this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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I don't know if i'd describe it as "Keynesian" but yes you are right, it's not "centrally planned" in the traditional sense. Most of the countries i mentioned do not have centrally planned economies. This is not about central planning, it's about state driven vs liberal "free market" models. Economic planning is just one tool that a state can employ to guide and shape its economy. The key distinction here is about who ultimately has the power. Does the state control capital or does capital control the state?
That's a good point. And yet in western liberal democracies the bourgeois state has become increasingly unwilling or incapable of bringing the rest of the capitalist class to heel. Even traditionally social democratic Europe is becoming more and more neoliberal, while at the same time states in the global south that are trying to assert their independence from western neo-colonialism, as well as semi-peripheral states like Russia find themselves going in the opposite direction and rejecting neoliberalism in favor of a more state led model, if only for the purely pragmatic reason that they are finding that neoliberalism is not just a hindrance to their development but is actively anti-development. The western states that have embraced it have been de-industrializing and de-developing before our eyes.
And the fact that this phenomenon is happening in both bourgeois states like Russia and in proletarian ones like the AES states which had opened up and liberalized to a degree in the 80s and 90s illustrates a point that Marxist-Leninists who support China have been making for a while now: that socialism is not synonymous with economic planning nor capitalism with markets, but that these are merely economic tools that both proletarian and bourgeois states can use. At the end of the day, as you correctly point out, the real determinant of socialism vs capitalism is which class controls the state. And so far Russia is still very clearly a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
So yes, to sum up, you are right, however there is still something interesting happening in terms of the economic model that we are seeing have success and the one which is not.
The bourgeoisie are not a unified monolith. There are sharp contradictions between finance capital and industrial capital. Finance capital's extreme parasitism, self-destructiveness and tendency toward de-development poses a threat to industrial capital and creates inter-capitalist conflict. So i suppose it would be more accurate to say that finance capital does not control the state in state led economies.
That’s the conclusion that follows from the arguments, but it doesn’t make much sense. State led doesn’t care about the profitability much, they want stuff done in accordance with the goals of the state. The “finance capitalists” of today don’t finance much because not much is profitable today. The finance sector needs the state to prop it up, that’s what neoliberalism does. The capital is concentrated there so the capitalist state props it up. Finance capital is the condition for imperialism and thus has the state that supports it help it by using the military and foreign policy to open markets for export and exploitation. @[email protected] what do you think?
I think your analysis of the role of finance capital in imperialism is correct.
This part i don't fully agree with. We cannot speak of "the state" in the abstract as the state is an instrument of class rule. And if we are talking about a bourgeois state then the "goals of the state" are the goals of the bourgeoisie, and more specifically the section of that class whose interests it represents. Which means that they do care about profitability, but whose profitability? To answer this question we again have to analyze the precise class character of the state in question...national bourgeois, comprador, finance imperialist, etc.
The problem is that the logic of capitalism eventually dictates that even if you do have a bourgeois state that for the time being serves first and foremost the interests of industrial capital, the natural progression of capitalism toward a falling rate of profit compels the system toward financialization and imperialism in order to maintain profitability. And that is if it actually manages to retain its independence and not become subjugated by a foreign imperialist power thereby turning comprador.
I agree with this assessment. My point was that with a rational nationalist country like Russia their ultimate goal may be to defend the bourgeoisie, but they aren’t trying to make the war machine more profitable. The defense industry for a pre-imperialist country matters more if it is able to defend them than if it is going to be a staple of the economy. Meanwhile in China they dgaf about companies’ profits, they just want to improve people’s lives and so on. As long as they are involved in the world market this means making “win win” deals that do increase people’s profits. However, since that is not their goal, they’re willing to attack industrial capital if it’s not doing its job, like the real estate thing.
I think i generally agree with that take. One small correction though:
I don't think real estate counts as industrial capital, from my understanding it falls under the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) category of parasitic capital.
No, i mean the people building houses stupidly by taking out loans and paying them off with construction that would be delayed.
I don’t really know which side I fall on exactly, but here’s a debate I was involved in over this about whether that understanding is correct: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2656976 https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2680725
What matters is if capital controls the government. The state can manage the economy in the interests of the capitalists or the workers. It can manage it to a greater or lesser extent. State run companies would make it a greater extent, but its socialist or capitalist character is in who controls the government and where the surplus goes.