Re: No retreat in Doha

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

From: "Sabri Oncu" <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>

========================

My 2 cents, adjusted for inflation [or is it deflation?]


> "September 11 and its aftermath have starkly exposed what was the
glaring
> weakness of the movement all along. Its analysis focussed on the
dwindling
> power of the state and overweening corporate power.

=========
This could be debated until the cows come home, but the criticism is
not on the dwindling power of 'the state' but how the twisted
prerogatives of 'the state' systemically ignore and block the needs
and interests of the working class. National security is not Social
security. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that most political
parties in the North are themselves organized as corporations and as
such are in competition to secure capital via proposing policies to
their respective clients; other corporations. Exxon sells oil, the
Republicrats sell legislation. That rabid left-winger Jagdish
Bhagwati:

"An altogether contrasting approach, on the other hand, has been to
make the government again lose its autonomy, not to the economist, but
now to the economic system whose agents within a pluralistic political
regime play the policy influencing game that determines the policy
outcome. The lobbies compete for policy outcomes; the government is de
facto a playground where this competition or conflict results in
policy outcome. The government has no ego, no identity, in this
approach. It is best described as the *clearinghouse government*
approach to political economy modeling...the government is captive to
the economic system." [Political Economy and International Economics,
p 155]

Thus we have books being published called "The Captive State" not "The
Wimpy State." The phrase I learned in school was 'State Capitalism.'


> Its disregard for the
> state was such that it had no strategy for achieving the political
power
> necessary to deliver its aims, and fell back on subverting the state
by
> declaring it impotent.
=========
Not the case. It's across the board disgust with political parties who
have used the appurateses of State institutions to secure significant
barriers to entry against competition. The state is not impotent
against corporate power, it creates it via the ability to make law in
favor of some interests [the few] against others; the tyranny of
organized minorities.


> All that looks a bit threadbare now in the midst of
> war, as the state re-emerges as hugely important in delivering that
most
> basic of its functions - security. Patriotism has re-appeared as a
powerful
> force, clawing in unprecedented poll ratings for Bush and Blair.
Nearly
> every day, we hear of the state granting itself more power -
trampling on
> civil liberties and over financial privacy, and even broaching the
question
> of higher taxation. The anti-corporate movement can no longer
convincingly
> bemoan that the governments of western democracies are simply
puppets of
> corporate interests. It has to revise its analysis of political
power and
> develop its own understanding of how to achieve it."

==========
Well, when in a crunch sure the State is going to trample on civil
liberties, but this ignores how, via the creation of the corporation
we now have organizations that have more rights than citizens. Pfizer
can make Prozac, citizens can't make Ecstasy, ADM can grow corn and
wheat with subsidies, citizens can't grow dope. It's no accident that
corps. got more rights earlier than African Americans and women.
Additionally, some corporations interests are advanced in the process
of creating an even more authoritarian society. Computer and software
firms creating databases for tracking troublemakers. Facial
recognition systems [complete with subsidized R & D], contractors that
sell police gear, the war industry, the list can go on.

There are groups in the US who are trying to challenge citizen's
perceptions of the regulatory state and go directly for the
jugular--how corporations are legally constituted via legislation and
jurisprudence. This will be a long educational process. We know we can
have the complex division/organization of labor with a totally
different property and contract 'scheme.' Grabbing the State to
accomplish this will be hard as hell, but so was ending slavery [in
the North]. Even slavery still survives in many parts of the world and
may, according to some estimates, be growing.


"The truth is, however, that neither capitalism nor socialism has much
to do with the economic realities of the modern world...The
relationship of capitalism to democracy may remain problematic and
controversial, but the relationship of the multinational, monopolistic
corporation to democracy involves no such mysteries. The corporation
is incompatible with freedom and equality, whether these are construed
individually or socially. Like the night in which all cows are black,
it obliterates the distinction between public and private...It is an
enemy of democracy in all its forms. While the arid debate about
capitalism and socialism goes on, the corporation prospers. More than
does the problem of scale, it threatens democracy at its vital center.

"If the corporation is not to defeat democracy, then democracy must
defeat the corporation--which is to say that the curbing of monopoly
and the transformation of corporatism is a political, not an economic
task. Democracy proclaims the priority of the political over the
economic; the modern corporation rebuts that claim by its very
existence." [Benjamin Barber]


Ian