the state by Devine, James 27 March 2002 23:16 UTC
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 ^^^^^^^^ CB: One orthodox version of Marxism theorizes a special and somewhat separate institution of repression, standing bodies of armed men specializing outside of production, from the beginning of class exploitative society. The knightly class was something of this in feudalism. In this scheme the state's purpose is to protect the private property of the ruling class, and in that sense the state and the "economy" are united. Maybe here it is said that the " separation "of the state from the bourgeoisie is in part a bourgeois self-congratulatory myth of laissez-faire and libertarianism. The bourgeoisie, as a exploiting ruling class cannot get on without monopoly of the special repressive apparatus. This is a sine qua non of a ruling class. The primitive accumulation of capitalism could not have been carried out without enormous state repression in Europe, and repression by sailor-soldiers from boats and colonial settlements all around the world. On the other hand, within another orthodox version, there is recognition that in the history of capitalism there may be even more integration between the state and the bourgeoisie with the rise of monopoly capitaism with an increase of state-monopoly processes and institutions. Some of the recently developed state-monopoly processes and institutions are privatization, where the the private sector begins to directly carryout public works for profit. Heavy duty and relatively newly powerful state-monopoly institutions are the FED , the IMF, the World Bank. Also, there seems to be some pattern of specific individual corps becoming almost " the government corps" in a given period , such as Enron, Carlyle Group, George Schultz's company a number of years ago.
