Long- Vs. Short-term Class Interests
Structural Marxism posits that the state functions to serve the long-term interests of the capitalist class. Building upon the works of Engels and Lenin, Structural Marxists posit the idea that the state is a mechanism for regulating class conflict, the irreconcilable tension between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. By regulating these antagonisms rather than eliminating them—which Lenin thought was impossible without violent revolution—the state serves to stabilize the capitalist system as a whole and preserve its existence.
Structuralists differentiate between the long-term and short-term interests of the capitalist class in order to describe the necessity of the state to the capitalism system. Short-term interests of the bourgeoisie include policies that affect capital accumulation in the immediate future such as tax breaks, reduced minimum wages, government subsidies, etc. They maintain that when the state is not benefiting the bourgeois class’ short-term interests, it is acting on the behalf of its future interests. Accordingly, when the state seems to act on behalf of the proletariat rather than the bourgeoisie (raising minimum wages, increasing rights of workers’ unions, etc.) it is serving capitalist interests by meeting the demands of workers only enough to prevent an uprising that could threaten the system as a whole. Because the interests of the proletariat and the capitalist classes are counter to one another, the state is necessary to regulate the capitalist system and assure its preservation by forcing capitalists to agree to demands of workers to which they otherwise would not succumb.
Read more about this topic: Structural Marxism
Famous quotes containing the words long-, short-term, class and/or interests:
“Everything ponderous, viscous, and solemnly clumsy, all long- winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among Germans—forgive me the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, being a reflection of the “good old time” to which it belongs, and a reflection of German taste at a time when there still was a “German taste”Ma rococo taste in moribus et artibus.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.”
—Tom Stoppard (b. 1937)
“But the strong and healthy yeoman and husbands of the land, the self-sustaining class of inventive and industrious men, fear no competition or superiority. Come what will, their faculty cannot be spared.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... contemporary black women felt they were asked to choose between a black movement that primarily served the interests of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)