Louis writes:
Second, I don't think that you can exactly compare the state to a corporation. The state has much more autonomy. In the 1800s, parties were much more closely tied to social classes so that when they took power you could anticipate how they would govern. The differences between the landed gentry and the manufacturers were often so extreme that they led to civil war. In the USA today, and to a lesser degree in all the major industrial parties, you have a kind of permanent government that makes decisions that reflect the ruling class interest but not in a mechanical fashion. This is especially true when it comes to foreign policy. You have sharply divergent explanations about why the US invaded Iraq, all with a certain degree of plausibility.
============================== The state does have a degree of relative autonomy, but the latitude it enjoys is elastic, varying in relation to the historical circumstances which the ruling class finds itself in. As you know, when the bourgeoisie was threatened by revolution, it accepted to surrender a good deal of political power it normally exercises through its traditional party(s) to fascism because extraordinary measures were demanded to preserve its property. Similarly in depression and war, the capitalists will accept a degree of state control which they won't countenance in times of peace and prosperity.
It's my impression that over the past three decades and especially since the reversals in the USSR and China, the bourgeoisie has been as secure as it has ever been, and that this has been reflected both in its efforts to dismantle the welfare state and its confidence to allow housebroken social democratic parties to govern despite the levelling impulses of their working class supporters. Maybe this wil change as workers in the advanced capitalist countries continue to lose ground and become more restive, but that is still not the case to date. I agree there have been sharply divergent views about the invasion of Iraq, but within the ruling class rather than between the ruling class and the state, as I think you may be suggesting. They've turned, as all policy questions do, on whether the invasion of Iraq advanced or harmed American capitalism's interests at home and abroad, the same debate as had occured over the Vietnam war. These strategic differences within the bourgeosie were reflected from the beginning at the level of the state - between the overconfident Bush cabinet and its neocon advisors, on the one hand, and the more cautious military command and bipartisan intelligence and foreign policy establishment, backed by the international bourgeoisie, on the other. When it became apparent the occupation was going badly, the latter pounced, and often in a very public way. Part of its current exasperation and confusion - the Democrats typify this mood - is that there is no easy way out of the "mess" the inept Bush team has left for the revamped executive committee of the ruling class to clean up.
