[...]
> Another issue - the statement that state "has historically been controlled
> by and acted as the agent of the dominant propertied class" is
> demonstrably
> false. The easiest counterexamples are the Soviet Russia & its European
> satellites and Communist China, where the state was anything but
> controlled
> by propertied class.
MG: If your assumption, following Trotsky, is that the workers and peasants legally owned the major means of PDE in these societies by virtue of public ownership - state bureaucrats could not appropriate and bequeath this property to their heirs, for example - but that these classes didn't "control" what was ostensibly their state, then this would be the ONLY, but not the "easiest", counterexample of an historical instance where the state has not been controlled by the large propertyholding classes.
In all of the other modes - slavery, feudalism, and capitalism - the state has most emphatically acted as the agent of the dominant propertied class. My reference throughout has been to capitalist states.
On the other hand, if your assumption, following many others, is that public ownership by the workers and peasants was nothing more than a legal fiction masking the fact that state property was effectively in the hands of "bureaucratic collectivists" "state capitalists", or an unspecified "new class", then these societies were not even an exception to the rule but a striking reaffirmation of it since here too the state was unequivocally at the service of the privileged and powerful minority rather than the mass of the population.
Which is it, Woj?
>Other examples from modern history may include Japan
> during Meji restoration, Alavardo government in Peru, Ataturk government
> in
> Turkey or Nasser Government in Egypt...or for that matter the Juarez
> and later PRI governments of Mexico, Taiwan, or even the 1930 military
> government of Brazil ...Australia
> where the liberal (British) government deliberately undercut the growing
> power of landowners in the 19th century ...And then there is
> pre-capitalist history full of struggles between the crown and landed
> gentry, of which Sweden can serve as one and good example..
MG: In all of the examples you cite, these states defended the system of private property against challenges from below led by socialist parties wanting to abolish it. Such concessions as were made were designed to split and reduce the influence of these parties or to spur economic development where the native bourgeoisie was too weak to mobilize capital on it's own - but always within the framework of capitalist development. They remained capitalist states, marked by greater or lesser degrees of autonomy from the ruling class, depending on the tasks they were called upon to perform, including "mediating" between the classes in cases of conflict.
> So the idea that state is by definition run by the propertied class is but
> a
> Left wing myth that is demonstrably false and does not even deserve to be
> called "vulgar Marxism" :)
MG: Try to avoid provocation, even with a smiley face. Reasonable people have been disputing these issues for a long time.
> Since it is clear, from historical record, that the state sometimes is
> controlled by the propertied class and sometimes it is not or even acts
> against the propertied class - a far more interesting approach, imho, is
> to
> investigate the conditions facilitating each of the outcomes instead
> shutting down any discussion by declaring by definition that state is
> eveil
> tool of the propertied class.
MG: I don't maintain that the state is an "evil" tool of the ruling class or ascribe any other moral properties to it. It is an instrument of social control and economic development which exists to advance the interests of large propertyholders, with incidental benefits accuring to the population to the extent these are deemed "affordable" and, crucially, do not fundamentally affect the power and property of the ruling class.
> I also have issues with your faith in the parliamentary process as a
> representation of the "vox populi" and counter-weight against evil power
> of
> state bureaucracy.
MG: Please cite those statements have I made in this thread which lead you to believe I'm proposing "faith" in bourgeois democracy as a counter to the "evil" state bureaucracy which is an integral part of the same system. Then we can properly evaluate your claim.
That may be true under certain conditions, but under
> other conditions parliaments are but useless chatterboxes unable to enact
> any meaningful reforms, and it takes reformist state bureaucracies to
> enact
> such reforms - examples: the introduction of welfare reforms in the UK and
> Sweden...
MG: Sweden has an advanced welfare state; the UK's is fraying at the edges. But they are still commonly understood to be capitalist states. Your arguments all seem to imply otherwise, which is how this thread began. If so, and if I wanted to be provocative with a smiley face, I would suggest you start attending town hall meetings where they are believed to be "socialist".
> I may add that the main obstacle to the introduction of universal social
> programs in the US was (ans till is to a large degree) not the capitalist
> class alone, but the idiotic party system in a symbiotic relation with
> various propertied and popular interests (e.g. Southern racists.) If it
> were
> solely for the Fed and mega-capitalists alone we would probably have a
> universal public welfare system on a par with that in Europe for a number
> of
> reasons, chief of them being companies offloading the cost of benefits on
> the public sector. It is the sleazy pork-and-barrel congressmen and
> politics of patronage in which they are engulfed up to their eyeballs that
> stands in a way of the health reform.
MG: The "sleazy pork-barrel congressmen" are not the source of the problem, but the byproduct. The source is the private healthcare industries, without which the bought congressional representatives could not exist. These self-interested corporate lobbies, moreover, enjoy the SUPPORT of the rest of the capitalist class which is also hostile to any public plan which legitimizes the principle of state intervention and threatens to raise personal and corporate taxes at no benefit to itself. Instead, the corporations, institutional investors, and the wealthy are accepting of extending very basic care to the uninsured who otherwise find a more costly way to emergency rooms - providing, of course, this extension of coverage is also paid for by other workers, cuts to medicare and other government programs. Do you not read the financial press?