> Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and Iadmit to being hardly clear as to what these "structural" limits on real democracy are, but this is what I would like to investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the limits on state stabilization policy and its increasingly class biased form (predicted by Mattick Sr, Mario Cogoy, Joachim Hirsch)
Ernest Mandel actually published on this as well, in fact I translated a fairly comprehensive article of his called "Methodological issues in defining the class nature of the bourgeois state" (written for a festschrift for Leo Kofler) which never got published however.
Jurriaan, I would like to read it. There is a chapter on the state in Late Capitalism, if I remember correctly. This would have been written after that?
Mandel's argument is that the ""state derivation" school which seeks to infer state functions and forms from the logic of capital is ahistorical, and do not probe the historical origins of the bourgeois state, nor the dialectics of free wage labour.
Bob Fine has some interesting discussion of the functionalism of Marxist state theory.
Another important text is that of Reuten & Williams, although I do not agree with some of the "value-form" arguments.
yes I have wanted to get a copy of this apparently important book.
and (b) Shaikh and Tonak's very important finding that the welfare state never redistributed income downward even in the so called Golden Age, working class taxes may have exceeded transfers even before 'social democracy' was blamed for stagflation, and the regressive nature of the so called welfare state has only since worsened with relative cuts in social expenditures and regressive increases in the payroll and sales tax paying for tax breaks not even for investment
The experience in this regard is different in different countries, depending on the balance of class power.
how different? that's what I would like to know.
>Which is not to say that since the state is always a class state that the working class need not be bothered by its principles of organization. A police state is very much a worse institution for the working class than a representative democracy. Ultra left criticism that cannot see the real danger posed by Ashcroft is delusional. The terrain of extra electoral activity has to be preserved, especially for collective worker action.
Agreed. I wrote a bit about taxation recently. Maybe the orthodox Marxist would froth at the mouth at this, but the orthodox Marxist never thinks about how socialist economy is actually organised, typically he just anticipates the breakup of capitalism as the moment of asserting his power over the working class. At the root of your statement is a misconceptualisation of reformism and revolutionism.
ok. What I would like to consult again is Perry Anderson's exploration of the nature of representative democracy in his essay on the antinomies of Gramsci.
>Perhaps it's time to return to the debates over state theory, surveyed in Martin Carnoy's and Bob Jessop's now twenty year old books?
My bias is that we should sort out the issues which Marx does not sort out, principally taxation, public finance, monetary manipulations including credit, that would be the main ones.
Yes public finance. Why do Asian Central Banks continue to hold US govt debt now that the devaluation has already cost them $200 bn? Must they support the dollar given export orientation?
Rakesh
Jurriaan
