On 2013-10-04, at 9:33 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: "The canard, as you put it, is as valid as ever. The state is the
> executive committee of the ruling class. The purpose of the executive
> branch, Congress, the courts, and the regulatory agencies is to ensure the
> smooth functioning of capitalist markets and to protect the power and
> property of those whose income derives primarily from profits and
> dividends."
>
> [WS:] Who decides what "the purpose" of something is - some armchair
> academic? Everything in this world serves multiple purposes, depending on
> who is using it. Capital owners certainly want to use the state to the
> purpose you stated, others use it for protection, production of public
> goods, income distribution, collective defense etc. To what extent each
> of these purposes is being served at the expense of other depends on the
> power relations - of course - but the claim that the state serves a
> singular purpose of being the executive committee of the bourgeoisie cannot
> be taken seriously. Not only that - it is counterproductive to the
> interests of the working class, although it may fit the mindset of petty
> bourgeois academics and self-styled anarchists.
Stripped of your gratuitous insults about my views being those of a "petty bourgeois academic" or "self-styled anarchists", of which I'm neither, we agree:
1. "Capital owners" want to use the state to ensure the smooth functioning of capitalist markets and to protect the power and property of those whose income derives primarily from profits and dividends.
2. Those who don't own capital look to the state to serve other purposes, such as "protection, production of public goods, income distribution, etc."
3. It is "power relations" which decide "to what extent each of these purposes is served at the expense of others".
You are reluctant to conclude the obvious, however: that it is the "capital owners", by virtue of their power, whose interests are served as the expense of of those who hve little or no capital. At the same time, despite what you atttribute to myself and others, historical materialists have always understood the capitalist state to have a more general interest in protecting the population the from physical harm and crisis-inducing economic deprivation. "The claim that the state serves a singular purpose" is yet another example of your manufacturing bogus differences in order to knock them down.