[lbo-talk] The State (Was: Ralph loves the nice plutocrats)

[Somebody Somebody]

An unrelated issue is the tacit assumption that even if the state at a particular historical juncture is serving the interest of a ruling class of some sort, that the policies it pursues are necessarily not in the best interest of the working class. I'm afraid this isn't inherently the truth, and needs to be determined on an empirical case-by-case basis. Of course, it's so much easier to follow the catechisms of Marxist orthodoxy according to which we can assume things like "privatization is always bad".

For instance, although some persist in doubting the obvious, the transition to capitalism really has brought hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. That it's also raised the gini coefficient and enriched party-connected capitalists isn't necessarily evidence against this fact. What's striking is that health indicators after 1978 continued their upward swing started under Mao, while *simultaneously* there was for the first time, a massive increase in per capita income, fixed investment, and mass availability of consumer products. In other words, putting an equal sign between Deng Xiaoping and Ronald Reagan as both neo-liberals is both facile and misleading. One industrialized his country and raised agricultural productivity and the other increased the national debt and lowered income tax rates on the rich. So, sure, we could say both served the bourgeoisie, except that one actually *created* a capitalist class where none existed before.