Re: executive committee

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 02/10/00 01:43PM >>>
>Max writes: >If you think the state is the executive committee of
>the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too.<

*Sigh*

Marx did not write in the _Manifesto_ that the state is the executive
committee of the bourgeoisie.

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CB: That was Marx and Engels , who wrote _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ . And Engels wrote _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_.

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He wrote that the executive of the modern state is a committee for
managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie--suggesting that the
democratically-elected legislature of the modern state is something
else.

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CB: Yea , and that statement in _The Manifesto_ was a sort of poetic thing. Extending the metaphor which is based on the structure of a joint stock company,  the executive is the subordinate of the "board of directors", not the "board of directors"itself.   The "board of directors" picks and fires the executive officers , such as the President in the U.S.

The less poetic, more scientific and complete Marxist theory of the state is in Engels' _ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_

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This misquotation has served the function through the twentieth
century of making Marx appear closer to Lenin than he in fact was...

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CB: Lenin's theory of the state in _The State and Revolution_ is based on Engels' in _The Origin_.

Also, it is Marx who proudly proclaimed that he had not discovered classes but rather the "dictatorship of the proletariat", as the form of the socialist state.  Lenin was in fact virtually identical with Marx and Engels on the general character of the state. Lenin was a loyal executor of Marx and Engels' "estate on the state".


CB