Capital and State

I would first ascertain that state activity almost always benefits capital in some way. Take, for example, environmental legislation. On the one hand, limits on emissions etc tend to drive down maximum profits. However, if on the other hand, government takes a lead in encouraging alternative fuels, this benefits capital in the long term, as it would end oil dependency, while opening up new markets in the short term.

Education is another good example. Universal education, administered and directed by the state, creates a relatively employable workforce. A large drain on capital is the requirement to train a new, efficient workforce “fit for the twenty-first century”. This creates a contradiction, or at least resentment, if the workforce has to pay in advance for its own training. Better, for capital, if this is paid for through general taxation or, even better, through student loans and top-up fees so one subsidises one’s own education during his or her working life.

What is really at stake is the privileged nature of the traditional middle and professional classes. Through their organs of propaganda, they moan about giving single mothers housing benefit, “shirkers” Jobseekers Allowance and the failures of the state education system (which neither they or their children usually have any real experience of) to create both a socially responsible and highly skilled proletariat.

However, the very survival of the Capitalist Mode of Production is dependant on a middle class to consume a great deal of the surplus labour that would otherwise end up being redistributed back to the producing classes or to technologically-deficient developing nations. A beaurocratic caste, often belonging to the state apparatus, is an example of an almost-deliberately created middle class. Examples of these would be NHS managers in the United Kingdom, the differing state beaurocracies of France, Germany and the former Soviet Union. The military-industrial complex of the United States is also a component as would be any beaurocratic centralisation in the European Union. There is therefore a need for compromise between the state collectivism that capital requires and excessive burdening of middle class taxpayers. This is why inheritance tax is often such an issue.

What is forgotten is that it is in neither the interests of capital nor the state’s for the general population to (be able to) house and educate themselves independently (education is especially a concern for local government, “Foundation” schools notwithstanding). Unemployment is also a dictate of capital as well as a consequence, partly in the interests of a “flexible” (read: hire and fire) workforce and generally so the worst jobs can be done by the fewest people for the lowest price; so unemployment therefore has to somehow be a benefit, without removing individuals from “the market”. This also has issues involving immigration.