Re: SSSP session on Democratic Party, comment

Mark --

Just because someone wrote a book claiming to have "Brought the state back
in" doesn't simply erase 150 years of contrary social thought!

Of course governmental institutions can act against the interests of one or
another group of capitalists. That is not the question. The empirical
question is whether "THE STATE" is some sort of free-floating institution
de-linked from the class relations of production, distribution, exploitation
that underlie and saturate our social insitutions.

Is this "State" some sort of mystical muse that arbitrarily and whimsically
makes policy? Or does it rigidly follow Weber's or Michel's abstract social
psychology handbook on what the "rules of behavior" must be when an
organization reaches a certain size?

In the justifiable philosophical battle against extreme, narrow "economic
determinism/economic reductionism" , many people flee to a kind of
"psychological reductionism" which rather subtly "brings rigid theories of
human nature back in".  It usually is nothing but a form of ordinary
liberalism-pluralism that ultimately asserts that oppressed classes CAN
achieve liberation by simply changing the rules of the state. It also
assumes that the classes in power will step aside.

I'm inclined to believe that the classes in power will resort to the worst
kinds of mass brutality and murder imaginable before they give up power.
But that's an empirical question. Care to look at the evidence?

Alan Spector --who hopes this doesn't come across as contentious, really :)>

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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <mrkdwhit@wallet.com>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 2:21 AM
Subject: Re: SSSP session on Democratic Party, comment


>>
>>Exposing aspects of capitalist injustice certainly does open the door to
>>reformism or intellectual gadflyism without praxis -- both of which could
>>undermine the struggle for deeper social transformation. On the other
hand,
>>one could argue that merely changing the structure of the election laws
>>similarly only plays into the reformism that asserts that social injustice
>>and inequality can be achieved without confronting the class nature of the
>>state, and the state itself, and the class (capitalist) which controls the
>>state.
>
>        I'm confused about the sentence above. Do you mean, "one could
argue
>that merely changing the structure of the election laws
>>similarly only plays into the reformism that asserts that social justice
>>and equality can be achieved"?
>
>        All I can suggest is to read that person's article (the web
address)
>I passed dealing with the effects of government structure on the urban
>level, which belie an argument about the economic essentialism of the
>government, the argument you are posing. Come on, I thought the state was
>'brought back in' about twenty years ago, at least? ;-)
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>Mark Whitaker
>University of Wisconsin-Madison
>
>