What is the Relationship Between Capitalism and the State?

Nov 17
10:13

2009

Punkerslut

Punkerslut

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"A numerous nobility causeth poverty,What is the Relationship Between Capitalism and the State? Articles and inconvenience in a state; for it is a surcharge of expense; and besides, it being of necessity, that many of the nobility fall, in time, to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion, between honor and means."

--Francis Bacon, 1601
"The Essays," Of Nobility

The government is just a church for the capitalist class -- it's a moral front for the masters of industry.  It only legitimizes and justifies the exploitation of the masses by the privileged class.  That is to say, what the capitalists do to us today, they would have done to us without government; every police officer, paid for with the taxes and exploitation of the common worker, would instead be a company guard; the military, the prison system, and the state legislature, all attempts to control or pacify the people, would be recreated.

The Capitalist can do this, of course, because they have the wealth to pay enough people to be vicious and brutal.  And if it's not to hire the mercenaries, it's to hire the preachers who bring the public to their cause.  All governments receive their guns, their tanks, and the wages for their troops from Capitalists -- and Capitalists receive their wealth from exploiting the common masses, from hoarding up lands and denying to others, from bribing politicians and forming monopolies.

The state, then, is completely dependent on the wealthy landowners -- it is dependent on the Capitalists' ability to subdue laborers, to exploit communities and lands, to make wealth.  Whatever it takes to produce the armies and navies for dominating the world.

"...the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people..."

--Nicollo Machiavelli, 1505
"The Prince," Chapter 9

Since the state cannot exist without the Capitalist, it is always in a position of dependence.  If its Capitalists deny them their taxes and hire an army of goons, the state will crumble.  The public employees, depending on those taxes for their meager wages, will be pushed to revolt, and the pillars of the government would shake.  Without the source of paying police and troops, the state loses its power and dies.

The Capitalist will then resurrect another state in its place.  This has been demonstrated with a thousand years of European monarchs hunting each other, each supported by different landowners.

The state is just this object for the Capitalist to control.  They pick one candidate or another.  In a representative government, they dump piles of money into their campaign box.  In a monarchy government, they dump piles of money into the laps of military officers, and create a coup.  The Capitalist has the power to shop around for whatever politician they like; and it is this prior support that all politicians must constantly keep in mind.

Every politician must always be aware of their dedication to the Capitalist.  Their elections, their power, and their personal wealth are completely dependent upon that support.  When you are looking at a politician, you are seeing someone who is bound to the Capitalist class.  Someone who is speaking for the managers of sweatshops, for the supporters of authoritarian government, for the exploitation of the common workers.  This is what every politician represents, and if they ever break that chain, they lose office, and are quickly replaced.  This is how the Capitalist class maintains complete domination over the state.

"And, in fact, what do we find throughout history? The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class or other; a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class, and finally a bureaucratic class, when, all the other classes having become exhausted, the State falls or rises, as you will, to the condition of a machine; but it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the State that there should be some privileged class or other which is interested in its existence. And it is precisely the united interest of this privileged class which is called Patriotism."

--Mikhail Bakunin, ~1870's
"Marxism, Freedom, and the State," Chapter 3

Punkerslut,