Re: Forwarded from Tom O'Lincoln (state capitalism)

[Greg Schofield <gschofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stuart Lawrence wrote:

> > We live in an age when nearly all the means of production have become
> > mediated through the state via public companies. The old bourgeoisie have
> > expropriated themselves:
>
>The mediation is not so much through the state (public companies --
>corporations -- have evolved legally from entities with strictly defined legal
>charters into interchangeable pools of capital with the sole mandate of
>maximizing shareholders' returns) but through the financial markets and the
>institutions of speculative and finance capital.

Hang on just a minute - legal entities and legal charters sound like the
state to me - combined with company law and the legal responsibilities of
directors as defined by the law. All put in place to serve the interest of
the bourgeoisie for sure. But the state becomes (the bourgeois state
obviously) the first and final arbitrator of the directors action. That is
why I used the term mediated very precisely.

I am not saying the state owns or controls these companies, far from it. In
the first place ownership is by sleight of legal-hand invested with the
stock holders while control is given to their employees. Mediated is the
precise term, the employee (directors) are legal definitions governed by
the state.

The state makes the rules and is empowered to inspect and sanction those
who are in breach. However look what has disappeared but good old
unmmediate private property in the means of production. Look also at how
the bourgeoisie have divorced themselves from the means of production and
made themselves unnecessary.

>But the two most significants aspect of this transformation -- the
>evolution of
>the modern corporation with its relatively passive shareholders and active
>professional management, and the internationalization of these corporations --
>have not changed in any way the basic imperative of market-oriented production
>and investment.

Well of course it is a bourgeois form of socialisation after all. But they
have changed nonetheless, the management reflects the bourgeois class as it
now is (largely redundant), the old bourgeoisie could at least run the
means of production the same cannot be said of present management.

This is where glossing over by abstractions misses the point. Yes some
things remain exactly as there were, but other features, critical facets,
do change and the class powers change in the process.

Consider this, based on the all too apparent inability of managers to
actually run the means of production properly. Lets assume nothing at all
changes, except that in some special circumstances, and in the shareholders
interest, the directors are removed from a particular company (it is in
some trouble) and the employees themselves are asked to fill those vacant
positions. I forecast that in a company, still solvent but in trouble (and
one that actual makes something rather than services), that just by this
minor shift such a company would rapidly become more profitable, just on
the basis that those running the company actually know what it does.

I use this fanciful example only to illustrate the parasitic nature of
management (ie those who do not so much manage crisis but manage to create
crisis). The reason for this parasitism is they reflect the class
expectations of their employers - justifying their existence and bending
reality to always present what their employer's want to hear (they are not
managers in any technical sense just courtiers).  It is not accidental but
stems directly from the divorce of the bourgeoisie from the means of
production.

The frightening feature of present day capitalism is not its power but its
lack of control and little of this has to do with markets as such (except
of course that market where the gambling takes place and the bourgeoisie
show their faces).

Except for the stockmarket (a relatively contrived and removed casino),
most of the other so-called markets are so monopolised - they are only
markets in name, they do not drive but are driven by these massive
companies. Further more, investment driven would be nice, if it were true
(I trust we are not talking about rearranging the deckchairs through
takeovers but greenfield type investments). Investment driven is hardly
true for the bigger companies, first they only invest their petty cash,
second they rarely invest in anything which does not proffer a speculative
return (hence they tend to invest in big projects which they never care if
they work or not - a very uncapitalist attitude).

Stuart, I have taken issue with these things because they are the very
things inverted and perverted by this turn of bourgeois history. Of course
I have overstated the case, but there is more than a grain of truth that
while the system is still anchored in capital-labour relation and
bourgeoisie suck up and abuse the surplus they are able to milk, just about
everything else has ceased being what it was - again the bourgeosie as Marx
foresaw have in effect expropriated themselves they have not left the stage
but they have eaten themselves inside out.


>The increasing dominance of finance capital has at the same time
>brought corporate managers under a more uniform discipline focused on
>externally-determined goals.  It would be a mistake to apply the "rentier"
>label
>to capitalists who are increasingly focused on pursuing speculative profits
>which represent the redistribution of existing wealth. Speculation intensifies
>the quest for short-term gains bearing little relationship to a long-term
>general rate of profit. At the same time, the political solution to managing
>crises of overproduction has now developed into a formula of debt crisis,
>currency market manipulation, privatization, and transnational rationalization
>of excess productive capacity, allowing US capitalists to avoid the most
>devastating cyclical damage through the exercise of global hegemony.

Well all true enough, any disagreement I have with this is negligible.

>Socialization and nationalization of risks and costs combined with the
>expropriation of capital and natural resources has been the political
>theory and
>practice of global capitalism throughout, and clearly this is not a model that
>can be mechanistically adapted to socialist goals.

Why not?

I am sorry to be so flippant, but again why not?

I mean I believed Marx and Engels had no problem with this and it was a far
less developed tendency in their day. Of course the state stands in the way
and that is surely the point.


>Capitalism as a world system
>seems to have created more international competition and conflict than
>generalized class conflict; how to transcend the former in order to bring
>about
>the latter is the great question of our time.

I daresay as long as we remain passive elements (this is not personal but
directed at the communist movement as a whole) then it will no doubt continue.

Stuart, the point is surely that because the bourgeoisie have gone so far
half our job is done, however we seem totally unwilling to do the other
half - that is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the working class
becoming the leading class - the political platform for this seems to write
itself yet the movement stalls, looking over the horizon for a socialism
that is already half delivered.

I will go so far to claim that history has performed a great irony and few
of us seem to get the joke. Our socialism has been overtaken by events and
turned it into utopianism which we cling too and imagine as a goal and
objective.

Our goal and objective is the class.

I wait for further repsonses.

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia