"Marxism Today" comes to South Africa Not a capture, but an embrace! Reformism, from the Gotha Programme, to Eduard Bernstein, to the Mensheviks, to the renegade Kautsky, to the Eurocommunists - it never goes away! Mcebisi Jonas in Umsebenzi Online, (excerpt), 21 April 2016: "We need to better understand how the relationship between state and capital can be better regulated in the national interest" The second big issue relating to state capture that we need deeper discussion around is how to better manage and regulate relations between the state and capital. Here we need to locate our position conceptually. Instrumentalist interpretations associated with more orthodox Marxism see the state as always acting in the interests of the capitalist class. Gramsci, through his concept of hegemony, provides a far more helpful framework to understand the state in capitalist society. In his conception, the state is more of a site of contestation, mediating and eliciting trade-offs among the contending classes (albeit in the last instance to protect the interests of the ruling class). Poulantzas further develops this approach, introducing the dimension that the capitalist class itself is not homogenous in its interests, but is comprised of various fractions of capital which compete for state power and influence. The French Regulation School (Aglietta, Lipietz, etc.) built on this in explaining how systems of capital accumulation (the regimes of accumulation) are regularised and stabilised through institutional laws, norms, policies and practices (the mode of regulation). These are not always in sync and result in ongoing crises and transitions. While time does not allow in this brief reflection to comprehensively apply this framework to South Africa, the point must be made that any discussions about state transformation and function must be linked to broader discussions about the system of accumulation we are simultaneously regulating and transforming (and the contradictions entailed therein). We should also dig out of our memory banks those old discussions about base-superstructure, and in doing so avoid the pitfalls of both economic determinism and voluntarism. As the democratic developmental state, we should be realistic about the ways in which our inherited system of accumulation (built around the minerals-energy-finance complex) structures the policy choices we have at our disposal. At the same time, we should appreciate that the state, underpinned by an alliance of progressive forces, including patriotic capital, can make significant changes within the mode of regulation that will trigger changes in the system of accumulation. In practical terms, this suggests that we should be engaging more - not less - intensely with capital (and particular industrial segments) to ensure we rapidly address our core structural weakness, of exporting primary commodities, and importing value-added manufactured products. South Africa remains overly dependent on external sources of growth, rather than its own internal engines of growth. This in turn makes the economy extremely vulnerable to factors beyond its control, such as the global commodities demand, the monetary policy of major economies such as the United States, and the risk appetite of bond and equity investors. South Africa could significantly grow output, jobs and exports in existing and new sectors and industrial segments in manufacturing, the agricultural value chain, services, energy and infrastructure. But this will not happen unless we rethink and implement new models of economic governance, in which the state and capital (or fractions and segments thereof) move beyond traditional paradigms towards a system of reciprocal incentives and trade-offs in the national interest aimed at growing jobs, investment and revenue, and addressing barriers to entry and bottlenecks to new ventures. At the centre of this new economic governance model must be a clear and decisive system for distributing rewards and costs. This will necessitate trade-offs being facilitated between the state and capital, between foreign and domestic capital, between corporate capital and SMMEs, between established industry players and new entrants; between capital, labour, and consumers; and between the formally employed and unemployed. Such a model will also mitigate against the more commonly associated economic policy failures - including capture and rent-seeking by corrupt interests, crowding-out investment, and misallocation of resources (picking losers). Read the full article on the SACP web site at: http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=5284#redpen -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. 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