Social scientists should assuredly keep the structural constraints of capitalism in mind when developing state theory in the 21st century. However, we should not lose site of the fact that individuals also make history, and that a single-minded focus on the structural constraints of capitalism may only lead to a functionalist interpretation of the state, alongside a cynical approach to politics.
To preserve its position, capital has no other choice than to curtail democracy. As class conflicts heightens, the need for authoritarian governance, “preventive fascism,” grows.
Marxism has a future only if its practitioners confront unexpected developments with a determination to find their roots using the methodology and concepts of Marxism, not by trying to show that the evidence is wrong out of a misplaced fear that any unexpected development threatens to undermine Marxism.
Contrary to Professor Kotz’s view that “the usual profit mechanism that drives accumulation no longer works in the normal fashion,” it is doing just that.
The problem with the current trend of idea-centered scholarship on neoliberalism is that it seeks to isolate, and elevate the importance of ideas and experts, giving them a causal primacy that supposedly operate independently from materialist economic forces, the distribution of class power and the conduct of class struggle.
What is the capitalist democratic state and how should it be confronted?
Capitalist competition is the vehicle that transforms democracy into dictatorship.
Luxemburg’s 1906 pamphlet, “The Mass Strike,” analyzed the essentially spontaneous character of the gigantic strikes that accompanied the Russian revolution of 1905, and it showed that the workers learned and developed in the course of the struggle, not only strategy and tactics, but also revolutionary ideas. In a similar vein, she also wrote a stinging critique of Lenin’s more top-down concept of revolutionary organization, in a famous response to his writings on the vanguard party to lead. Also in this vein, Luxemburg penned an essay offering critical support to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, with her criticism centering mainly on the establishment of a single-party state, something she accurately predicted would undermine the democratic aims of the revolution.
What determines which path labor takes will be the degree to which labor mobilization spreads and is tied to a broader political vision. That in turn will depend on the kind of patient, workplace-based organizing that rarely makes headlines.
As neoliberalism pushes us away from finding collective solutions to social problems some turn right towards hate and racism.
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