by Alice M.
In their detailed analysis of classes and
class struggle Marx, Engels and Lenin paid a great deal of attention to the decisive
role of the coercive state apparatus in enforcing the rule of the class that
holds the economic and political power in society.
Their
investigations into the historical origins of classes and class struggle showed
that the state apparatus arose at the time when human society divided into two
main classes – the exploited and oppressed majority who create all the wealth (surplus
value) in society, and a small minority who own the means of production,
exploit the vast majority and keep the surplus value for their own class.
The job
of the capitalist state machine is to suppress the resistance and struggles of the
working class, and ensure that the exploitation by the minority class is not
interfered with or disturbed by the majority working class of the exploited
population. In his 1919 lecture on The State, Lenin said, “The state is a
machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another.”
Today’s
monopoly capitalist state is made up of the armed forces (army and police), jails,
the public services, the courts, the extensive legal system and the mass media.
The capitalist state is administered by parliament, the CEO (Chief Executive
Office) for the ruling class.
Ted
Hill, the founding Chairperson of the CPA (M-L) used these general truths of
the coercive state machine exposed by Marx, Engels and Lenin, to examine the
particularities and characteristics of Australia’s imperialist dominated
capitalist state. His analysis deepened the revolutionary working class
consciousness and advanced Australia’s revolutionary theory.
Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Hill pointed out that the state apparatus takes many
different forms, reflecting the historical, economic and social conditions of
the time. The capitalist state uses both the open force and the deception as a
means to suppress resistance and challenge to the main order of the capitalist
class rule. Both the open and the deceptive coercion of the capitalist state
are two sides of the same coin, often used simultaneously.
There’s
the open violence and suppression by the armed forces – the army and the police,
including the secret police, and imprisonment of rebellious workers. There’s
also the coercive state machinery of the upper levels of the public service and
the bourgeois legal system that administers and enforces the capitalist class
exploitation.
The monopoly
media is an essential part of this capitalist state’s superstructure. It vigorously
imposes the ideology and interests of the monopoly capitalist class, and tries
to crush or silence the voice and the will of the people when resistance and
rebellion of the working class disturbs the smooth operations of the capitalist
exploitation.
The
imperialist dominated capitalist state has always used both of these forms of state
repression and coercion.
From
the British colonial armed forces’ bloody and violent repression of the
Aboriginal people, the violent putting down of rebellious convicts, the Eureka
uprising of 1854, the struggles of shearers and maritime workers in the early
1890s, to the Chifley Labor government using the army to crush the striking
coal miners in 1949.
More
recently we have seen the 1998 MUA struggle, police attacking striking workers
on the picket lines, the secretive Commonwealth Crimes Act and the more
deceptive, but no less effective, suppression of working class struggles through
the capitalist legal system in the form of the penal powers in the 1950s and
1960s, the BIIC, the ABCC, WorkChoices, Fair Work Australia and many thousands more anti-worker laws designed
to paralyse working class struggle and gut workers’ collective organisation.
In the struggle
between construction unions and the giant Grollo construction company in
November 2012 the state deployed most instruments of the state machinery to
suppress construction workers’ battle for safety in their workplace. More than
one thousand armed and riot police were dispatched to the peaceful picket line.
Simultaneously,
the capitalist state activated many of its anti-worker laws against the union
and workers, and the capitalist mass media went into full drive spreading lies
and propaganda to discredit and demonise the just fight of construction
workers.
In
Australia’s present conditions, the capitalist state can largely rely on coercion
by deception, through its legal system and the mass media, in the suppression
of the exploited working class.
Nevertheless, in spite of the coercive state machinery surrounding the working class, all the improvements to workers rights and conditions had been wrung out of the capitalist class through workers own struggles. They are important concessions forced on the ruling class by the organised and militant actions of the working class.
Through
these actions the working class deepens the understanding of class struggle, the
capitalist system and the role of its coercive state.
We encourage
activists to study – Engels’ Origin of
the Family, Private Property and the State, Lenin’s lecture on The State and The State and Revolution, as well as Ted
Hill’s Revolution and the Australian State.
No comments:
Post a Comment