> On Aug 17, 2026, at 21:43, Anthony Teso via groups.io
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Re: Variations of the capitalist state
> Anthony Boynton's framing is useful, and I want to concede most of it before
> saying where it turns.
I think so, too.
>
>
>
...
> Fifth, a smaller point with consequences. Describing the English and Dutch
> states as precapitalist empires will not survive contact with Brenner.
For those who need references, like I do, see http://gesd.free.fr/brenner76.pdf
and
https://dokumen.pub/the-transition-from-feudalism-to-capitalism-0860917010-9780860917014.html
> By the seventeenth century the English state's revenues already rested on
> capitalist ground rent and a countryside organized by market dependence. This
> is relevant for Boynton's argument rather than against it: the bourgeoisie
> was not capturing an alien apparatus but reorganizing one whose fiscal base
> was already its own. The transformation was political precisely because the
> social property relations had already moved.
The changes in 16th and 17th century England that produced capitalist social
relations raises the question of what's shaping US capitalism in 21st Century
United States. Tony B mentioned that "capitalism has hit the wall..."
Capitalism does that periodically.
This periodicity has been studied in the theory of long waves by Mandel, who
describes the process in terms of exogenous triggers and endogenous processes,
which echo some of the discussion of this thread as well as the Dobb-Sweezy
debate generations ago. Mandel's long waves are based on value theory. Another
theory, the Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA), which focuses on
institutional factors.
The post WWII rebuilding of a devastated Europe and Asia fueled a long wave of
capitalist prosperity in the US that lifted capitalist markets around the
world. The institutions of this surge in value accumulation were shaped by US
capital's alliance with its industrial working class. The partnership lasted
roughly a quarter century. During this time, the US policed the world and
allocated enormous sums to support military spending on a scale never seen in
"peacetime" - though 8-10M people died in foreign countries as a result of the
US military and its foreign policy in the post WWII period. Domestically,
however, US political and social institutions became progressive during this
period with concessions made for social peace including the US Black Civil
Rights, women's rights, environmental protections, and other concessions.
The alliance broke apart after 1970 when the long wave continued under
different institutional arrangements: US capital and its agents, such as
Justice Louis Powell, struck a belligerent posture to the social and
environmental justice movements and labor unions. Capital no longer needed a
partnership with the US working class now that US industries were competing
with a rebuilt capitalist Europe and Asia. US capitalists went looking for
surplus value in the working classes of far less developed countries where
workers lived in dormitories and shipping crates rather than ranch houses and
bungalows. Many label this the "neoliberal" era, which lasted nearly a half
century.
Today, neoliberalism cannot sustain the post WWII long wave. Instead, US
institutions are in crisis and neoliberal ideologies no longer hold sway over
large parts over the US voting population. Most importantly, finance capital
shorted US industry during the neoliberal period, deficits rose, and the
surplus shrank over time. Most recently, about 75% of stock market gains spring
from the tech sector, which is predatory capital investment that increases
surplus by cannibalizing other sectors and eliminating jobs in other
industries. The US technology industry has always displaced jobs, but since the
turn of the century, tech has replaced entire industries and incorporated them
into its businesses. Tech capitalists are key backers of Trump.
Unlike the 1970s, US capitalists no longer have the room to maneuver by
changing institutional arrangements. The US industrial base has been
cannibalized. What's left to consume is being eaten by Tech, which is facing
increased popular opposition, such as the anti-datacenter movements today. The
reasons for the collapse of neoliberalism with no obvious replacement is a
driver behind Tony's Patrimonial Bonapartism. It is, of course, overdetermined
and also shaped by US demographic shifts, and changes in sexual and gender
roles, among other factors. I don't expect this current period to outlast
Trump, and I do expect that those behind Trump will need more of a mass base to
continue what they have started. Today's Trump administration is not fascist,
but it may be a dress rehearsal for a future US fascist movement.
I have been reading Gramsci's Prison Notebooks lately. Hoare and Nowell-Smith's
introductory essay is particularly interesting in its description of the
Italian communists and left socialists sense-making of the emergence of Italian
fascism. The lion of the Italian revolutionary left, Amadeo Bordiga viewed
Italian fascism as a phase of rule that will give way to social democrats in
office. Gramsci was arrested because he did not choose to leave the country
when the fascist crackdown was underway in earnest; he didn't think a good
captain should abandon his ship. Or in Gramsci's case, that an elected
legislator should not abandon his post at such a critical time. Their
confusions were an ominous warning to us all.
Mark
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#43077): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43077
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120796980/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
#4 Do not exceed five posts a day.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
