I wrote: > > More and more, I think of state bureaucrats and politicians under capitalism > > as a fraction of capital, similar to banking capital. ...
Carrol writes: > This would fit in with Wood's argument (in _Democracy against Capitalism_) that capitalism artificially divided the political into the two separate realms of "the political" and "the economy." If one takes "politics" to be concerned with the allocation of human activity, then "economics" is the guise that this political activity takes on under capitalism. And in the latest stages of capitalism the line has become thinner and thinner.< I agree with her on this one. In fact, it's what I think of as the orthodox Marxist position. Under feudalism and other pre-capitalist modes of production (and post-capitalist ones like USSR-type systems), the state is not separated from "the economy." The feudal lord is not only one's political boss, but one's economic boss (and so-called "non-economic" means are used to extort one's surplus-labor). With the rise of capitalism, we see the separation out of a separate "state" sector which monopolizes the use of violence (or gives license to individuals to use violence) and leaves the "private" capitalists as being mostly non-violent in their methods. JD
