acting in the interest of capital in general. All decisions are based only on past experience and available knowledge within a highly complex system of institutions (seeking both to advance the interest of the state as laid out in policy and to maintain and advance their own narrow institutions interests). The turn towards a more finance based economy was both the method used to lay the basis for a resurgent, or counter-revolutionary if you like, capitalist class in the late 70s and into the 80s and 90s, as well as the source of restructuring and reigniting capital accumulation. When the two - class struggle gains for capital and capital accumulation - line up, you see big pushes by the state to clear the way, set it up, and depoliticize the economics of it for the masses. I don't think finance captured the state through lobbying or other means. That is akin to saying that the tiger captured the tiger in order to catch its pray. The state is involved at every level and its very reproduction are based on successful capital accumulation. Therefore, there is no finance without the capitalist state and there is no capitalist state without finance. The relationship the state has with finance is neither determined by finance or the state. Meaning there is no antagonistic relationship, no binary, dichotomy, or dualism. The state doesn't repress finance and finance doesn't overpower and capture the state. The Bretton Woods era should not be seen as the states successful limiting of the role of finance, but as the states active nurturing back to health of finance. The neoliberal era reveals a huge increase in the role of the state in finance, not its retreat. The crisis has only enhanced this, as will any legislation that comes from it. Sorry, that is a bit rambling and disjunctured. Brad ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
