> Manjur Karim wrote to Carl Remick:
>
> >I don't see anything defeatist about the argument for reassessing the Left's
> >traditional defense of government.
I have just posted to marxism re the clarification brought about by distinguishing government from state, a distinction which holds even at the level of mere usage. We can speak, for example, of a or the government wielding state power while to speak of a state wielding governmental power would be simply weird. Consider also the living wage ordinances being fought for in many cities. These increase the activity of government without adding to state power. One could also imagine laws which cancelled government contracts with any business allowing the printed or oral use of the n-word within its premises. There is an increase in governmental activity without an corresponding enhancement of the police power of the bourgeois state.
To project into the future (with the understanding that such a projection is not for the sake of positing goals but for better understanding of the present), in a hypothetical classless society state functions would be reduced nearly to zero while governmental functions would be enormously increased. I can't imagine any left political program that did not work for increased governmental activity as its major concern. But I cannot imagine any left program that does not *also* work for narrowing of state power (for example by eliminating prison sentences for most criminal activity, as Angela Davis and, implicitly, Johnny Cash have both proposed).
"Left defense of government" is, given the distinctions I offer here, tautological. That's what it *means* to be politically left.
Carrol