Is the USA state-monopoly capitalist?

[jacobin1949]

The CPUSA holds that the USA is no longer free-market capitalist or liberal capitalist but in fact state-monopoly capitalist. Who here agrees with this thesis? Elaborate on your opinions.

[Hit The North]

What's the difference?

[Dimentio]

The USA is actually some sort of "imperial economy" driven by debt to sustain the price system and increase the consumption by printing money. Such kind of regimes tend to be quite unstable.

[Hit The North]

All regimes are unstable if you take the long view. In the medium term, the USA has proved to be remarkably resilient.

[Dimentio]

All regimes are unstable if you take the long view. In the medium term, the USA has proved to be remarkably resilient.

The USA created this was debt after 1981. It is a rather short span of time. The country is destroying it's own producive base, squandering its resources and dilluting its knowledge base. Half the PHD;s earned in the USA are PHD;s that belong to foreign exchange students. A lot of adult Americans are functional illiterates.

Shame that Huckabee is not going to win. He would been the final nail in the coffin.

[Hit The North]

A lot of adult Americans are functional illiterates.

What do you mean by a lot?


Shame that Huckabee is not going to win. He would been the final nail in the coffin.

Would it? How?

[ComradeRed]

It's not state capitalist, I'm not sure what you mean by "state monopoly capitalist".

I'm not going to lie and say the government has no say in business, but business remains private even though the government is a client.

For that reason, I would have to say that it is much more of a "corporationism" or more simply an oligopoly.

It is evident that the state is controlled by such "oligarchs". But this is by "coincidence".

The state and corporate oligopolies act independently, although one may influence the other from time to time.

The business decisions are still made by "the board", and the government decisions are still made by the politicians.

The politicians simply find it rewarding to employ private businesses...because the money finds its way into the politicians pockets.

That is not the same as the state running the businesses.

Just my two cents...

[Lenin II]

ComradeRed is essentially correct. Though the capitalists from the US do run enormous monopolies which absorb each other worldwide and spread like wildfire, the term "state-monopoly capitalist" doesn't quite cut it. The government would need have more direct control, rather than just widespread complacency and corruption.

[Comrade Qwatt]

The CPUSA itself is a bourgeois group, so there opinions are rather void.

[Zurdito]

The state is the the expression of the bourgeoisie's interests. The extent to which it is involved in the market is a quantiative, not qualitative, question. A bourgeois state is a bourgeois state, it willl liberalise or "protect" dependent on the demands of the situation. Let's be clear that liberalisation and privatisation are not a disempowerment of the state, because the people undertaking it are those who control the state.

[Hit The North]

The extent to which it is involved in the market is a qualitative, not quantiative, question.

I think you mean the other way around, comrade :)

[Zurdito]

I think you mean the other way around, comrade :)

ahh yes, correct. ;) I'll edit it. :)

[Awful Reality]

Nope. Just the opposite, the free market in the US controls the government, what with interest groups, lobbyists, and conglomerates controlling the government, even if de facto.