"Never mind the state being a committee to manage the whole affairs of the bourgeoisie; Musk is the state."
Not really, for all the reasons you set out later in your post. The state is the state of the ruling class, and, today, the ruling class is a global class of speculators, "coupon-clippers" as Marx and Engels called them, in "Anti-Duhring", owners of fictitious-capital (shares, bonds and derivatives) from which they derive interest/dividends, and in the last 40 years, more significantly, capital gains from inflated asset prices, mostly fuelled by central bank liquidity.
Musk is certainly an important and powerful individual, but he remains that, at best he might reflect the interests of similar US tech billionaires, though I doubt even that. Most o them have fallen into line, simply because they are spineless, and sought to avoid coming into the cross-hairs of Trump's regime. Already, of course, those tech billionaires came into conflict with the MAGA base, because they need continued migration into the US to meet their needs for skilled labour-power. Its a similar contradiction to that faced by the Brexiteers in Britain, as net immigration rose massively after Brexit, the very thing that those that voted for it wanted to stop!
So far, there is nothing in what Trump and his regime have done that seriously threatens the global ruling-class, or even its US fraction. Most of the things he threatened such as the ridiculous tariffs, he has had to abandon, at least for now. If he tries to reintroduce them, the bond market will sell-off again, and the stock market will follow suit, indicating some of the real power of that ruling-class, as also Truss found in 2022.
But, the real power of the state resides in a thousand institutions, and social and family connections. Ultimately, it resides in the armed forces and bodies of armed men, which do not need, in the US to even go as far as an open coup, such as that which faced Allende and others on the Left. A simple bullet to the head has more often been sufficient in the US to remove the threat of a troublesome priest. Indeed, the last time Trump's strategy was tried in the US, by McKinley, in the 1890's, a time when the rest of the world had entered a new period of secular growth, not only did it cause US growth to be hit hard, prices to rise and so on, but it caused the Republicans to get wiped out, and later McKinley himself took a bullet.
To suggest that Musk is the state was maybe hyperbolic, but what I mean is that rather than form pressure groups or lobby to influence policy, as might be suggested by the state being but a committee to manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie, the likes of Musk and co have actually taken over power directly. He literally holds the purse strings. There is no intermediary.
I think you should follow the money. The global ruling class comes from Silicon valley and its associated financiers, not only the speculators. The fact that the tech titans Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai and Cook were pictured so prominently at Trump's inauguration tells you who's closest to power, and how closely they share goals. They're among the richest people on earth and they represented around a trillion dollars of wealth. No financier appears in the top 20 world's richest people unless you count Warren Buffett -- and certainly no speculators. Anyway there's no need to distinguish between financial capital and Silicon valley, as they're closely connected.
Musk is more than just a powerful individual. With a fortune estimated at upwards of $400 billion he's probably one of the richest people ever to exist and he helped bankroll Trump's victory. Yes he's got a short attention span and might get bored one day (as might Trump get bored of him). He's also unsophisticated, self-contradictory, historically ignorant and seems socially inept. But in the meantime he can wreak enormous damage.
I don't think the need for skilled immigration will prove decisive because these aren't high employment companies -- indeed they're marked out by their automation and low headcount. Twitter only has a couple of thousand employees. Trump has shown he'll quite readily contradict himself on immigration. He's married to someone who allegedly worked in the US illegally on a visitor's visa. His real target is the low-paid and so-called illicit immigrants who seem to so rile the racist MAGA base - and the tech bros don't care about them.
I agree that nothing Trump has done or said threatens the ruling class. My point is precisely that he's acting in their interests. The financial market reaction to his tariffs both during this administration and the last was quite muted.
Finally, yes, the state comprises a set of institutional and social relations and an army, but that doesn't stop its main institutions being taken over and effectively run by anti-democratic and reactionary forces which are so powerful that they have the potential to reorientate the world order.
I think its necessary for me to clarify terminology.
Firstly, there is a difference between government and the state. That distinction is certainly blurred in Presidential systems like the US, which by their nature are semi-Bonapartist. Nevertheless, a distinction still exists, and its important to also distinguish between a fraction of the ruling class, such as Musk, obtaining immediate influence and control, as against the interest of the ruling-class as a whole. Indeed, sometimes that interest is not even perceived by individuals within the ruling-class, and it has to be forced upon them, by the actions of the state, acting in their collective, long-term interests. The Factory Acts in Britain, are a good example. I will come back to this, shortly.
