On 2012-01-24, at 11:54 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Jan 24, 2012, at 8:37 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> The bourgeois state cannot be pro working class by definition.
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> Wasn't Marx's view that the executive branch was the bourgeoisie's domain, but the legislative branch was contested?
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> Doug
If so, this view would have been formulated in the context of mass struggles for the universal franchise, when expectations for what it portended for the political organization of the working class and the conquest of state power were higher than subsequently turned out to be historically warranted.
Certainly, I wouldn't today draw that separation between the legislative and executive branches of the state or any of its other agencies. The influence of "the 99%" is negligible in all parts of the state apparatus. There is so little to choose between Democrats and Republicans in Congress and social democratic and conservative parliamentarians in Europe that it seems preposterous to suggest they are proof that these legislatures are in any way "contested" arenas which pit the working class against the bourgeoisie. Insofar they are are "contested terrain", the conflict is strictly between the liberal and conservative wings of the bourgeoisie.
This understanding, however, does not prevent my supporting the political goals of the mass organizations which have ofttimes been realized, even if only partially, through legislation typically supported by the left-centre parties and opposed by those on the right. Gains have been made which need to be defended by parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means.
But my understanding - which I'm not confident is shared by many others on the far left and social democratic left, as this discussion has shown - is also that these reforms always require that the bourgeoisie see them as consistent with the political and economic needs of capitalism at certain conjunctures. If there is no ruling class imprimatur they will be rejected, and the movements pressing for the reforms will be ignored or repressed. There are, of course, internal debates within the ruling class as to whether and when such reforms are necessary as well as ongoing disagreement over what levels of taxation and spending are required to maintain social peace and economic growth, and these debates, as noted above, unfold in the legislatures and other state institutions.
So, yes, I continue to believe in the primacy of class and that the bourgeois state cannot be pro working class by definition.
As to Somebody's discovery that the nature and depth of reforms vary between what he concedes to be "bourgeois democratic states", I've also understood that to be the case for some time.