The size of government - is it a relevant debate for the left?

[GPDP]

Since the intent of this thread is to spark a discussion rather than me asking a genuine question, I decided to start it in Politics rather than Learning. Hopefully I chose wisely.

For those not in the know, when I speak about the "size of government", I am talking about the subject in the sense employed in modern American political debate - that is, big vs. small government. The former is associated with liberals and "socialists", and the later with conservatives and "libertarians".

The reason I ask if it is even relevant for us to engage in this debate is because it appears to be mostly a right-wing talking point on the part of conservatives and other right-wingers who are for low taxes and increased deregulation and privatization. That is, while many on the left, particularly anarchists, would certainly call for less government intrusion into individuals' lives (much in the same way that mainstream left-liberals would call for less government intrusion in terms of greater civil liberties and rights), we do not seem to engage on whether there should be a bigger government or a smaller government. Rather, our focus is on who it is that is governing (is it the working class or the capitalist class?), and even whether there should be government at all. And for those that argue for little or no government, the focus is still very different to that of the right-wingers that preach smaller government, as their conception of small government essentially means lassiez-faire capitalism, to which we are almost certainly all opposed.

So, seeing as the leftist conception of government and the state lies on a completely different paradigm to that of mainstream ideologies, it is clear why it seems we do not care much for the debate on its size. Nevertheless, should we still tackle it from a leftist perspective? I would like to hear some opinions on this matter. And excuse me if my thoughts seem a bit jumbled. I kinda thought this all up on the fly lol.

[Dimentio]

I think its more relevant to discuss what the government is doing and should be doing. I think the real issue is not welfare programmes or what should be publicly funded, but how much control the working class should have over the state.

I think that we rather should seek to support communalisation than nationalisation. It is harder to privatise a healthcare system controlled by the working class cooperatives, than a state-owned healthcare system for example.

But we should oppose privatisation in general. Because it decreases public accountability.

[FreeFocus]

Would the size of an overseer make much of a difference to a slave? You feel the crack of the whip whether the pig is short or tall, small or big. The size of government is a non-issue by itself, and is only relevant insofar as its size is conducive to leftist goals (because I'm an anarchist, this means getting it smaller). I think it's much easier to face the state if its military budget is small and it does not possess as much violence potential.

Dimentio also raised some good points about health care, for example, and I like his ideas.

[Yazman]

There's no reason to have a large government at all, with modern technology. Even basic things like the internet eliminate the very need for many "in-between" jobs.

[Revy]

The "size of government" is not our issue. "Big government" usually refers to government involvement in social programs, like welfare, or the idea of having universal health care ("government-run health care" is the new catch-phrase).

The same people who rail against "high taxes" or "big government" are the same people who are either passive or supportive when it comes to imperialism, xenophobic border controls, legislative attacks on civil liberties/civil rights. very hypocritical. One politician can stand up and say "I hate big government" and then go on about how there needs to be legislation banning abortion, drugs, gay marriage, etc.

[mykittyhasaboner]

"Big government" is a pejorative, and it is a gross simplification of the character of a given state. Really, its just utter rubbish used by libertarians and other laissez-faire morons to scare people away from state-interventionism mainly as it is practiced by the 'Democratic Party' as well as all who pushed for corporate bailouts.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Whenever I hear someone talk of "big government," I ask them "What do you mean, 'big'? Compared to what? How do you measure the 'size' of government, exactly?"

Then they'll try to come up with a definition, which will clarify where they stand politically.

"Big government," without any explanation, is just a meaningless political catchphrase. With an explanation, the catchphrase becomes unnecessary. Don't talk about the "size" of government. Governments don't have sizes. Talk about specific functions of government - are we dealing with the function of providing health care, delivering the mail, repressing dissent, fighting imperialist wars, or what? Some kinds of "big government" are good, and others are bad.

[GPDP]

Whenever I hear someone talk of "big government," I ask them "What do you mean, 'big'? Compared to what? How do you measure the 'size' of government, exactly?"

Then they'll try to come up with a definition, which will clarify where they stand politically.