When I say that the ruling class is a class of speculators, I do not mean financiers, or chancers. I mean by it what Marx and Engels meant when they said that it was now a class of parasitic coupon-clippers, living off their interest and dividends (and rents) from the ownership of shares, bonds and landed property. I say it is now a class of speculators for the simple reason that from the 1980's onwards, that concern with obtaining those revenues became replaced with a concern to obtain speculative capital gains on the ownership of such property.
Often, we hear of “the 1%”, which, globally, would mean a ruling class of around 70 million people. But, as I have set out previously, in fact, that 1% has a very wide range of wealth from just a few million Dollars, to hundreds of billions of dollars. But, even if we talk about the core ruling class amounting to 0.1% it would still mean 7 million people. Let's be even more restrictive, and say its the top 0.01%, it still means 0.7 million people. So, talking about the top 20 richest people is not a relevant metric, even allowing for the distinction you have made between “financiers”, and my definition as simply the owners of fictitious-capital, i.e. stocks and bonds. On my definition, all the people you list are “speculators”, because they have all become in the last 30-40 years more dependent upon speculative capital gains from rising asset prices than on revenues from interest/dividends/rents.
There is another point as far as that is concerned, which is precisely that this wealth is paper wealth, which can be dissipated in an instant, as 1987, 2000, and 2008 showed. That i quite different to the case with real productive wealth, as Marx described. Its precisely why central banks during that period have tried to protect that fictitious wealth by engaging in QE and so on, whenever reality imposes and asset prices crash.
But, therein also lies the contradiction and problem. I doubt that there is much or any scope for repeating that exercise. We had all the idiocy of negative yields and so on after 2010, and ultimately, reality imposed itself again. We have also had attempts to restrict the demand for labour-power and capital, so as to try to hold down wages to protect profits, and hold down market rates of interest to prevent a crash in asset prices. But, its failed. On the one hand, the petty-bourgeoisie has grown by 50% since the 1980's reversing a 200 year trend, with its own reactionary consequences of which Brexit, Trump. Truss are a manifestation. On the other hand, attempting to hold back growth, manifest in large companies using profits to buy financial assets rather than invest, simply led to inefficient small firms filling the gap, and employing more labour due to low productivity, and to China and other emerging economies filling the gap in the global market.
The ruling class needs to be able to increase the mass and rate of profit, without needing to significantly increase the demand for money-capital, to finance it, thereby avoiding a rise in interest rates which will crash asset prices. I don't think, in the end that is possible, but, in the short term one means of achieving it is to remove various frictions and barriers to trade. Brexit, and the petty-bourgeois nationalist ideology of Trump run completely counter to that, which is why they are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the ruling class, as Truss discovered. I am not at all surprised that Trump had to capitulate on his Tariffs, though we will have to see if he tries it again.
To come back to the point I made at the top, the short-term interests of the ruling class to avoid a crash in asset prices, which they have become dependent upon, and which is new compared to their position in all previous periods, is contradictory to their long-term interests both to ensure the continuation of capitalism, and to ensure the accumulation of real industrial capital, whose profits are the source of their revenues from interest/dividends, rents and taxes. It is that real, large-scale, socialised industrial capital which is the foundation of the capitalist state, and which, therefore, it must defend, even, ultimately at the expense of the short-term interests of the ruling class.
The state must not only pursue the creation of larger single markets, and to oppose the nationalist agenda of tariffs and protectionism, but it must also promote the required planning and regulation of the economy, within this larger politico-economic framework, which again is contrary to the agenda of the petty-bourgeois nationalists, such as Trump et al. So far, as with Brexit, or the first Trump term, the actions of those governments has not threatened those long-term interests, precisely because the state has been able to neuter them, by its various levers of real power. Trump has had to back down, as did Bojo in relation to Brexit, and most notably Truss. Trump's backers have no doubt learned from that, and are acting to try to limit the range of movement of what they call “the deep state”, but which is really just the capitalist state. But, the entrenched power of the ruling class retains a myriad of means. Trump's attacks on USAID – in themselves not a significant threat to US soft-power across the globe – have already provoked a reaction, and use of the capitalist courts. The courts have already ruled out a number of Trump's executive orders, and, although that may simply mean a delay, as he appeals to his stacked Supreme Court, it still means that, as with Brexit, his political regime gets increasingly bogged down in these day to day fights.
In the end, even if he persists through that, and through the global financial markets hitting US bonds and so on, along with a growing popular opposition as that develops – the immediate consequence being that is heterogenous electoral coalition disintegrates, and Democrats win seats in local elections as they arise, and regain control of Congress in 2 years, causing him further problems – the ruling class can simply rely on a more accurately fired bullet, and a convenient Lee Harvey Oswald.
