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Some notes on capitalist-state in
globalisation
[This article was first written for the French
theoretical left libertarian review la Gryffe. I don’t translated notes, as
they almost leads to references of French books] These notes aim at contributing to the
demystification of the state, the state that fills in depth the thought of
the "left" up to its critical margins. It tries to show that the
state works as a private capitalist company, which possesses a capital
and invests it in the production of commodities. The common socialist
analysis sees state as "state of the dominant class", in charge of
managing the public affairs with best interests of the capitalists. The main alternative
consists in asserting the superiority of the state on the capitalism. What is
only returning the problem. In both cases, the exact nature of their
connections remains mysterious, sometimes reduced to a sociological question. Assert that the state is a private capitalist
could arouse the question: whom does it belong? To nobody in particular. For
a long time, analyses on the "state capitalism” reminded that the
capitalism is a social report, based on the exploitation, and not a simple
legal form based on property. On the other hand, it is managed by a
bureaucracy and a political "class" which removes from it
substantial advantages. In this text, it is the analysis of a particular, but
essential aspect, of this relation that is going to be sketched: the
financial mediations represented by the tax system and the national debt. The
capitalist-state
The main capital of the state is the Territory,
which is similar to a landed capital. It exercises there a series of rights, which
allows extracting an income by taxes, customs duties. But it does not content
taking money: it uses it to improve the profits of the public or private
capital, either directly in helps and different subsidies, or by creating the
convenient social conditions (cost of the work, formation, social peace,
etc.). It is the commodities of the state, that the private
capitalists buy it by paying taxes. Does the tax being paid directly by
capitalists or by workers does not change much, because it’s always integrated
into the global cost of the work. There is so a cycle of money circulation
between " public " and private capital. This cycle is very slow. To take only a single
example: between the moment a state invest in an educational program and the
one where the workers stemming from this program will have produced enough so
that, by means of the tax system, this money returns in the state budget and
exceeds the initial sum, he can take place twenty, thirty years. This
slowness obliges the state to have a global, long-term sight, as its future
is not limited by the fluctuations of one commodity in particular. It so
makes the state an element of stabilization of the system. It contributes
also to mask the profits of the state, already well hidden behind the ideological
mystification of general interest. This ideological mystification is the corporate
culture of the state. It peaks in the myth of the free access to public
utilities. The state absorbed the political sphere to transform it into
commodity, making of any resistance become an anti-politics in the same way
as the resistance in the capitalism passes by the refusal of the work. It can make appear his ideology as the
reflection of the interest of each, although it is nothing else the interest
of bureaucracy and "political class». "Public utility" is the
name of the exploitation of state workers, whose salaries arise from the
capital of the state and whose essential production consists in allowing the
private sector to increase its profit. But, and what is essential to understand, this
engendered profit interests directly the state, because it returns to it
under direct or indirect fiscal form. The state is so bound to capitalists by
a trade relation. They are so placed in a mutual interdependence,
which does not exclude conflicts of interests. It is this financial
aspect, which is mostly neglected in the analyses of the state. One knows
how state supports capitalists, but one forgets that this help has a price.
At the same moment, the action appears, in the common analyses, as free and
without counterpart. The
world market of states
For the private capitalist, tax is the price of the
services from which it benefits. But it is a global price that includes
mostly services, which do not concern it absolutely, at least directly and
for its limited mind. There is a contradiction around the contents of
these services. The small capitalist, boss of small company, can hate the
state of all his forces or take place under his protection, but he can not
by-pass it: it is confined in the national territory, and "its” state is
in situation of monopoly. Things are different from the transnational company,
often richer than many states. Theses one can choose the establishment of its
various branches according to its needs (cost of work, professional skill and
formation, labour and environmental laws, tax system). It is the basic
principle of the relocations of factories and the exports of capital. The
national and regional specialization on definite and very concentrated productions
is another consequence of it. There is so a world market of states. Every
state appears, with the eyes of the capitalists, as a set of competitive
advantages, whose fiscal cost is only one of the factors. From this moment,
states are placed in a competitive system on the directly economic ground,
and each is going to try to highlight the appropriate specificities, even if
it means being engaged in a real fiscal war - where from the current stake
around the fiscal paradises or of the
fiscal harmonization of the European community. The
question of the national debt
In the vocabulary of the left, neoliberalism is
synonym of all troubles, because it is the ideological vector of the
dismantling of the welfare state and the mix capitalism economy. The
deregulation is bound to the inversion of the balance of power states /
transnational in the global capitalism. But if the state deregulates, it is
to maintain the own profits. It is not weakened so inevitably, even if its
influence is seemingly lesser or redefined on one function, social control. It's the same for the privatisations. Except any
ideological consideration, a nationalized company has sense for the global
profit, which it generates and which returns in the state budget. If this one
has not the necessary capital to make if fructify, privatisation is not a bad
solution, because it gives an immediately available money supply and that it
helps a company from which a part of the profits will finish in the state
budget by means of the tax system. It is so not at all a sign of decline. But the current states have all, more or less,
public debts. How can it be to otherwise after more than sixty years of cult
of the benefactions of national debt, of which Keynesianism was the main
herald? Not only the poor countries persist in borrowing to pay the interests
of their debt, but the USA, first capitalist power, are also the indebted
country. The purpose of the national debt was at the same moment to boost the
economy by the state commission and, there even, to strengthen the role of
intervention of the state in the economy. It allowed especially to avoid
increasing the fiscal pressure beyond the point where this one stops being
really profitable. But increase of the national debt presses heavily on
the financial means of states. The titles of the debt become then themselves
commodities which business is prosperous, but creates financial instability.
In this context, neoliberalism preached by the IMF, or the Maestricht
criteria (which include reduction of the debt), if they limit the immediate
intervention capacity of the state by dismantling public service, aim to
restore the financial means of the state by the reduction of the debt.
Eventually, the neoliberalism strengthens the state, by restoring its capacity
of financial action. Neoliberalism
and neoreformism
The alternative was proposed by the demand of Third
World debt cancellation, new banner of the social Catholicism (Jubilee 2000
campaign) and of the social democracy, take sights of utopia, because it
expresses the contradiction between the necessary reduction of the debt and
the refusal of the social forces which support the "left" to
sacrifice providence-state, which they are products and defenders in the same
moment. The neoliberal phase is, in a sense, a phase of
primitive accumulation of the global capital. Marked by the violence and the
destruction of all which was assimilate to common good - notably the
providence-state or national sovereignty. The neoreformist phase which could
succeed it and which appears as its antagonist today, will come to crown the
new system of states by legitimising the institutions under the form of an
accomplished world state. That’s why they emphases on the question of
financing an overall policy, by a tax on financial transactions (Tobin tax)
or, as it was advanced more recently, an international tax on armaments,
sketches of world tax system. After all, a world state would not know how to
exist without giving itself the means to extract a profit of its global capital,
to reproduce in its scale the cycle of accumulation which had led to the
current “nation” states. Nico
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