"Big government," without any explanation, is just a meaningless political catchphrase. With an explanation, the catchphrase becomes unnecessary. Don't talk about the "size" of government. Governments don't have sizes. Talk about specific functions of government - are we dealing with the function of providing health care, delivering the mail, repressing dissent, fighting imperialist wars, or what? Some kinds of "big government" are good, and others are bad.

Indeed, which is why it's mostly right-wing conservatives, libertarians, and other hardcore cappies who use it. It is central to their ideology. In their view, the size of government appears to lie in some kind of spectrum of their own making, most commonly one based on "economic freedom" i.e. how laissez-faire the economy is. The more laissez-faire, the smaller the government.

As far as I know, left-liberals and social-dems don't frame their ideology in terms of the size of government like their opponents do. They are branded as being pro-"big government" by conservatives and their ilk, but they don't appear to accept or acknowledge the label. Again, this is likely because their ideology does not hinge on some arbitrary spectrum of how big the government is. If they do protest government being too big, they protest it in grounds of it being too involved in social affairs, such as gay marriage and the like.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Just an FYI regarding "socialist big government": it's ironic that even the Brezhnev-era Soviet government bureaucracy was smaller than today's Russian government bureaucracy (especially given Russia's smaller and declining population).

[ZeroNowhere]

hardcore cappiesJust saying, but Authoritarians and conservatives are no more 'hardcore cappies' than liberals and Naderites.

[Q]

Just an FYI regarding "socialist big government": it's ironic that even the Brezhnev-era Soviet government bureaucracy was smaller than today's Russian government bureaucracy.
Intruiging! Do you have a source for that?

[GPDP]

Just saying, but Authoritarians and conservatives are no more 'hardcore cappies' than liberals and Naderites.

I should've said "laissez-faire" cappies, then. You know, advocates of unrestrained and unregulated capitalism, as opposed to regulated or state-welfarist capitalism.

[JimmyJazz]

This is an awesome thread, GPDP. And I think most of the posters so far have been right on.

I would say this is the most important question to me at the moment, actually.

I just read Lenin's State and Revolution recently, and was basically blown away by how anti-state it is. He's absolutely vehement. Over and over, he talks about bureaucracy as "a parasite on productive society" and calls for the socialist revolution to immediately abolish the standing army, police, and prisons. He calls for arming the workers as an alternative to any kind of military.

It's so opposite of what we think of Leninist societies in practice: giant socialist bureaucracies and all power to the Party.

I do think it's important to realize that Marx and Engels did not believe the state would "wither away" as in "cease to exist". I once thought this was the case, but the more I read about it, the more I realized that they meant the state would simply cease to be a "state" as such. They were defining the "state" as an instrument of class rule, and pointing out the logical conclusion from this, that a state in a classless society is by their definition not a "state" at all. They did not, however, believe that the need for administration would disappear. They said many times that the state would change its functions from class oppression to mere administration, and that after its functions had changed enough, it would have changed qualitatively, i.e. its character would also have changed. But in their conception, and in Lenin's, a (potentially gigantic) administrative apparatus will still be present in a society in which classes have been overthrown.

I'm not sure how realistic this is; but I know it requires a world revolution to work. If you have a "state" in any form, it sure as hell isn't going to wither away while imperialist states still exist all around it. And the military power that is maintained for defense against imperialism can of course be used for other, more nefarious reasons (see Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Tiananmen Square 1989, and so on).

Basically, I'm not satisfied with the Marxist account of how the state "withers away", and which says that the state doesn't need to be a subject of revolutionary ire in and of itself. I think both the Marxist account (abolish classes and the state "withers") and the anarchist (abolish the state and classes disappear) are simplistic. But there is a real logic to both.

Anyway, I think there are two important tasks for us with regard to thinking about the state: (1) for propaganda purposes, we need to drive it home to the public as clearly and loudly as possible that that socialism in no way necessitates a "big" state (as others in this thread have already done a good job of pointing out, it is simply not the same issue; in fact it's an orthogonal issue); and (2) for our own purposes, we need to actually think of ways to implement a classless economic system without a giant and ballooning bureaucracy, or a state with its own independent apparatuses of power (military, police) which can be turned against the working class.

