Viewpoint Magazine roundtable on the state

October 31, 2014 8:42 AM

The recent issue of the online Viewpoint Magazine (previously) contains a roundtable discussion on state power and revolutionary strategy featuring historian Geoff Eley, political theorist Jodi Dean and others.

The prompt: "In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the socialist movement spilled a great deal of ink debating the question of state power. Lenin’s work was perhaps the most influential, but it also provoked a wide range of critical responses, which were arguably equally significant. But whether or not Lenin’s conception of the correct revolutionary stance towards the state was adequate to his own particular historical conjuncture, it is clear that today the reality of state power itself has changed. What is living and what is dead in this theoretical and political legacy? What would a properly revolutionary stance towards state power look like today, and what would be the concrete consequences of this stance for a political strategy? Does the ‘seizure of state power’ still have any meaning? Does the party still have a place in these broader questions?"

The Committee Room and the Streets: An Interview with Geoff Eley
Rethinking Political Power and Revolutionary Strategy Today by Panagiotis Sotiris
The Ends of the State by Joshua Clover and Jasper Bernes
Commune, Party, State by Jodi Dean
The State Against the State by Nina Power
Lessons for Building a Democratic Workers’ State by Immanuel Ness

(There are plenty of non-roundtable contributions to the issue as well.)

posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles (2 comments total)

I don't know about the other articles, but The Ends of the State is very smart, well-argued, and to the point.
posted by twirlip at 2:15 PM on October 31, 2014

There's an interesting argument in The Ends of the State that states are only good for administering capitalist economies: I wonder if this ties in with observations about the limitations of government found across both right and reforming-left, that when government tries to do something big and complicated, like run a health service, it becomes inefficient and bureaucratic? The right would argue that privatisation and the market are the solution: maybe the Communist would argue that their alternative structure of ownership and control is another. This is interesting, I think, because we have lost this alternative Communist narrative, so the left can only defend rubbish state performance against right-wing attacks: it can't say how state performance would be improved - because it can't - or describe the non-market alternative - because we no longer have one.
posted by alasdair at 2:18 AM on November 1, 2014