Editor’s Note: Excerpted from the report of the LRNA Steering Committee, December 2004.

We have said many times that the introduction of electronics and robotics into production represents the introduction of qualitatively new means of production. This changes everything, including the form of the state.

Globalization - capitalism in the age of electronics - has as its imperative the removal of all barriers to the mobility of capital in all its forms, including those barriers imposed by the state.

This does not mean that the nature of the state changes. A state is an instrument of the ruling class to maintain its position as the dominant class. Any change in the form or function of the state machine undertaken by the ruling class is made in accordance with its changing needs and always with reference to strengthening and extending its position as the ruling class. Today, the principal needs of the ruling class involve adjusting to the changes in private property.

New State Form Emerging

Global capital is chafing under the historically derived encumbrances imposed by the nation-state. (Here we mean the responsibility of the national state to its "population," to the nation as a whole). These encumbrances must be and are being removed, and in the process the institutional structure of the bourgeois democratic republic is being destroyed. In its place is being erected the initial pieces of a new state form compatible with the present day needs of capital.

 This transformation is expressed as a merger of the government and the major corporations and is being accomplished through the implementation of neoliberal economic, fiscal, and social policies. The key mechanisms employed in this transformation are deregulation of economic activity, including the gutting and non-enforcement of protective legislation and rules; privatization of public goods and services; and fiscal policies that distribute tax benefits upward and tax burdens downward, deferring to future generations payment on a historic debt and imposing budget cuts that result in the dismantling of the public health and social welfare system. It is important to emphasize that this "merger" of the government and the corporations is in fact corporations assuming direct control over governmental functions as dictated by the needs of capital.

The social and political consequences of this "marketizing" of the economy and society will set the long-range context on the eve of an historic social movement. We are witnessing the sharpest polarization of wealth and poverty ever in the world and in our country. In 1960, the gap in wealth between the top 20% of U.S. households and the bottom 20% was 30-fold; four decades later, the gap was 75-fold. This intensifying polarization is caused not only by the automatic operation of the market, but also is a direct consequence of the operation of neoliberal policies.

Along with the destruction of the welfare state and the resulting reliance of social services on philanthropy, is the erosion of due process and avenues for redress of grievances. This process occurs through the enactment of draconian laws such as the Patriot Act.

 As a result of these developments, we can discern the outlines of political confrontation on a class basis. With the "destruction of the middle" in society, there is a growing erosion of the political buffers that formerly absorbed the people's energy in reformist struggle. In the absence of the political buffers provided by the welfare state, the stage is being set for the inevitable confrontation with the coercive power of the state.

Protecting Private Property

The ruling class's aim in transforming the state is not limited to expanding opportunities for accumulation. U.S. capitalism must also restructure the state in order to maintain its hegemonic position in the world and to deal forcefully with the social eruption certain to occur as the impoverishment of the people becomes intolerable. Again, the state form is determined by the needs of the ruling class and its ability to reorganize society in accordance with its needs.

In an earlier period, U.S. capital needed a nation-state in the form of a bourgeois democratic republic. Key features of such a republic included free public education, the franchise and popularly elected legislative bodies, the separation of church and state, and the capacity to mobilize a standing citizen army. Such innovations were necessary for the development and defense of the national market and to ensure for capital the existence of an indoctrinated working class capable of functioning in an increasingly complex industrial factory system.

 Today, under conditions of global electronics based production and dominance of speculative capital, it would appear that the days of the bourgeois democratic republican form of government are numbered.

It is easy to pander to the shallow vanities or prejudices of people or frighten them. It is much more difficult and dangerous to disengage them from their cherished beliefs. The American people are profoundly committed to their beliefs in democracy, economic justice and civil liberties; beliefs that were essential to the effective functioning of the bourgeois democratic republican form of government. They will not easily part with these beliefs.

 As the ideological aspects of the social struggle unfold, we have to keep our "strategic eyes" on the historical importance of the developing polarity as the basis for an emerging social movement. The polarization of wealth and poverty expresses the developing class polarization in society and the destruction of the social "middle." Movements develop on the basis of such extreme shifts in wealth and class formation; ideologies that appeal to actual social interests coalesce with these movements. But an ideology that galvanizes a movement is not necessarily the one that expresses its real interests and takes it towards its actual aims. The big question today is which ideology —capitalist or communist— will express and guide this movement?

Growing Political Instability

 What are the consequences of an ideology that does not express the real interests and aims of the working class? Of significance is the existence of a strain of anti-government fervor that expresses the discontent, cynicism, fears, and swelling anger of people who are feeling but not understanding their economic insecurity and the general destruction of society. It is this face of the anti-government sentiment that is the most dangerous. It captures the valid anger of a social group whose needs are not being met by capitalism and deflects it away from political activity that holds the government responsible for the well being of society.

As the new state form emerges, it provokes a response among the military, political, bureaucratic and professional sectors. It should be obvious that these reactions don't flow from any principled position on the side of the poor or even the well being of the American people as a whole; they are reactions to the undermining of the bureaucratic and "institutional" aspects of government. Nonetheless, these reactions represent a potential avenue of political instability that we should keep an eye on, but while we resist the pull to tail this sort of opposition.

New Condtions, and New Tactics

 The political change our country is undergoing is greater than the summation of its alarming manifestations. These political changes express the new epoch, and they will be monumental. People are fearful, and they have good reason. As the political organ of the ruling class, the state undergoes changes in form to protect private property under changing conditions. The political changes today express the beginning of the end of an industrial-based society and the corresponding break in unity between the workers and capitalists in production. History helps put this into perspective.

 Along with the rise of industry and the need to develop and protect a national market came capitalism and the nation state. Through the stages of capitalism's rise and expansion, the state form strengthened the unity of the workers and the capitalists. This unity was never a commonality of interests. But at different stages, the state ensured the creation of a class of propertyless workers dependent upon the capitalists. But with the breaking of the connection between workers and capitalists in production and with the frontier opened up by global production and financial speculation, we are seeing the beginning of the end of a state form that expresses and promotes the unity of the nation

 We are witnessing the transition from a republic that promised to serve the common good of society to a government that enthrones the corporations, renounces any responsibility to society, and puts the "common good" on the market. In order to control the inevitable social response and instability and to protect private property, the ruling class is preparing an American form of fascism that fits this new epoch. In the face of these political changes of epochal and historical significance, we align our political tasks and tactics.

 

June.2006.Vol16.Ed4
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