For the propaganda purposes, I made this list (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=is+the+left+wing+statist%3F&btnG=Google+Search) [click the top google return, that's my list...] a little while back and sent it to a few of my libertarian friends--one is a Ron Pauler, the others are more vaguely "libertarian", but mostly end up reading right-wing libertarian stuff.

For our own purposes, there are a couple ways I've come up with, or come across, by which to implement socialism without increasing bureaucracy or "big government":

First of all, have government legislate socialism instead of having the government administer it. The Soviet constitution of 1918 (http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/constitution/1918/article1.htm) announced that, "As a first step toward complete transfer of ownership to the Soviet Republic of all factories, mills, mines, railways, and other means of production and transportation, the soviet law for the control of workmen and the establishment of a Supreme Soviet of National Economy is hereby confirmed so as to insure the power of the workers over the exploiters." So even if it was not done overnight, state ownership was pretty much the goal from the very beginning. But this was the social basis for complete Party control over the relations of production (rather than working class control over them), and therefore it was the basis for all kinds of anti-working class oppression, including everything under Stalin. It essentially allowed for some Party men and bureaucrats to decide that, if they wanted to build a great, industrialized national economy, and that they didn't care how much worker oppression it took to do this, then by god they had the power to do it. State ownership is a tremendously more dangerous route than Marx ever envisioned. He saw it as basically benign (after all, the state is no longer "political", it is no longer capable of class oppression, it doesn't even qualify as a "state" anymore). The 20th Century shows it is anything but.

So instead of a resolution declaring state ownership or the intention thereof, why not just pass a resolution saying, "This government does not respect private property beyond personal possessions. All workers are now free to unionize, and all workplaces will be considered de facto unionized. Workers who would like to take over production at their workplace should draw up a specific plan and, with or without some changes, their plan will be accepted. Capitalists who resist this will be treated just as workers who infringed upon private property, or merely withheld their labor in a strike, have been treated in the past--i.e., with escalating force. Workers who see an essential need of society that is not being addressed by currently existing capitalist enterprises may form cooperatives to solve that problem, and can get help in drafting a start up plan if they need it. The government itself will also make plans for how to begin transferring national productive forces from frivolous-yet-profitable industries (trinkets, designer clothes, construction of mansions, etc.) to essential-yet-neglected ones (healthcare, food, entertainment and culture that is accessible to all working people, shelters for the homeless), and will incentivize workers to move around in accordance with these plans (instead of ordering them around, as a capitalist state might do). Workers will have complete occupational freedom, freedom to move about the country, and freedom to reside where they would like, and the government will not dictate anything to them; but it will come to the working class with proposals and referanda about allocating the nation's productive forces from frivolous industries to necessary ones, which will only turn into action if approved by a majority."

OK, so that was pretty long. But you get the idea, and you see how it is totally different from state ownership. I don't know if it is a final solution, but is a good first step, it pre-empts government tyranny over the working class, and any necessary steps beyond that would be easy enough to make when the time comes (anyone who thinks he can currently plan out the entire road from capitalism to full blown communism is a utopian).

Let the working class first see that the new system is working, and that it empowers them more than capitalism.

I honestly don't think that most people object to government tyranny over the capitalist class and the rich. What they object to about Communism is that it has always devolved into tyranny over the working class. And the basis of this has been state ownership as an unquestioned assumption of how to build socialism.

The key of this "legislate socialism" thing is that, instead of making a bunch of laws to regulate the economy by protecting the interests of private property, as the capitalist state does, we would now make all laws with an eye to protecting the rights of working people to the fruit of their labor and control over their lives. Not extending a finite number of rights to them, but rather granting them an unlimited ability to pursue these rights on their own. The government basically says, "We are on your side now. Go."

You can see some of this going on today in Venezuela, although it would of course be more radical, with the end goal of completely abolishing the superfluous social role of "capitalist", and of giving the working class a strong centralized apparatus to guide production for its needs, but an apparatus that is firmly in its hands and can never turn against it or be used to oppress it, since it will have been created by the working class through trial and error, and won't simply have announced itself on the scene.

