State Strategy or Global Strategy?

I entirely agree with a previous writer that it would be ridiculous to 
dismantle
existing welfare states or existing state-run enterprises.  It would not 
only be
ridiculous, it would be obscene precisely because, as has been pointed out, 
many
workers are better-off in state enterprises, and the working-class as a 
whole has
done better.   Everywhere we see privatization, the state workers are laid 
off by the
thousands, some to be unemployed, most to work for lower wages in other 
sectors, and
those remaining working harder for fewer benefits.  State enterprises are 
great, as
long as the country can afford them, but often they can't.

Further, is the creation of state-run enterprises in each country, one by 
one,
really a viable strategy to end capitalism and create a more equitable 
system?   I
don't think so.  I will argue there that the "state-run enterprise 
strategy" doesn't
work well as a method of transforming the world-system because it is 
"socialism in
one country" and not socialism as a world-system.

To begin, state-run enterprises do compete with capitalist enterprises, 
except where
they have a national monopoly, like the local postal service.  Precisely 
because
state-run enterprises, especially in the pro-capitalist countries, treat 
workers
better than many private run enterprises do, that the state-run firms 
cannot compete
as well as can the private firms.  (Alec Nove, whose solutions I don't care 
for,
nonetheless has written volumes on the inefficiencies of "socialism in one 
country.")

That is, because state run enterprises often follow safety regulations, 
provided
better retirement benefits, don't hire and fire workers at will, give pay 
raises each
year regardless, etc. they cannot produce as cheaply as private enterprises 
do.  In
capitalism, 'efficiency" simply means the level of exploitation of the 
workers hired,
or hired indirectly through sub-contractors.

Capitalist enterprises, once they become trans-national, leave the welfare 
state as
fast as they can, relocating all but highest tech sectors to the 
semi-periphery and
periphery to avoid paying the higher corporate taxes in welfare states.  
This is the
familiar process behind the successive waves of "deindustrialization" in 
core,
semi-peripheral countries, the so-called product cycle, and the 
feminization of
industry (especially textiles).  Private firms simply set up shop where 
costs are
cheaper, where workers are easier to control, where governments allow them 
to
pollute, etc.

In the welfare-state undergoing this process, private enterprises, as well 
as
remaining state-run firms and governments themselves, seek to pay less for 
the
products they need to do their business to pay the benefits that workers 
get, and
thus often turn to the world-market and import goods from private companies 
in poorer
countries.

At the same time, to pay for the benefits that workers in state-run 
enterprises
receive, taxes are raised to exorbitant levels (and as we know the wealthy 
who should
pay the most simply move their wealth out of reach in off-shore bank 
accounts).
This creates a situation in which the country has both high-taxes and
high-unemployment for the working class -- like most of Europe.

Meanwhile, although state-workers are paid better, they're not paid as well 
as the
upper strata "labor aristocracy" of private firms.  Naturally, they try to 
make their
wages go as far as they can.  So they buy imported goods produced in
private-enterprises in the periphery and semi-periphery, undermining 
workers in their
own countries who are (or who at one time had been) engaged in that 
activity.  In
short, it is no secret that the standards of living in socialistic core 
countries,
like Sweden, as well as pro-capitalist core countries, like the US, are 
subsidized by
the goods of the third world, just as the high standards of living among the
bureaucrats in the recently existing socialist states rested on similar 
imports or
wealth extracted from domestic workers.

These are just some of the reasons why the "state-run enterprise strategy" 
doesn't wo
rk well as a method of transforming the world-system.  Equality must be 
implemented
on a GLOBAL SCALE.

I think it would take too long for the movements to conquer each state and 
try to
convert all enterprises in that state to state-run enterprises and grapple 
with the
problem of fleeing capital.  I  don't think we can or should wait for each 
movement
to seize state power until all 200 plus states are conquered.  We should 
work
democratizing and equalizing the entire capitalist economy, not just that 
portion
that on doing the entire job at once while, in the meantime, those 
movements, which
should be democratic in nature, take state power do so.

We need a global strategy which at once covers the entire globe and leaves 
no place
for private businesses to run, and which also implements measures that 
reduce, and
eventually eliminate the insidious gap of wealth between periphery (Third 
World) and
core (First World),  between women and men, between white and people of 
color, old
and young, gay and straight, and which strictly regulates pollution, etc.