[lbo-talk] Unproductive Workers = The Best Organized in the USA

[Michael Hoover]

>>> marvgandall at videotron.ca 01/21/06 11:02 AM >>>
Those with decision-making power within the various state institutions -
legislature, regulatory agencies, executive arm, etc. If the decision-makers
aren't responsive to the needs of the corporate lobbies on all important
issues they're asked to resign from the "committee". The corporations have
formidable economic, political, and mass communications resources to enforce
their will.  You hint at a problem with the concept. What are your
reservations, if any, about it? It's a functional view of the state, not a
conspiratorial one.
<<<<<>>>>>

or instrumental view, recall miliband/poulantzas debate from several
decades ago, although former view was most starkly stated by lenin
in _state and revolution_ that the state is simply 'an instrument for
the oppression of the exploited class', no state 'relative autonomy'
state to be found in that conceptualization

marx and engels write in the _communist manifesto_ that 'the executive 
of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common 
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie' (m&e are much more instrumental in the 
_german ideology_ where they characterize the state as a mechanism used 
by the capitalist class to sustain its hegemony)... 

as for _manifesto_ remark about 'exectuve committee, focus should be on 
'executive'...

marx writes in _18th Brumaire_, that executive power, in contrast to legislative, 
expresses heteronomy, in contrast to autonomy (in other words, not self-governing 
or self-determining), he also refers twice in the same work to 'parliamentary 
cretinism' by which he means self-deception of powerless assemblies vis-a-vis
executive...

for marx, legislature is 'contested terrain', thus, he could call passage of england's '10 
hours' bill not just a great practical accomplishment, but a victory for the principle of 
'political economy of the working class' (_inaugural address to the international working 
men's association_)...

km wanted executive power subjected to as many controls as possible, in his view, 
such authority in the paris commune was delegated to sub-groups of the assembly 
and subject to immediate recall, he writes in _the civil war in france_ that the 
commune was an both executive and legislative body...

rightly or wrongly, marx opposed separation of powers, which he refers to as
'worm-eaten' theory in _Crisis and Counter-Revolution_ moreover, he calls
division of power  'old constitutional folly' in _the constitution of the french 
republic_, going on to say in that essay unity of powers is basis of 'free' 
government...   mh

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