The State: Theory And Praxis, 2022 book by Kevin Carson

Intro: Writing the section on engagement with the state in Carson Exodus left me wanting to write a lot more, especially considering how prominently the issues in that section figured in intra-Left debates in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. election cycles. Just about everything I’ve written from 2010 on, this book involves some aspect of post-capitalist transition. And while Homebrew Industrial Revolution and all the books since were meant to be timely and influential (at least as influential as realistically possible), this is more true of The State than any of the others. I wrote Desktop Regulatory State in the heady atmosphere of Occupy and other movements of the 2011 cycle, and that momentum sustained me through the beginning of Exodus. But the Left has lost much, if not most, of its dominant position in networked resistance since then. GamerGate and its alt right offshoots on social media were the beginning of an upsurge in memetic warfare by the Right. For the last six years the United States has existed under the shadow of fascism; each election brings another chorus of pundits asking whether this will be our last. A substantial minority of the public lives in the alternate reality defined by QAnon, and “election theft” and anti-vaccine conspiracism, and right-wing paramilitaries are in the streets on levels reminiscent of Weimar Germany. So the whole question of playing to win is, perhaps, more urgent now than when my previous books went into print.

Table of Contents

Origin and History of the State .............................. 3

Introduction to Part Two: Theory of the State: General Survey of the Ground .......... 19

Theory of the State: Interest Group Pluralism ........................ 21

Theory of the State: Marx and Engels................29

Theory of the State: Miliband and Instrumentalism.............. 39

Theory of the State: Corporate Liberalism ................................55

Theory of the State: Power Elite .......................... 73

Theory of the State: Structuralism......................89

Theory of the State: State Autonomy .............. 103

Cockup/Foulup Theory................129

The Question of Democracy................................ 141

A General Survey of the Ground: Accelerationism, Saviorism, and the “Reformist” Enemy....................... 161

The Rupturalist Error vs. Interstitialism ..................................169

The Many and the One.................187

The Danger of Diversion and Cooptation, Non-Reformist Reforms, and the Need for a Dual Track ............................203

Bibliography ..... 233