"Never mind the state being a committee to manage the whole affairs of the bourgeoisie; Musk is the state."
Not really, for all the reasons you set out later in your post. The state is the state of the ruling class, and, today, the ruling class is a global class of speculators, "coupon-clippers" as Marx and Engels called them, in "Anti-Duhring", owners of fictitious-capital (shares, bonds and derivatives) from which they derive interest/dividends, and in the last 40 years, more significantly, capital gains from inflated asset prices, mostly fuelled by central bank liquidity.
Musk is certainly an important and powerful individual, but he remains that, at best he might reflect the interests of similar US tech billionaires, though I doubt even that. Most o them have fallen into line, simply because they are spineless, and sought to avoid coming into the cross-hairs of Trump's regime. Already, of course, those tech billionaires came into conflict with the MAGA base, because they need continued migration into the US to meet their needs for skilled labour-power. Its a similar contradiction to that faced by the Brexiteers in Britain, as net immigration rose massively after Brexit, the very thing that those that voted for it wanted to stop!
So far, there is nothing in what Trump and his regime have done that seriously threatens the global ruling-class, or even its US fraction. Most of the things he threatened such as the ridiculous tariffs, he has had to abandon, at least for now. If he tries to reintroduce them, the bond market will sell-off again, and the stock market will follow suit, indicating some of the real power of that ruling-class, as also Truss found in 2022.
But, the real power of the state resides in a thousand institutions, and social and family connections. Ultimately, it resides in the armed forces and bodies of armed men, which do not need, in the US to even go as far as an open coup, such as that which faced Allende and others on the Left. A simple bullet to the head has more often been sufficient in the US to remove the threat of a troublesome priest. Indeed, the last time Trump's strategy was tried in the US, by McKinley, in the 1890's, a time when the rest of the world had entered a new period of secular growth, not only did it cause US growth to be hit hard, prices to rise and so on, but it caused the Republicans to get wiped out, and later McKinley himself took a bullet.
To suggest that Musk is the state was maybe hyperbolic, but what I mean is that rather than form pressure groups or lobby to influence policy, as might be suggested by the state being but a committee to manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie, the likes of Musk and co have actually taken over power directly. He literally holds the purse strings. There is no intermediary.
I think you should follow the money. The global ruling class comes from Silicon valley and its associated financiers, not only the speculators. The fact that the tech titans Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai and Cook were pictured so prominently at Trump's inauguration tells you who's closest to power, and how closely they share goals. They're among the richest people on earth and they represented around a trillion dollars of wealth. No financier appears in the top 20 world's richest people unless you count Warren Buffett -- and certainly no speculators. Anyway there's no need to distinguish between financial capital and Silicon valley, as they're closely connected.
Musk is more than just a powerful individual. With a fortune estimated at upwards of $400 billion he's probably one of the richest people ever to exist and he helped bankroll Trump's victory. Yes he's got a short attention span and might get bored one day (as might Trump get bored of him). He's also unsophisticated, self-contradictory, historically ignorant and seems socially inept. But in the meantime he can wreak enormous damage.
I don't think the need for skilled immigration will prove decisive because these aren't high employment companies -- indeed they're marked out by their automation and low headcount. Twitter only has a couple of thousand employees. Trump has shown he'll quite readily contradict himself on immigration. He's married to someone who allegedly worked in the US illegally on a visitor's visa. His real target is the low-paid and so-called illicit immigrants who seem to so rile the racist MAGA base - and the tech bros don't care about them.
I agree that nothing Trump has done or said threatens the ruling class. My point is precisely that he's acting in their interests. The financial market reaction to his tariffs both during this administration and the last was quite muted.
Finally, yes, the state comprises a set of institutional and social relations and an army, but that doesn't stop its main institutions being taken over and effectively run by anti-democratic and reactionary forces which are so powerful that they have the potential to reorientate the world order.
Dan,
I think its necessary for me to clarify terminology.
Firstly, there is a difference between government and the state. That distinction is certainly blurred in Presidential systems like the US, which by their nature are semi-Bonapartist. Nevertheless, a distinction still exists, and its important to also distinguish between a fraction of the ruling class, such as Musk, obtaining immediate influence and control, as against the interest of the ruling-class as a whole. Indeed, sometimes that interest is not even perceived by individuals within the ruling-class, and it has to be forced upon them, by the actions of the state, acting in their collective, long-term interests. The Factory Acts in Britain, are a good example. I will come back to this, shortly.