Second of all, a lot more attention has to be payed to syndicalist ideas, and reviving those, in my opinion. I agree with Engels (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm) that, "Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production." Syndicalism (or what I know about it, anyway) therefore isn't a complete solution, and on it's own it doesn't add up to socialism; because it solves the wage labor-capital antagonism, but it doesn't solve the anarchy in production. Basically, even if workers took over production in their own factories/workplaces, they would still be inheriting the entire capitalist economy and would merely have become its new managers. The system they will have inherited was built on the toxic, anti-human priorities of capitalism, in which production includes anything that makes a high rate of profit (even if it is utterly destructive, like an F-16), and nothing that makes little or not profit (even if it is utterly necessary, like say a treatment for malaria, which is a disease that affects millions of people, but all of them poor).

OK, so you also need ways to change how the productive forces are allocated, and not just to promote worker takeovers of existing industries. That said, workers taking over production is one of the two key socialist goals, and syndicalism is an already-worked-out body of thought on how this can be done. I can't make a better synopsis of syndicalist ideas than the writers of the IWW constitution preamble (http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml) already did, so I won't bother trying.

And really, what is the major criticism that certain revolutionaries have made of syndicalism in the past? That it's unrealistic; that unions aren't revolutionary enough; that they can't possibly match the power of the state. But if you already have the state as an ally, these problems disappear. You don't need a govenrment actively "building socialism" for syndicalism to be able to work; all you need is a government that no longer actively fights radical synidcalist workers by being totally beholden to private property. A major part of the leftist critique of capitalism is that the workers actually performing the labor know how to carry out the process better than some absentee capitalist ever could. The truth of this has been brilliantly confirmed in things like Argentina's factory occupations ("Occupy, Resist, Produce"). If we really believe this part of the critiqe of capitalism, we'll let workers work out the issue of workers' control without the government's interference. All they need is an ally in the highest levels of government, not a mentor, or worse yet, a new boss.

Finally, Blackscare shared with me a while ago the concept of usufruct (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct). It's a legal concept stating that one person can have temporary rights to whatever profits are yielded by another person's property. From what I can tell, it's a principle that in the past has been used to screw the propertyless, for instance in a situation where someone goes into debt slavery, and the slaveowner gets the profits of all the debtor's property for the duration of the debt slavery (however, the slave gets to keep the actual title, and gets to return to making profits on the property when his debt is paid and his debt slavery is up). So, a bit similar to the way the IRS confiscates your paycheck if you owe them backtaxes; but it doesn't make you work for them, it just takes your paycheck. Anyway, as Blackscare pointed out to me, it's easy to imagine a form of "usufruct" that benefits the propertyless instead of screwing them: for instance, legally mandate that those who actually work a factory, piece of land, whatever, are the ones who have temporary rights to whatever profit it yields. In a transition society, the actual title might still belong to a capitalist, though he would have been emasculated and would have no real power and enjoy no profits. In the eventual society aimed at, the title wouldn't belong to anyone.

So basically, the key thing for us communists is a system in which collective property is legally and culturally respected, and private property (beyond personal possessions) is not. There's nothing in this about the "size" of the state. And anyone who says that state ownership is the only alternative to private property, lacks imagination.

If we really believe the two Marxist propositions that (1) the state is a capitalist state, which protects private property by force, and (2) the working class is a powerful historical force, capable even of overthrowing the government, then we surely have to believe that (3) having a working class ally instead of an enemy in the government (even a relatively hands-off ally, aka a "small government" ally), plus working class initiative to build socialism, will indeed result in socialism. The government does not need to build socialism for the workers, it just needs to let them do it.

And I think we should take every opportunity to point out to people how we live under a capitalist state that protects private property by force. Therefore, what we are calling for in government is not necessarily an active socialist ally that is going to manage the entire economy, so much as the absence of an active enemy.

