Maxi Nieto critiques the perspectives of the “new democratic socialism” and argues they are based on a misunderstanding of capitalism as a structural totality. 

Introduction

Since the financial crisis of 2008, a “new democratic socialism” (DSA, Podemos, Syriza, Jacobin) has been gaining influence, advancing the idea of a gradual socialist transition away from the existing State structures. The purpose of this article is to submit to criticism (starting from Marx’s Capital) the theoretical and political assumptions of this proposed gradualist strategy. This strategy tends to be based on a faulty perception of the fundamental structures that make up the capitalist mode of production (CMP) as an “organic system.” In contrast to this view, and also starting from Marx, the revolutionary communist perspective is presented and its main political foundations are established, leading to a critical consideration of certain fundamental aspects of the historical and political experience as viewed from that tradition. 

To develop the argument, we first examine the fundamental articulations that define the CMP as a structural totality: the connection between market and capital and between capital and State. We then consider the particularization of the latter relationship at the global level. Subsequently, we show how the CMP blocks the democratic model, while the task of communist revolution on the political plane is the “conquest of democracy.” Finally, we argue that democracy is a necessary condition for the exercise of workers’ power, and we expose the current need for a revolutionary strategy of social transformation. In conclusion, we hope to have shown the problems with “democratic socialism” as well as the relevance of classical Marxist analysis. 

1) ‘New’ Reformism

The 2008 crisis awakened in the West a renewed interest in the socialist perspective and possible alternatives to the capitalist mode of production (CMP). Since that time, the notion of a “new democratic socialism” has gained influence, advancing the idea of ​​gradually overcoming capitalism by way of the current institutions of the State. This has traditionally been called a “democratic road to socialism” and it involves progressively “democratizing society and institutions” through a strategy of the accumulation of “partial ruptures” until a qualitative change is eventually experienced in power structures. Among the most conspicuous representatives of this new reformist left are, in political field, DSA (U.S.), the tendencies of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (U.K.), Syriza (Greece), Podemos (Spain), Die Linke (Germany), Front Gauche and NPA (France), and Bloco (Portugal) – or at minimum the internal leftward currents present in all these organizations. In the intellectual field, this vision is currently defended by authors such as Wright, Chibber, Muldoon, and Blanc, and by the influential progressive magazine Jacobin.¹

A supposedly novel feature of this gradualist strategy of successive partial reforms and ruptures (seeking to “widen the contradictions” within the State apparatus until reaching a final “breaking point”) is ostensibly promoted through simultaneous struggles both ‘outside’ and ‘within’ (or else ‘against’) the State. This combines a mobilization of the masses and a strengthening of independent labor organization with electoral politics and, if necessary, the tasks of government (currently oriented to the gradual transformation of power structures). Such a proposal intentionally distances itself both from the social democratic management of capitalism and from the revolutionary Marxist strategy for seizure of power (and particularly from Leninism, seen as the condensation of all the evils of the left); this is a perspective that sees as an inescapable head-on collision with the bourgeois State. In any case, the axis and true lever of social transformation would in this view be institutional, since in this strategy the struggles and organization of workers are always conceived as external support to internal parliamentary and governmental action (that is, subordinate to the advancement of institutional policy), so as to overcome the resistance to reforms that will be opposed by both capital and the State bureaucracy. 

Obviously, these ideas are anything but novel, and they refer directly to reformist currents of the 20th century, where the gradualist strategy of “accumulation of forces” for the “democratization of society and institutions” presented two main variants:

a) A variant more formally attached to the political traditions of Marxism, starting with Kautsky² and continuing in the 1970s with Poulantzas³ and “left-wing Eurocommunism.” Today, this would characterize the authors referred to above (who claim Kautsky) and the political forces of “new democratic socialism” (or at least its internal currents further to the left).

b) A more libertarian and post-Marxist variant of an inter-classist, ‘spontaneist’ and ‘movementist’ (or anti-party) character, fed by the ideological-cultural magma of 1968 and headed by authors such as Castoriadis⁴, Gorz⁵, Laclau⁶, and Negri⁷ as well as Italian autonomism.

Beyond the broad heterogeneity of this “socialist democratic” or “radical democratic” current ‒where very different authors co-exist and present opposing points of view on important issues – the main unifying characteristic is to question (in different degrees and forms, depending on the author) the very foundations of Marx’s theory and politics, and especially those of revolutionary communism as forged in the constitution of the Third International. 

