>>but the bourgeoisie doesn't need to actually run the government or the
>>state (i.e., to govern) to get all of these things it wants and needs.
>
>No. It hires state functionaries to take care of things. In a
>"democracy," the state functionaries do have to win some popular
>appeal, but fundamentally they must do the work of the bourgeoisie.
>The state has to be fundamentally theirs, though there's going to be
>slippage here & there.
Its worse than you think Doug. In a capitalist economy, the state doesn't have to be under their control for it to be theirs. Whoever actually exercises state power must exercise it in the interests of the capitalist class, whether they like it or not. Because state power depends on economic power - militaries and bureaucracies and police, etc, require substantial finance. State finance is dependent on the nation state's economy. Capitalists control the economy, so as a class they exercise an economic veto.
But it isn't even as conscious as that, it doesn't have to be. The capitalist class doesn't have to form a committee and decide to put the economic boot into a government they don't like. Its systematic. If and when any government takes it into its head to implement policies which are inimical to the interests of the capitalist class, then the very logic of the market will undermine that nation, that government and its people. By undermining the economy on which we all ultimately depend.
Even if you don't get that, the majority of the working class who live in political democracies do appreciate it. That's why they are loathe to elect radical political leaders who will mess around with things in a way which will undermine the economy. (That is to say, in a way which will be contrary to the interests of profit.) It stuffs things up, people understand that.
That's why the whole social democrat project has been doomed from the start, or at least is a lot more limited in terms of its possibilities than was envisaged by the original social democrats. Capitalism cannot be reformed, in the sense of being made to operate in the interests of the majority of the population. Such a capitalism would be worse than the one we have, it is an inherently contradictory concept. The contradictions would quickly strangle economic life, it would be so hopelessly inefficient many would starve.
Most of the established social democrat and labour parties in the developed world accepted that long ago. Of course the USA has never really had any such parties, in fact for a long time it hasn't had any political parties at all, in any meaningful sense for decades. So people there may not have had that illusion shattered yet.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas