Dave Zachariah: The Limits of Social-Democratic Politics

  1. Die Neue Zeit
    Die Neue Zeit
    Traditional Marxist views on the state underemphasize the monetary connections underlying the capitalist nature of the modern state, for the right and wrong reasons. There is the danger of reducing these connections to the populist bogeyman of lobby money. Dave Zachariah offered a different perspective: fiscal and monetary (alternatively taxation, debt and credit, and money supply).

    http://reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/za...ldemocracy.pdf

    The crisis of social democracy is a long-term result of the fundamental problems that the political strategy of any reformist workers’ movement inevitably encounters in relation to the state and the economy, and which it has yet to solve. These problems will increasingly bring the question to the fore: is the goal of social democracy to be a party in government or an organization for social transformation? Whilst this may at one point have been synonymous to its members, it will be argued why it necessarily ceases to be so with the passage of time.

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    The spectacular membership growth of social democracy strengthened the belief that seizure of state power through the parliamentary road was inevitable.

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    But the social democratic conception of the state would also prove to be simplistic. Firstly, the workers’ movement’s struggle for universal suffrage was not based on the classical theory of democracy as a form of government […] Secondly, even if the state can be a juridical subject, and at times act unitarily, it is a hierarchy of state apparatuses that do not always act in concert. The most extreme example is Chile during 1970-3 […] More plausible examples, however, are the Ministry of Finance or Central Bank, which can limit the government’s scope for economic policy and therefore influence its direction. Thirdly […] No decisions taken within the state, no executive orders by ministries, no laws passed by parliament, would be effective without the possibility to sanction those whom do not follow them […] Fourthly, and most significantly, is the structural dependence between the state apparatuses and the capitalist sector. This is the central problem of the reformists’ instrumental conception of the state and needs to be elaborated at greater length below.

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    People who administer the state hold a position in the economy that gives them opportunities to privileges, wealth and power through its capacity to levy taxes. The state provides the capitalist sector with a juridical system and laws without which it could not operate, but at the same time the state is dependent on tax revenues from the incomes in the sector and credits in order to act in the world economy. This dependence forces state managers to be concerned about maintaining the economic activity, irrespectively of whether they are bureaucrats or elected professional politicians; regardless of whether their goals are to build military capacity or implement social reforms.

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    Therefore every parliamentary advance must be used to strengthen the extra-parliamentary capacity of workers’ movement—to organise people, articulate coherent political programmes from its vantage point and control parts of the economy—which history shows takes decades to build […] If the primary goal of social democracy no longer is to conduct social transformation but to be a ruling party then nothing remains but its role as an administrator of the state and it will be locked in a structural necessity to reproduce capitalist relations of production and hence preserve a class-divided society. Then it has exhausted its historically progressive role.
  2. Tower of Bebel
    Tower of Bebel
    A concise explanation of what it's happening right now. Thanks. It could also be a critique of the "The strategy or Attrition" series, which made a big deal of the capitalist nature of the state.