I think communism can be pretty well summed up in the following way: communism is the belief that the gross inequalities of our world can never be resolved except by replacing competitive economic forms with cooperative economic forms. To the extent that this is done, inequalities will be resolved. Nothing else--not charity, not social mobility, not social safety nets, not foreign aid, not Keynsian spending--is sufficient to seriously address the sickening inequalities which characterize our planet. But there is nothing about a cooperative society that requires a "big" state more than a competitively-organized society does. Communism is at heart a theory about how to organize civil society; not a theory of the "state" at all.

[ZeroNowhere]

They did not, however, believe that the need for administration would disappear. They said many times that the state would change its functions from class oppression to mere administration, and that after its functions had changed enough, it would have changed qualitatively, i.e. its character would also have changed.They did not say that the administrative functions would mean the existence of a state, though there would be a necessity for some functions carried out by the present state to be continued. That is, “All socialists see anarchy as the following program: Once the aim of the proletarian movement – i.e., abolition of classes – is attained, the power of the state, which serves to keep the great majority of producers in bondage to a very small exploiter minority, disappears, and the functions of government become simple administrative functions.”


I think both the Marxist account (abolish classes and the state "withers") and the anarchist (abolish the state and classes disappear) are simplistic.That's a misrepresentation of anarchism.


He saw it as basically benign (after all, the state is no longer "political", it is no longer capable of class oppression, it doesn't even qualify as a "state" anymore).I'm fairly sure that he wasn't much of a fan of the capitalist state in his time, I don't really see how the USSR's state disproves anything, really.


State ownership is a tremendously more dangerous route than Marx ever envisioned.Capitalism is as dangerous a route as Marx and most people at the time saw.


IWW constitution preamble (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml)Wow, that thing's got quite a downgrade from the original.


Syndicalism (or what I know about it, anyway) therefore isn't a complete solution, and on it's own it doesn't add up to socialism; because it solves the wage labor-capital antagonism, but it doesn't solve the anarchy in production. Basically, even if workers took over production in their own factories/workplaces, they would still be inheriting the entire capitalist economy and would merely have become its new managers.Generally, anarcho-syndicalism involves the abolition of capitalism.


Let the working class first see that the new system is working, and that it empowers them more than capitalism.Doesn't this assume that we are doing this independent of the majority of the working class?

Anyways, the 'big government vs small government' debate is pretty much a debate over taxes and such. It may be relevant to some of the left, the reformist left, that is, but not to socialists. Though the 'big government' terminology is not acknowledged by the reformist left because the term was created as an attack by the right, in the same way populists enjoy getting pissed off about 'big oil'. That is, it presents the government as dominating, while in contrast, 'small government' implies more freedom and such. Basically, it's a product of the two not realizing that they're on the same side and should really show more respect for each other.

[JimmyJazz]

They did not say that the administrative functions would mean the existence of a state, though it would carry out some functions carried out by the present state.

"it" = what?

That's the problem with the Marxist account of the withering away of the state; it's just a tautology. The state is defined as an instrument of class rule, communism is defined as a classless society, therefore by definition a communist society doesn't have a "state", or at least it has one which is rapidly "withering away" because it's not needed.

Unfortunately the administrative non-state apparatus, the "it", whatever "it" is, has proven itself capable of invading other countries, militarily repressing revolt within its borders, carrying out purges, building up personality cults, engaging in arms races, and imposing highly oppressive relations of production on the working class.

[Dimentio]

I should've said "laissez-faire" cappies, then. You know, advocates of unrestrained and unregulated capitalism, as opposed to regulated or state-welfarist capitalism.

You mean the Austrian economists, the libertarians and the objectivists? Their ideology is plain crazy if you apply it on reality. On paper, its of course having an eerie logic.

[ZeroNowhere]

"it" = what?

That's the problem with the Marxist account of the withering away of the state; it's just a tautology. The state is defined as an instrument of class rule, communism is defined as a classless society, therefore by definition a communist society doesn't have a "state", or at least it has one which is rapidly "withering away" because it's not needed.

