" The democratic republic is best for capitalism because it allows capital to rule with less coercion and therefore more durably"
This has been historically falsified by the experience of present-day China and the Gulf states. That is the model towards at least a faction of capital is aiming.
Doloras, this is sharp and worth taking carefully.
You are right that present-day China and the Gulf states are demonstrating that capital can rule durably without the democratic republic, and that at least factions of Western capital are looking at those models as the future they want. The post-2010 Silicon Valley turn toward authoritarian-capitalist sympathies is the visible evidence.
Where I would push back is on the 'historically falsified' framing. Lenin's argument in State and Revolution was not that capital always prefers the democratic republic. It was that the democratic republic is the best political shell for capitalism under the historical conditions Lenin was analysing: the imperialist core economies of 1917 where the bourgeoisie had consolidated its rule against feudal residues. Capital under different conditions reaches for different shells.
China is the case that requires the most careful analysis. Following Au Loong-Yu and the broader FI tradition's China work, I would say China is capitalist (the state defends the capitalist mode of production) but has a Bonapartist political form. Not the classical Bonapartism of one capitalist faction ruling over another, but a special configuration where the state rules above the bourgeoisie it has helped to constitute. The Chinese capitalist class exists as a class in itself but is structurally denied the conditions to act as a class for itself, except through the mediation of the party-state and especially the commercial interests of the various wings of the PLA.
The point Marx makes in The Eighteenth Brumaire about parliament is what helps clarify this. Parliament is where the bourgeoisie can coordinate against the atomising knives of the marketplace, acting as a class rather than just as competing individual capitalists. In China the party-state and the CPC machine are the functional equivalent of parliament. They are the institutional space where intra-bourgeois competition is modulated and coordination becomes possible. The competition is not abolished but it is mediated, prevented from escalating into open political conflict that would scare the children (the working class) or scare the grandparents (the older party cadres and the broader stability of the system). The Bo Xilai case, the Jack Ma case, the 2020-2022 platform capital clampdown: these are the visible moments where the party-state asserts its modulation function, ensuring that no individual capitalist and no autonomous faction can mobilise the political base that would threaten the institutional coordination the party-state provides.
The Gulf states are a different configuration: rentier capitalism with strong feudal residues but with active commercial bourgeoisies (the al-Futtaim group, the al-Rajhi family, the sovereign wealth funds as integrated capital actors) that the 'tech-feudalism' framing somewhat understates.
None of this falsifies Lenin's analysis. It demonstrates what the analysis predicts when conditions change. Which is itself the analytical resource the article argues the AWL apparatus has discarded. Conway's metric cannot engage Chinese capitalism on its own terms because doing so requires the property-form analysis the apparatus disqualified in 1988. Your point sharpens the article's argument rather than undermining it. Part Four of The Drift will engage the political economy question in more depth, including the variant capitalisms the FI tradition has the resources to engage and the AWL framework does not.
" The democratic republic is best for capitalism because it allows capital to rule with less coercion and therefore more durably"
This has been historically falsified by the experience of present-day China and the Gulf states. That is the model towards at least a faction of capital is aiming.
Doloras, this is sharp and worth taking carefully.
You are right that present-day China and the Gulf states are demonstrating that capital can rule durably without the democratic republic, and that at least factions of Western capital are looking at those models as the future they want. The post-2010 Silicon Valley turn toward authoritarian-capitalist sympathies is the visible evidence.
Where I would push back is on the 'historically falsified' framing. Lenin's argument in State and Revolution was not that capital always prefers the democratic republic. It was that the democratic republic is the best political shell for capitalism under the historical conditions Lenin was analysing: the imperialist core economies of 1917 where the bourgeoisie had consolidated its rule against feudal residues. Capital under different conditions reaches for different shells.
China is the case that requires the most careful analysis. Following Au Loong-Yu and the broader FI tradition's China work, I would say China is capitalist (the state defends the capitalist mode of production) but has a Bonapartist political form. Not the classical Bonapartism of one capitalist faction ruling over another, but a special configuration where the state rules above the bourgeoisie it has helped to constitute. The Chinese capitalist class exists as a class in itself but is structurally denied the conditions to act as a class for itself, except through the mediation of the party-state and especially the commercial interests of the various wings of the PLA.
The point Marx makes in The Eighteenth Brumaire about parliament is what helps clarify this. Parliament is where the bourgeoisie can coordinate against the atomising knives of the marketplace, acting as a class rather than just as competing individual capitalists. In China the party-state and the CPC machine are the functional equivalent of parliament. They are the institutional space where intra-bourgeois competition is modulated and coordination becomes possible. The competition is not abolished but it is mediated, prevented from escalating into open political conflict that would scare the children (the working class) or scare the grandparents (the older party cadres and the broader stability of the system). The Bo Xilai case, the Jack Ma case, the 2020-2022 platform capital clampdown: these are the visible moments where the party-state asserts its modulation function, ensuring that no individual capitalist and no autonomous faction can mobilise the political base that would threaten the institutional coordination the party-state provides.
The Gulf states are a different configuration: rentier capitalism with strong feudal residues but with active commercial bourgeoisies (the al-Futtaim group, the al-Rajhi family, the sovereign wealth funds as integrated capital actors) that the 'tech-feudalism' framing somewhat understates.
None of this falsifies Lenin's analysis. It demonstrates what the analysis predicts when conditions change. Which is itself the analytical resource the article argues the AWL apparatus has discarded. Conway's metric cannot engage Chinese capitalism on its own terms because doing so requires the property-form analysis the apparatus disqualified in 1988. Your point sharpens the article's argument rather than undermining it. Part Four of The Drift will engage the political economy question in more depth, including the variant capitalisms the FI tradition has the resources to engage and the AWL framework does not.