The Role of the State in Society. It is Not Our Protector.

 

John Clarke

Ontario Canada

 

This annoying cartoon completely misrepresents the role of the capitalist state. For good measure, it does this by presenting the hated symbol of US state power, Uncle Sam, as a weakened but noble protector of the victims of predatory capitalists.

The motivation behind this depiction is dismay at a decades long undermining of measures of social provision and regulation which is then inaccurately perceived as evidence that the state is in decline. This has led many liberals to incorrectly conclude that major capitalist interests have disempowered the state.

To dispel this false view, we need only recall Margaret Thatcher’s infamous claim that ‘there is no such thing as society.’ With this assertion, she was actually attacking the secondary state function of timidly limiting the destructive conduct of capitalists, in order to maintain social stability. She was suggesting that the social infrastructure should be gutted and the victims of this process lectured on the need for self-reliance.

 

Had someone suggested that the non-existence of society meant that the prisons should be opened up or that police forces and the military be disbanded, the limits of Thatcher’s desire to weaken state involvement in peoples’ lives would have emerged rather quickly.

 

Thatcher’s reactionary selectivity gets to the heart of the matter. The state emerged in history at a point where private property and a division between exploiting and exploited classes had developed. State power is employed to uphold the property relations that the ruling class requires and to ensure that public affairs are conducted and social order maintained in ways that correspond to this.

 

It is true that the capitalist state has an interest in preserving legitimacy and even sometimes protecting the capitalists from their own worst instincts. The state does this over a wide front to one degree or another. Laws are enacted that provide some rights to workers, tenants, consumers, etc. A portion of the state budget is allocated to public health, public education, social housing, income support and other elements of social provision. Moreover, the business dealings of capitalists are subjected to a degree of control that limits their ability to exploit, pollute and swindle.

 

The state has an interest in preventing social dislocation and unrest so as to ensure that an exploitative society is relatively stable. Individual capitalists, on other hand, often object to such mild forms of interference with their scramble to maximize profits. Public debates on this front further the illusion of an impartial state trying to strike a fair balance so as to serve the common good.

 

To return to the cartoon, it draws on the fact that, from the 1970s on, the capitalist state’s function was modified (though not fundamentally changed). As the neoliberal era took hold, the major effort to curtail the restraining hand of the state that Thatcher advocated was carried through on a massive scale.

 

At the same time, however, the more vital functions of the state were by no means weakened. Repressive and military power were actually increased and the regulation of the poorest portion of the population was dealt with by intensified forms of policing instead of systems of provision. When workers went on strike, they dealt with a state power that was by no means diminished.

 

It is true that capital broke free of state regulation in a whole series of ways but the state wasn’t coerced into this. It made the changes very willingly in the interests of the class it is there to serve. Moreover, the rapacious conduct of the capitalists took place under systems of legality that rested on state authority. Whenever the power of workers needed to be crushed or a failing bank or major company bailed out at public expense, the state was anything but powerless.

 

At this particular time, concerns for Uncle Sam’s health and strength are entirely groundless. His military forces are deployed across the world, his cops and immigration enforcers are fully active and his readiness to provide the legal forms and physical authority the capitalists need is undiminished. He and the major companies that are circling him in this absurd cartoon are all in it together. He is there to serve their interests but they need him more than ever.