Unfortunately the administrative non-state apparatus, the "it", whatever "it" is, has proven itself capable of invading other countries, militarily repressing revolt within its borders, carrying out purges, building up personality cults, engaging in arms races, and imposing highly oppressive relations of production on the working class.This argument would work if the USSR, China and such were ever classless. Anyways, yeah, I do realize that the 'it' was randomly chucked in, but no special name was given to it by M+E, De Leon would call it the 'Industrial Government', however. Anyways, yes, communism does have no state by definition, I don't see the point there.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Intruiging! Do you have a source for that?

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:oMo1qmF7KfMJ:www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/pm_0283.pdf+size+russian+bureaucracy+soviet+larger&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk


The creation of federal districts headed by new presidential representatives merely created yet another layer of the Russian state—a strategy that has already proven ineffective in enhancing governing capacity in post-Soviet Russia. The Russian state apparatus actually grew steadily throughout the 1990s, relative to its size in the first few years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian State Committee on Statistics reported in 1999 that, despite central state efforts to cut the size of the Russian bureaucracy, it grew steadily in terms of the number of officials employed in federal agencies and regional administrations. Where in 1994, for example, there were a reported 1,004,000 officials employed at all layers of the state, that number had increased each year to reach 1,133,000 by the end of 1999. Not surprisingly, therefore, state spending on this apparatus has also increased steadily since 1994 (the first year for which figures were available) from 1.73 percent of all state spending in 1994 to 2.4 percent in 1998. More than two years after the ascent of Vladimir Putin to the top of the Russian state hierarchy, a Russian bureaucrat was born every 18 minutes. Indeed, the number of bureaucrats has increased in the last ten years as Russia’s total population has declined, such that about 10 percent of Russia’s population in 2002 works in the civil service. There are about 300,000 more Russians employed in the civil service than in the Russian army. Comparative experience even within recent Russian history, but elsewhere as well, indicates that a bigger state is not necessarily a more capable state



Generally, just "Google" size russian bureaucracy soviet larger :)

[Die Neue Zeit]

So instead of a resolution declaring state ownership or the intention thereof, why not just pass a resolution saying, "This government does not respect private property beyond personal possessions. All workers are now free to unionize, and all workplaces will be considered de facto unionized. Workers who would like to take over production at their workplace should draw up a specific plan and, with or without some changes, their plan will be accepted. Capitalists who resist this will be treated just as workers who infringed upon private property, or merely withheld their labor in a strike, have been treated in the past--i.e., with escalating force. Workers who see an essential need of society that is not being addressed by currently existing capitalist enterprises may form cooperatives to solve that problem, and can get help in drafting a start up plan if they need it. The government itself will also make plans for how to begin transferring national productive forces from frivolous-yet-profitable industries (trinkets, designer clothes, construction of mansions, etc.) to essential-yet-neglected ones (healthcare, food, entertainment and culture that is accessible to all working people, shelters for the homeless), and will incentivize workers to move around in accordance with these plans (instead of ordering them around, as a capitalist state might do). Workers will have complete occupational freedom, freedom to move about the country, and freedom to reside where they would like, and the government will not dictate anything to them; but it will come to the working class with proposals and referanda about allocating the nation's productive forces from frivolous industries to necessary ones, which will only turn into action if approved by a majority."

I like this elaboration, although I made similar remarks on the bolded part. It's much more meaningful than "transitional" sloganeering of "workers' control" or even CPGB comrade Mike Macnair's minimum program musings of "abolition of constitutional guarantees of the rights of private property and freedom of trade (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/625/macnair.htm)." I think professor Paul Cockshott made similar remarks on transitions to socialism.

[JimmyJazz]

This argument would work if the USSR, China and such were ever classless.

What was the exploiting class? A bureaucracy is not a class, they are historically different. A bureaucracy is part of the state in any normal person's language (i.e., anyone but a radical leftist's language).

To a normal person, communism is synonymous with big government. And that's because to them, communism does not mean "cooperation", it means "state ownership". My long-ass post typed out at 3am was not supposed to be a way to sneak my little pet proposal into a thread on big gov't, it was to show that communism means social cooperation, and is compatible with any size gov't or no gov't at all, depending on to what degree working class initiative and class struggle are allowed to take the place of gov't action.

[More Fire for the People]

I really don't care about the size of government--I'm more concerned about bureaucratization and the members of that government.