Among the features common to all these authors, we highlight the following, logically implicated by one another: 

i) Open rejection (or at least sub-valuation) of the labor theory of value and of its derived conception of the CMP as an “organic system” with an objective operating logic where the elements that comprise the economic structure and those of the political sphere are inter-articulated. Society is seen as a mere juxtaposition of independent spheres, structured in terms of correlations of forces between classes. In the same vein, this non-organic vision of the CMP leads to a conception of circulation of commodities as not necessarily related to capitalist valorization, thus establishing a separation between market and capital that serves as the basis for its proposal of market socialism.

ii) The autonomy and pre-eminence of ‘the political,’ which is de facto equivalent to recognition of a certain neutrality of the State, ultimately understood as a “battlefield” in the “war of positions” or a “material condensation of power relations between the classes,” where the discursive and the symbolic take a central role thanks to their supposed performative capacity to generate identities, collective subjects, and social transformations. From all this would derive the possibility of gradually overcoming the CMP from the starting point of current political structures, without need of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a political form of workers’ power during the transition period. 

iii) A conception of modern democracy not so much as a precise political project of civil power based on law and founded in the Enlightenment – with both formal (internal logical consistency)⁸ and material requirements (socio-economic independence of individuals) for its effective function or realization, all of which implies a prior end to the dominance of the bourgeoisie ‒ but rather as a mere procedure for the participation of popular majorities in social life (and therefore not exclusive to the political sphere), a methodology already at work in different degrees and forms that should be extended and deepened.⁹ In short, the difference at play is between understanding democracy as something qualitative to “conquer” (as stated in the Manifesto, occurring only after the constitution of the proletariat as the ruling class, which expropriates the bourgeoisie and destroys – but never derives from – its political power), versus democracy as a quantitative attribute that can be extended to any area. From this procedural conception, it follows that democracy already governs in a way limited to the political sphere, albeit with imperfections and shortcomings that allude, in essence, to faults of “low participation” and “delegation.” In this way, a proposal is made for a distinct and supervening democracy (of ‘councilist’ or ‘assembly’ character) that opposes the classic Enlightenment model, now considered insufficient or perhaps too formal. 

iv) A perspective of analysis and political project focused on the national sphere, where any relevant reference to global capitalist power or imperialism is avoided.  

v) In relation to the subject, the tendency to replace ‘the working class’ with terms of citizen inter-classism (‘the people,’ ‘the multitude’), then proceeding to a critique of Party form, particularly that of the Leninist model of vanguard organization.

vi) Socialism as a vaguely defined project (of “radical democracy” or “economic democracy”) but always understood as some form of market socialism (that is, marked by buying and selling of the means of production), or even as a capitalist “mixed economy” with a broad sector of “social and cooperative economy.”

All of these ideas predominate in today’s new socialist left, in one way or another. Faced with this phenomenon, the objective of this article is to show (based on Marx’s theory) that they begin from a faulty understanding of the structure and functioning of the CMP, so that the strategy of gradual transition that they defend proves simply impossible. As a contrast, the revolutionary communist perspective is presented and its main political foundations are established, also starting from Marx, leading to a critical consideration of certain fundamental aspects of the historical and political experience as viewed from that tradition. 

To develop this argument, we divide the text into three parts. In section 2 the fundamental relations that define the CMP as a structural totality are exposed, as by Marx himself: the connection between market and capital (2.1) and between capital and State (2.2), with particularization of the latter then considered at the global scale (2.3). In section 3 we show the blockading of the democratic model in the CMP, and we defend the idea that the task of communist revolution in the political plane is the “conquest of democracy.” Finally, section 4 explains that democracy is in turn a necessary condition for the exercise of workers’ power, and we reflect on the need for a revolutionary strategy of social transformation.

2) The capitalist mode of production as an “organic system”

Faced with the superficial conception of the “new socialism,” which does not address theoretically the constitutive structure of bourgeois society, Marx understands the CMP as an “organic system”¹⁰ in which the different elements that compose it are involved and (synchronously) presuppose one another, forming an articulated totality that has a specific logic of operation and objective laws of reproduction and development. This articulated system of elements is not limited to the economic structure of society, with the necessary relationship between circulation, production, and accumulation, but it further includes the legal-political sphere of the State and law. The process of exposition that Marx follows in Capital takes the form of a conceptual development by which the various categories are derived from one another in a logical sequence starting from the simplest and most abstract notions and progressing to the most complex and concrete.  

To understand this theoretical development, we first examine the connection between market and capital that defines the economic structure (as developed in Marx). In a second step, we derive the legal-political sphere from said structure, demonstrating the necessary connection between capital and State (raised but not completed in Marx). Finally, we highlight the materialization of the relationship between capital and State at the world level (indicated but not deeply explored in Marx).

2.1. Market and capital

From the aforementioned theoretical-methodological perspective, Marx shows that market and capital are two organically connected instances that are mutually presupposed and cannot exist independently and separately from each other.¹¹ Understood as the universal circulation of commodities, ‘the market’ is the necessary form of manifestation of an atomized production structure where autonomous business units compete in order to maximize their profits, seeking to value their investments as capital, which is the ultimate goal of all production.

In the chain of logical-theoretical implications that lead Marx to the notion of capital, there are two fundamental steps that inform the first two sections of Volume I. First, it is established that the universal circulation of commodities requires the category of money as a general equivalent and autonomous form of value. Marx then shows that money can become a truly autonomous form of value only if it functions as capital – as “self-valorizing value” – which increases during its circulation thanks to the generation of surplus value in production.

