Capitalist States in Crisis Create Corporatism not "Socialism"

October 9, 2008
By: Andrew R-Taylor


After having spent the years since the mid-1980s hearing the rising drum beat for the de-regulation of markets, loosing the fetters of entrepreneurship and the creative energies of unbridled capitalism, it is most ironical to read that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson hints that the American government may use its new bailout bill legal power to "invest" in private banks... The British have led the way down this new path, and many in the US Elites are asking "why...?", "who...?", "What!" "Socialism!" It's nothing but Socialism" they weakly croak in their demoralised disbelief... But is this Socialism we are seeing now being feverishly cobbled together helter-skelter in response to the present global capitalist crisis? Is this Paul's Damascus Road conversion for the USA? (Saul, Saul,it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks!(Acts 9:5))

It is not Socialism per se, -- we are not seeing the dialectical breakthrough of History in the working-class or its parties or organizations.1 Corporatism is the proper name for the edifice we are seeing slopped in place -- wall by govt-fabricated wall. This as yet inchoate corporatism is the latest stage of the national corporate governments' moves to stabilize Finance Capital and to create Credit. It is the the merger of state and corporate power. The rescue plans of the EU and western democracies are not in themselves antagonistic to the road to socialism -- but neither are they to be equated with revolutionary socialism.

We should also know that there have been moments in 20th century history when a frightened national bourgeoisie, rocked by financial crisis and unrest, willingly capitulated its independence to a corporatist government,-- but the compelling topic of the advent of a "creeping fascism" (Kenneth Leech) is for another day.2 Still, we can't deny that the US state has already, in some important ways, gathered to itself repressive policies of preemptive war, torture camps, and the weakening of domestic civil liberties (FISA being the latest nail in the box, approved by both Obama and McCain.)3 New powers and arrangements, including those devised to ameliorate the economic crisis , are rapidly emerging and merging together with the current state apparatus in America, -- and these could conceivably be swiftly marshaled together in an anti-democratic configuration. There are plausible reports, for instance, that the US Administration is also preparing to implement martial law, or something close to it, in case democratic protest breaks out.(see alarming/ alarmist (?) Tom Burghardt article on this possibility at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10473)


But back to the current and de facto nationalisation of the banks: some prefer to call this kind of merger of state and corporate power "state capitalism". No matter. In any case, let socialists henceforth refute the misconception that these state re-arrangements of the Banks and Credit -- however expedient to avert meltdown -- have anything to do with the self-emancipation of the workers, with workers' Councils,with the mission of the Socialist party, and the winning of state power.


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NOTES
1.V.I. Lenin: The State And Revolution, The Experience of 1848-51"The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system.
The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population — the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians — in the work of organizing a socialist economy."

2. Corporatism is a concept that has merited libraries of type by weberians, marxists etc., etc., but for my purposes Corporatism is an apt model-term for various types of more or less integrated, and repressive state-capitalist governance, as well as for the classical fascist Mussolini Italy of the pre- WW II era. I offer no perspective here on the quickly changing complexion of the US State.
3."I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." James Madison, US 'Founding Father'