forces and state

Some thoughts on social forces and State seizure.

In the period when industry and finance capital still weren't linked, in industrial societies, workers in factories could take over and paralyze production and political governments would be reluctant to use force on workers that are vital to production. Such was the case for example in Italy, when workers nearly seized power and the country was on the verge of a social transition. But the workers' party was indecisive. So another lesson would be to have a strong association or party to carry forward the changing of social relations resolutely.

In the era of industrial capital only, such industrial actions could cripple the State and make possible its collapse, with the subsequent transition. But in the era of monopoly and finance capital, struggle cannot be waged by industrial action alone. It has to be fought outside the factories as well. So if workers' actions are not sufficient, where are the social forces to create the transition?

Let's take the Philippines. The country has experienced at least 2 EDSA's but obviously they're not revolutions in the sense that there were no changes in social relations. How can the elite maintain its dominance?

And one has to look at the government bureaucracy - especially the (government) workers. Now focusing on organizing among these workers to change their consciousness would encounter problems, not least in their orientation of preserving the state, but that can be remedied if the lesson to be put through is genuine service to the people, with an awareness of the prevalent social privilege that runs counter to that dictum. Another way would be to show the antagonisms between their status as workers, and their exploitation in the immediate in the hands of the state and on the far plane, by the elite. There would of course be studies on the different gradations in rank and political loyalties, but progressives have to distinguish friends from enemies.
Another thing is that with the neoliberal ideology of streamlining government, with the concommitant effects on job security, there is a case to be made for organizing efforts among government employees. One can argue that finance capital is something existing as supra-state, or above the state; but social reality shows that it does go through the state and its movements are mediated by regulations that favor it. Everything else is ideological. So the state is still something that capital goes through, in fact depends on its mediation.
The situation of workers would be: while they serve as tools for the perpetration of elite rule through their maintenance work and ideological continuation, they are exploited with low wages and the haggardness of civil service, not least from their superiors. They're also caught between neoliberal doctrines of lessening the state, which proposes that any government role should be minimal, and the real dependence of these same forces on the state to preserve monopoly and enforce policies and regulations to favor finance capital and multinational business. Looking at this complex template, one can advance the opinion that when government workers launch strikes, the civilian state apparatus can be paralyzed.
Now one can counter that this would lead to reformism and over-dependence on legal forms. But that is not the consequence of the whole argument; it is the degradation of it. You don't argue against organizing among industrial workers because of their degeneration into trade bureaucracies and compromising labor parties. I think the Philippines has shown the way again on how organizing among government employees could still be done along progressive lines.

###
One has to look, too, at the tools of finance: the production of surplus has made a gigantic niche in the services sector, because capitalism still has to sell its surplus products. This does not preclude organizing in the services sector, but the focus in this sector at the present can only be diluted. Finance capital finds ways without the physical labor and voice of masses of physical beings. It has technologies that easily replace the work of human beings.

But again, there is force that the other repressive elements like the police and military can inflict. Which is why in the Philippines, those wanting change cannot just place aside the discourse of arms. Plus, in the Philippine situation where it's mostly rural, peasants can only defend themselves from landlord tyranny and militarization if they have an army that may be seen as their defenders - in conjunction with peasant organizations and inter-class solidarity - such that total exploitation would have to be seriously re-thought. This does not preclude organizing among reactionary soldiers.

This does not displace workers from the scene, because industrial actions have their place, especially in relatively backward economies where production is in the concrete, more or less, and not just in finance capital, where the more important power lies.
But the reality of the relative autonomy and domination of finance capital does change the landscape for struggle. Which makes it hard for the masses to conquer power for the advancement of their own interests. So powerful is money-capital, that any moves it does not approve of could mean the lightning rush out of much-needed capital. If progressives are to advance forward, they must be able to at least feel these subtleties of the all too rugged political landscape.
Again, this does not replace traditional organizing, rather it complements it, in line with class and social analyses which focus on interrelated organizing among communities and workplaces.