> This is the crux. Politics and economy are not "separate spheres" of
> social life! There is no political power that is "extra-economic", and
> there is no economic activity that is "extra-political". The political
> and economic systems in any society are mutually determined; thus any
> analysis that tries to understand politics as "outside the economy" or
> the economy as "outside politics" obscures the social processes that
> create and sustain the integrated political economy of a society.
Of course, in reality, everything is intertwined with everything else.
Yet, that doesn't preclude you from using the terms "politics" *and* "economics." Question: if the two terms denote one and the same lump, then why use two different words? Isn't that more obscure than using different words to mean different things?
If this social process that you call the "integrated political economy of a society" is indeed one and the same undifferentiated blob, then why do you imply in your formulation that there is "integration"? Integration of what and what? Doesn't integration (integer=whole, totality) suggest to you the existence of parts? Why the need to use an adjective "political" to modify a noun "economy"? Why not "economic politcs"? Or "economy-politics"? Or "politics-economy"? Or "ecponolimytics"?
Now, if the terms do denote two different things, then what's the essential difference between them? I'm not asking you to separate them physically or mechanically for me. Even chemical compounds can be analyzed. So, I am just asking whether it is possible to abstract, in our minds, one thing from the other, "politics" from "economics." If the answer is that this abstraction is impossible, then explain why? If it's not impossible, but simply wrong, then explain how the absolute identity of politics and economics clarifies, not "obscures" the social processes?
> Leaving the ad hominem aside, I think the biggest problem with the
> "foster socialism by controlling the State" argument is that the
> strategy isn't very effective. Russia? China? Eastern Europe?
Please forgive the ad hominem.
Are you saying that taking control of the State was the fundamental flaw in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe? (Not that it weakens your argument, but if that's right then Cuba and Venezuela are doomed as well.) How do you argue that point? Why taking control of the State is a fatal flaw while taking control of an operating system or of a child care center, one at a time, are not subject mutatis mutandis to same dangers as those involved in taking control of the State? What's the problem? Scale? What's wrong with State power that is not wrong with software or child care centers?