On 2010-08-13, at 3:35 PM, SA wrote:
> Marv Gandall wrote:
>
>> I start with the assumption that the capitalists' general class interest is to secure and advance their power and property against those who would curtail it at home and abroad, and that they effectively control the state which is the instrument for doing so. I evaluate state policies within this context.
>
> Then in a certain sense our previous exchange was a bit superfluous, since the position you were taking was one you had adopted by assumption.
But I tried to support my assumptions, what you then described as my "axioms", with reference to the historic and current relationship between the US and Israel and the Israel lobby. I was prepared to accept, for example, though I considered it exceptional, your position that Truman's support of Israeli statehood was based on humanitarian concerns and philo-semitism. But my assumptions led me to dig a little further and I was rather quickly rewarded with evidence that Cold War considerations were more decisive, as I had expected, in resolving the internal debate within the administration. Doesn't everyone, including yourself, proceed on the basis of assumptions derived from our experience and reading which then have to be tested empirically? The important thing is to be open to the possibility that they may prove to be applicable only in part or not at all, and to revise the assumptions accordingly.
> But actually, I would suggest - tell me if I'm wrong - that this is only your assumption when it comes to foreign policy, not domestic policy. I'm guessing you see domestic policy as being less determinate and more the outcome of complex struggles between many groups, not only those within the capitalist class. To the extent that domestic policy is shaped by a legislature (as opposed to foreign policy, which is mostly formulated by the executive), it would be pretty orthodox for a Marxist to say this, I think. The legislature is a terrain of class struggle, after all.
Unfortunately, your suggestion is wrong. I don't make the distinction which you do between foreign and domestic policy. I think all policy formation is characterized by "complex struggles between many groups, not only those within the capitalist class", including in the domestic arena. How else to explain popular struggles which express themselves both in the street and in the legislative arena? That said, I do not consider the legislature, courts, and regulatory agencies as "neutral" territory, to which the working class has equal access and is able to use these institutions to fundamentally alter the balance of power between itself and the corporations. I believe my view, rather than the one you express, is consistent with the "orthodox Marxist" tradition, but I'll concede that frustrated social democrats and many Marxists have abandoned this over time because they have come to accept parliamentary politics as the most effective means of pressing for reform and aquiring power. However, because socialist ideology was adapted to justify a pragmatic turn to electoral politics, this does not mean the ideological adaption to a "neutral" state has any basis in reality. What examples can you provide to demonstrate otherwise?
You might notably cite, as others have, the reform legislation passed by the New Deal, the model for social democrats and those Marxists who proclaim the liberal-democratic state is "contested terrain". But I'd ask you to consider whether the nexus of reforms which constituted the New Deal would have passed if the ruling class was united against them and prepared to suppress the unions and other popular organizations which were agitating for them. As it turned out, despite the verbal pyrotechnics against Roosevelt by conservatives within the ruling class, the pragmatic wing of the bourgeoisie came to view unionization, social insurance, and public works programs as necessary in the grave circumstances to a) revive demand and b) to contain the growing influence of the Communists in the popular organizations to the benefit of more accomodating social democrats seeking reforms within the framework of capitalism, reforms which were designed to ensure that they would not fundamentally alter property relations over time. Despite the advances they represented in ameliorating the worst excesses of capitalism, New Deal collective bargaining reforms were encased within a web of regulations designed to contain rather than stimulate industrial unrest, social insurance programs were similarly limited in scope, and job creation spending and other forms of state intervention in the economy were seen as temporary expedients to be quickly wound down when demand revived.
Of course, the ruling class has to be able to afford reforms aimed at reviving productivity and dampening social unrest in a peaceful and orderly way. If it can't, it will almost certainly opt for repression in defence of its interests. In such cases, the presumably neutral terrain of the liberal-democratic state is quickly exposed as an instrument of the ruling class which can be unilaterally dismantled at will, and those who considered that it stood above and mediated the struggle between the classes are forced to withdraw from politics or resort to dangerous underground activity directed towards the revolutionary overthrow of a system which has exhausted its capacity to reform itself.