Nicos Poulantzas: Capitalism in the next decade

I wrote a series of generally admiring posts about the work of Nicos Poulantzas (here, in declining order of relevance).

I was reading this evening an outstanding recent summary of his work by David Sessions.

Nicos Poulantzas

Generally I'm a huge fan.

Poulantzas tried to break out of the simplistic stereotypes of both the Stalinists and the Trotskyists concerning the nature of the capitalist state and its role in mediating and enforcing capitalist class dynamics.

Poulantzas's great problem, the issue that destroyed his theoretical position, was that he wanted an accurate analysis of contemporary capitalism which also predicted transition to socialism (the supercession of capitalist relations of production) as a reachable goal.

All his analysis kept trying to tell him this wasn't on the cards. It simply wasn't possible.

What does the future hold if not a transition to socialism?

The central political problems 'we' face today: the breakdown of consensus politics, the rise of 'populism', leftist hysteria - these symptoms are all rooted in the obsolescence of the neoliberal phase of capitalism. Neoliberalism has created a gulf between the super-elite beneficiaries of a financialised, globalised capitalism and vast swathes of the proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie (old and new - Poulantzas emphasised the distinction) which has not shared in this largesse, which correctly feels abandoned, disrespected, atomised, alienated and futureless.

The problem has been accentuated by 'elite overproduction': the flow of c. 40% of the population through the universities, which has created a febrile petit-bourgeois mass which has internalised neoliberal ideologies and then naively tried to realise them in actuality.

This is the genesis of the SJW, equal-outcome, blank-slate-believing mass movements which self-define as 'left' but which are thoroughly bourgeois-liberal. They have captured the traditional labour parties of the left.

I expect a new capitalist synthesis to arise out of all this turmoil over the next decade. The shape is hard to discern but it will be whatever serves to restore class cohesion - that's the stability point.

Probably a little more socially conservative, a little more redistributive. Only time will tell. The process won't be pretty: I agree with Peter Turchin about that.

It's worth watching the project of Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson in the new UK Government. That's exactly the project they're trying to define.

I expect the Brexit project now to go through, because there's a gathering consensus in the more strategic and hard-headed section of the British political elite that Britain's future is best assured by a strategic alliance with the US rather than being semi-locked-in to a disunited Europe, a power both politically and militarily weak.

In the past there has been the famous 'bridge' or 'straddling' policy, which saw the UK acting as a 'value-adding' middleman between the US and Europe. But in an increasingly multipolar political world resulting from the decay of the naive neoliberal globalisation project and catalysed by the rise of China and an incipent global recession, the UK finally, has to choose sides.

I think the Johnson government understands that, while the Remainers, locked into crumbling, sterile visions of the past, do not.

Such a shame that Nico Poulantzas is no longer with us. I wish I knew what he would have thought.

O’Sullivan’s First Law

 O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.

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Just thought I would give you a link to the original statement of this (as it's so relevant today).

"Robert Michels - as any reader of James Burnham's finest book, The Machiavellians, knows was the author of the Iron Law of Oligarchy. This states that in any organization the permanent officials will gradually obtain such influence that its day-to-day program will increasingly reflect their interests rather than its own stated philosophy.

To take a homely example, congressmen from egalitarian parties somehow end up voting for higher pay and generous expenses for congressmen. We can also catch an ironic echo of Michels's law in Stalin's title of General Secretary, as well as in the fact that powerful mandarins in the British government creep about under such deceptive pseudonyms as "Permanent Under-Secretary."

All of which is by way of introducing a new law of my own. My copy of the current Mother Jones (well, it's my job to read that sort of thing — I take no pleasure in it) contains an advertisement for Amnesty International.

Now, AI used to be a perfectly serviceable single-issue pressure group which drew the world's attention to the plight of political prisoners around the globe. Many people owe their lives and liberty to it. But that good work depended greatly on AI's being a single-issue organization that helped victims of both left- and right-wing regimes and was careful to remain politically neutral in other respects. Its advertisement in Mother Jones, however, abandons this tradition by calling for an end to the death penalty.

The ad itself, needless to say, is the usual liberal rhubarb. "In American courtrooms," it intones, "some have a better chance of being sentenced to death." That is true: the people in question are called murderers. But Al naturally means something different and more sinister — namely that poor, black, and retarded people are more likely to face the electric chair than other murderers.

Let us suppose this to be the case. What follows? A mentally retarded person incapable of understanding the significance of his actions cannot be guilty of murder or of any other crime. A law that punishes him (as opposed to one that confines him for his own and society's safety) is unjust and should be changed — whether or not he faces the death penalty.

On the other hand, someone who is guilty of murder may be executed with perfect justice. His race or economic circumstances do not affect the matter at all. The fact that other murderers may obtain lesser sentences does not in any way detract from the justice of his own punishment. After all, some murderers have always escaped scot-free.

Would Amnesty have us release the rest on the grounds of equality of treatment?

Finally, Amnesty's argument from discrimination could be met just as well by executing more rich, white murderers (which would be fine with me) as by executing no murderers at all. Significantly, Amnesty's list of death-penalty "victims" does not include political prisoners. America does not, have political prisoners, let alone execute them. Why, then, Amnesty's campaign on the issue?

That is explained by O'Sullivan's First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.

I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don't like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy takes over — and the rest follows."

Yes. There's a lot of it about.

Arnold Kling: the significance of Dunbar's number

Arnold Kling writes:

"Referring of course to the Dunbar number that marks the boundary between small-scale society and large-scale society.

The public operated in the sub-Dunbar sphere. You were concerned with your own family, friends, and co-workers.

The elite managed in the super-Dunbar sphere, running government and large organisations, including mass media. The public knew that the elites were out there, but the public felt no direct connection to the elites. When elites contested with one another, the public were largely bystanders."

There's a lot more at the link.

Kling is a libertarian economist who thinks in terms of models applied to an amorphous social reality. This makes him an over-reductionist. The right way to think about society is:

1. Social formation - society as it concretely presents itself.
2. Mode of production - which generates the class structure and social dynamics.
3. Human nature - which defines the human elements from which behaviour originates.

Orthodox Marxism gets (1) and (2) right and ignores or misunderstands (3), hence its utopian perspectives.

The more enlightened bourgeois intellectuals like Kling think the world is constituted from (1) and (3) and forgo a class analysis - we see ahistoric, universalist categories such as 'public' and 'elites'.

Kling is better than most, though. The orthodox neoclassical economists simply present patently ideological models of (1), with (2) and (3) being replaced by the atomised egoists of homo economicus. Steve Keen is not a Marxist but his critique of this is not inaccurate.

The idea of the Dunbar limit is a powerful one. It allows the concept of nationalism to be approached without misleading ideas that it's either an empty illusion (a logical consequence of neoclassical economics) or that it's some reactionary antithesis to an ideal state of perfect global compassion and universal love. We can safely leave the latter to the overly religious, the social-liberals and SJWs.

In practice people care about their immediate circle, people they know individually and find they like. They care about the concept of their nation insofar as their co-nationals conform to an ideal of behaviour: one which they believe - with substance - buttresses the stability of the institutions and relationships which guarantee their security and their way of life: an ideal-supertribe of generally-amicable 'us'.

There is a lot to be said about a correct theory of nationalism, and how relevant, useful and indeed functional the phenomenon may be in the 21st century.

But without Dunbar's number the analysis doesn't get very far.