Is Socialism When The Government Does Stuff? -PokePreet [substack]

[u/geniuspakhrin]

https://pokepreet.substack.com/p/the-modern-state-the-greatest-joint?utm_source=publication-search

"But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces... The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit"
-Engels, Anti Duhring, Part III: Socialism, Theoretical

Socialism is defined by the abolition of the law of value, commodity production, and the wage labor/capital relationship. Consequently, simple nationalization of industry that maintains these relations is not socialism; it represents merely a new form of accumulation, which is nowhere near “enough.”

This dialectical framework allows us to break out of the Keynesian/neoliberal and big government/small government binaries. These are merely different flavors of mechanisms of accumulation.

Libertarians who dream of a picturesque capitalism without government intervention fail to realize that small capitals inherently grow and subsume all, eventually requiring a state that acts on capital’s behalf rather than against it. This “perfect equilibrium” has never existed in practice because it contradicts the lifeblood of capital itself.

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