When I say that the ruling class is a class of speculators, I do not mean financiers, or chancers. I mean by it what Marx and Engels meant when they said that it was now a class of parasitic coupon-clippers, living off their interest and dividends (and rents) from the ownership of shares, bonds and landed property. I say it is now a class of speculators for the simple reason that from the 1980's onwards, that concern with obtaining those revenues became replaced with a concern to obtain speculative capital gains on the ownership of such property.
Often, we hear of “the 1%”, which, globally, would mean a ruling class of around 70 million people. But, as I have set out previously, in fact, that 1% has a very wide range of wealth from just a few million Dollars, to hundreds of billions of dollars. But, even if we talk about the core ruling class amounting to 0.1% it would still mean 7 million people. Let's be even more restrictive, and say its the top 0.01%, it still means 0.7 million people. So, talking about the top 20 richest people is not a relevant metric, even allowing for the distinction you have made between “financiers”, and my definition as simply the owners of fictitious-capital, i.e. stocks and bonds. On my definition, all the people you list are “speculators”, because they have all become in the last 30-40 years more dependent upon speculative capital gains from rising asset prices than on revenues from interest/dividends/rents.
There is another point as far as that is concerned, which is precisely that this wealth is paper wealth, which can be dissipated in an instant, as 1987, 2000, and 2008 showed. That i quite different to the case with real productive wealth, as Marx described. Its precisely why central banks during that period have tried to protect that fictitious wealth by engaging in QE and so on, whenever reality imposes and asset prices crash.
But, therein also lies the contradiction and problem. I doubt that there is much or any scope for repeating that exercise. We had all the idiocy of negative yields and so on after 2010, and ultimately, reality imposed itself again. We have also had attempts to restrict the demand for labour-power and capital, so as to try to hold down wages to protect profits, and hold down market rates of interest to prevent a crash in asset prices. But, its failed. On the one hand, the petty-bourgeoisie has grown by 50% since the 1980's reversing a 200 year trend, with its own reactionary consequences of which Brexit, Trump. Truss are a manifestation. On the other hand, attempting to hold back growth, manifest in large companies using profits to buy financial assets rather than invest, simply led to inefficient small firms filling the gap, and employing more labour due to low productivity, and to China and other emerging economies filling the gap in the global market.
The ruling class needs to be able to increase the mass and rate of profit, without needing to significantly increase the demand for money-capital, to finance it, thereby avoiding a rise in interest rates which will crash asset prices. I don't think, in the end that is possible, but, in the short term one means of achieving it is to remove various frictions and barriers to trade. Brexit, and the petty-bourgeois nationalist ideology of Trump run completely counter to that, which is why they are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the ruling class, as Truss discovered. I am not at all surprised that Trump had to capitulate on his Tariffs, though we will have to see if he tries it again.
To come back to the point I made at the top, the short-term interests of the ruling class to avoid a crash in asset prices, which they have become dependent upon, and which is new compared to their position in all previous periods, is contradictory to their long-term interests both to ensure the continuation of capitalism, and to ensure the accumulation of real industrial capital, whose profits are the source of their revenues from interest/dividends, rents and taxes. It is that real, large-scale, socialised industrial capital which is the foundation of the capitalist state, and which, therefore, it must defend, even, ultimately at the expense of the short-term interests of the ruling class.
The state must not only pursue the creation of larger single markets, and to oppose the nationalist agenda of tariffs and protectionism, but it must also promote the required planning and regulation of the economy, within this larger politico-economic framework, which again is contrary to the agenda of the petty-bourgeois nationalists, such as Trump et al. So far, as with Brexit, or the first Trump term, the actions of those governments has not threatened those long-term interests, precisely because the state has been able to neuter them, by its various levers of real power. Trump has had to back down, as did Bojo in relation to Brexit, and most notably Truss. Trump's backers have no doubt learned from that, and are acting to try to limit the range of movement of what they call “the deep state”, but which is really just the capitalist state. But, the entrenched power of the ruling class retains a myriad of means. Trump's attacks on USAID – in themselves not a significant threat to US soft-power across the globe – have already provoked a reaction, and use of the capitalist courts. The courts have already ruled out a number of Trump's executive orders, and, although that may simply mean a delay, as he appeals to his stacked Supreme Court, it still means that, as with Brexit, his political regime gets increasingly bogged down in these day to day fights.
In the end, even if he persists through that, and through the global financial markets hitting US bonds and so on, along with a growing popular opposition as that develops – the immediate consequence being that is heterogenous electoral coalition disintegrates, and Democrats win seats in local elections as they arise, and regain control of Congress in 2 years, causing him further problems – the ruling class can simply rely on a more accurately fired bullet, and a convenient Lee Harvey Oswald.