[Die Neue Zeit]

So what do you think of qualified (as opposed to pure) random selection instead of elections or appointments?

[GPDP]

You mean the Austrian economists, the libertarians and the objectivists? Their ideology is plain crazy if you apply it on reality. On paper, its of course having an eerie logic.

Well, I meant those guys as well as just run-of-the-mill conservatives that don't necessarily want laissez-faire in its totality, but don't want a welfare state either. Welfare for the working class, that is. Welfare and low taxes for the rich is a-ok with these types (though as we have recently seen, liberals and social-dems don't think too badly of corporate welfare, either). Basically, "small government" advocates can be anything from libertarians to neo-cons.

[robbo203]

I think its more relevant to discuss what the government is doing and should be doing. I think the real issue is not welfare programmes or what should be publicly funded, but how much control the working class should have over the state.

I think that we rather should seek to support communalisation than nationalisation. It is harder to privatise a healthcare system controlled by the working class cooperatives, than a state-owned healthcare system for example.

But we should oppose privatisation in general. Because it decreases public accountability.

The problem is that the notion of working class control over the state is almost a contradiction in terms. A slave society cannot be run in the interests of the slaves. Opposition to privatisation ,while proceeding from a sound premiss, all too often leads to an entirely wrong conclusion - that we need more state control, more state ownership and more state regulation in our lives. We do not. The idea that "publicly funded "and operated enterprises are somehow better because they are somehow more "democratically accountable" is just one more myth in the arsenal of capitalist ideology that it enables it to coopt workers into supporting the system.

We need to start thinking outside the black box. The options available to us are not limited to a statist variety of capitalism or a "private" one. Knee jerk opposition to privatisation which does not also make clear that we are equally opposed to the further remorseless encroachment of the capitalist state on our lives, is counterproductive

[ZeroNowhere]

The problem is that the notion of working class control over the state is almost a contradiction in terms.Not necessarily, it merely means the use of state power (eg. through law) by the working class to enforce the expropriation of the expropriators. Though yes, "the political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery."

[robbo203]

Not necessarily, it merely means the use of state power (eg. through law) by the working class to enforce the expropriation of the expropriators. Though yes, "the political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery."

Fair point. I accept the distinction you make. One can capture poliical power to abolish class rule but to perpetuate classes under the aegis of state - even a so called proletarian state - is to prolong capitalism and side with the interests of capital against wage labour

[Dimentio]

The problem is that the notion of working class control over the state is almost a contradiction in terms. A slave society cannot be run in the interests of the slaves. Opposition to privatisation ,while proceeding from a sound premiss, all too often leads to an entirely wrong conclusion - that we need more state control, more state ownership and more state regulation in our lives. We do not. The idea that "publicly funded "and operated enterprises are somehow better because they are somehow more "democratically accountable" is just one more myth in the arsenal of capitalist ideology that it enables it to coopt workers into supporting the system.

We need to start thinking outside the black box. The options available to us are not limited to a statist variety of capitalism or a "private" one. Knee jerk opposition to privatisation which does not also make clear that we are equally opposed to the further remorseless encroachment of the capitalist state on our lives, is counterproductive

I agree that the state is an inherently destructive construction for the working class, and I would advocate reducing the power of the state and instead putting control over the economy in the hands of the working people directly.

But there are grade differences even in hell. I would prefer a direct-democratic republic or confederacy with strong socialist movements before a totalitarian, fascist kingdom led by a demented clique of insane clowns any day.

[Yazman]

"it" = what?

That's the problem with the Marxist account of the withering away of the state; it's just a tautology. The state is defined as an instrument of class rule, communism is defined as a classless society, therefore by definition a communist society doesn't have a "state", or at least it has one which is rapidly "withering away" because it's not needed.

Unfortunately the administrative non-state apparatus, the "it", whatever "it" is, has proven itself capable of invading other countries, militarily repressing revolt within its borders, carrying out purges, building up personality cults, engaging in arms races, and imposing highly oppressive relations of production on the working class.

You're not seriously trying to claim that the Soviet Union was a communist society (stateless and classless) are you?