>>I didn't say that they rule without the state. I said political power was incidental.
>
>Repressing dissent, enforcing contracts, and regulating money are "incidental" functions? I knew Tasmania was far away, but you seem really really far away.
Let's be clear, incidental in the sense that political power is subordinate to economic power. Yes, capitalism has to enforce contracts. Otherwise business planning would be chaotic. A regulated monetary system is also essential. Political government is essential, if only to maintain order in the face of the vicious inequities, conflicts and insecurities of capitalism. But, though necessary, political government is incidental to the system, a mere lieutenant to the generals of finance. The essence of the system is economic rule over the working class, by the owners of capital.
We are not, primarily, ruled over by physical force, but by economic force. No-one points a gun at our head and demands we obey they daily orders of the ruling class. Daily producing more wealth that they automatically confiscate, daily increasing their power over us. Yet we do just that, we are at their beck and call.
Political power is subordinate to economic power, that is why political democracy can is comfortably incorporated into capitalist economy. Largely, it does not interfere with the privileges of the ruling class, it governs a subordinate realm. When it threatens to interfere with that realm, as when a government sympathetic to labour attempts to democratise the economy, attempts to subjugate the means of production to the will of the people (which is nothing less than an attempt to invade and annexe the realm of the ruling class, their economic power can mobilise political forces to crush that government. It has happened over and over again in the last century. If the ruling class cannot crush such a government quickly, the mere fact that the freedom of capital is interfered with for any length of time will in any case result in economic chaos as that country's economy is starved of capital.
Surely this is obvious?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas