What about the "iron heel" of ideology? Or of "private enterprise"? Working chumps know--at least the ones I meet and work with--they are subject to an arbitrary authority with draconian power in the form of an employer. As re: Third World countries, what does one think institutions like the World Bank or the School of Americas are for--they represent imperialism New Age style. As do Obama's civilian-bombing drones in Afpak.
It just happens that power has gone else where than the state.
To the extent the State does matter, while it is true an authoritarian state may provide many things we take for granted, there are many more in addition to those a participatory society could provide that are impossible in the present.
And finally, the reality is there are apart from the US and maybe China not really any sovereign countries in the world--most if not all others are in some significant way dependent on a larger imperial power whether they are explicitly client regimes or not (some, like Israel to the US, manifestly are).
> Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:23:32 -0700
> From: dredmond at efn.org
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Rethinking the State
>
> On Thu, September 24, 2009 6:52 am, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > Those rights are only possible because of
> > the state.
>
> A properly dialectical irony, no? This is one of those seemingly minor
> points which conceal massive, planetary opportunities: the 21st century is
> the first moment in human history when most people on the planet have
> their own states -- or more bluntly, aren't being crushed under the Iron
> Heel of imperial or neo-imperial autocracies (British, French, Iberian,
> US, Soviet). Which is why one of the central issues of the transnational
> era is how to build and expand developmental states, a.k.a. economic
> democracy.
>
> -- DRR
>
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