The cycle of capital includes phases of circulation (buying and selling) and production (generation of surplus) within a general economic inter-relation. Thus, circulation cannot be considered an autonomous sphere of the economic process, but rather the expression of its own particular moment whose immanent purpose is the expansion of value and where market relations are merely the necessary form of articulation in a private production system in which labors are undertaken independently from one another (without submitting to any overall consideration or plan). Circulation of commodities and capitalist valorization are therefore organically connected.

The basic scheme for understanding the fundamental determinations of capital finds completion (section 3, section II) with the introduction of labor power as a commodity and, consequently, the exploitation of labor as the content of the valorization process. 

2.2. Capital and State

Although unfinished, the categorial system constructed by Marx in Capital shows that the legal-political sphere of law and the State is also a necessary part of the organic totality of the CMP. This means that this sphere is likewise generated (finds its reason for being and is conceptually founded) from the phenomenon of “economic structure” as a necessary condition for its effective functioning. This derivation is only mentioned and not fully developed in Capital, where the categorical presence of the State is implicit but necessary for the overall theoretical edifice to be sustained.¹² 

In our interpretation, the genesis and conceptual development of the political sphere of the State would have two moments that correspond to certain determinations and functions which require the two processes of economic structure described above: circulation of commodities and valorization of capital. The first step is explicitly formulated in Marx’s writing; the second is not. 

i) The Legal-Political Sphere and Circulation

The legal-political sphere of law and the State is required by the circulation of commodities itself as a necessary condition for its operation. As Marx points out, commodities cannot proceed to the market alone – they are exchanged by people who must recognize and relate to each other in legal terms as free and equal private owners. Market exchange thus presupposes a legal relationship that takes the form of a contract¹³). The universality of exchange (in which everything is potentially interchangeable) demands a corresponding universality of freedom on the legal plane, and therefore the principle of equality (in which everyone can freely exchange), thus causing the principles of equality and freedom to depend on one another. 

The set of rules that express such freedom and equality we know as ‘law,’ a concept which requires the following chain of elements for its internal coherence¹⁴: i) the norms that constitute it must be all universal in character, valid for all possible cases (they cannot pertain only to specific cases, as this would dissolve equality); ii) consequently, laws must be formulated as a system of guarantees – every individual must be certain that his or her rights will not be violated, thus preventing any individual from imposing on another; iii) a system of guarantees in turn requires a sovereign authority – a material force or power that effectively guarantees and enforces, driving all to recognize themselves as private owners; and iv) the principle of legal equality of individuals (and the corresponding system of guarantees) requires that this sovereign power belong to society as a whole – an autonomous, unified, and impersonal power represented by the State.

ii) The State and Capitalist Reproduction

Inasmuch as the universal circulation of commodities structurally implies the valorization of capital, with social division into classes and the exploitation of labor, the State acquires new formal determinations as a general embodiment of the power of the bourgeoisie and must thereby assume new functions aimed at ensuring the global process of capitalist reproduction.¹⁵ 

Unlike in pre-capitalist societies, all based on personal relations of domination where economic exploitation and political power were not yet separate (with each slave-owner or feudal lord directly exercising political-military dominance over the producers exploited), bourgeois society is precisely characterized by the separation of these two functions. Because economic exploitation is no longer personalized (the worker is not linked to any specific capitalist), the owner of the means of production need not carry out any political, military, or judicial function linked to the extraction of surplus from his workers. Political domination becomes indirect (or mediated) and not immediately reducible to the power of the bourgeoisie as the economically dominant class. Such a political function is delegated to the State, an autonomous and impersonal power that, to the extent that it acts in a ‘neutral’ way,¹⁷ 

Beyond its legal dimension as rule of law, the State is also in a necessary and objective way the representation of the political power of the bourgeoisie – a political form with a class nature. This determination of the State as the general representative of the bourgeoisie is precisely what requires it to guarantee the general conditions for the reproduction of global capital. Here it must perform two fundamental functions, economic and political, materialized in their corresponding apparatuses and institutions: 

i) Economic: to guarantee the material conditions of accumulation that due to their characteristics and high cost cannot be created or assumed by capitalists individually; this includes action in three main areas: 

1. 1. The need for the State to undertake certain investments vital to the proper development of social production but not profitable in private hands: infrastructures and scientific research.
   2. Ensure the proper reproduction of the labor power, including: de-commodified provision of certain essential services (health, education); certain labor protections (collective bargaining, minimum wage, maximum workday) to prevent competition from imposing wages below the level of worker reproduction¹⁸; and social protections, through insurance and programs covering workers from market risks (unemployment, sickness, pensions).
   3. Monetary and issuance policy through direct and indirect procedures, ensuring the value of currency, controlling inflation, and stimulating the economy.

ii) Politics: to ensure dominance over work and to intervene in the class struggle, taking into account two aspects:   

1. 1. Unifies the capitalist class: since social capital is fragmented into rival individual capitals with different interests, the State is needed to establish its unity as a class, which acts as a general instance of capitalist representation. Through the institutions that make up the State apparatuses, and in a complex process of political testing and mediation, the various factions and groups of the ruling class shape power relations as well as a common policy that responds to their general needs.
   2. Politics organizes domination over the working class, which cannot be achieved exclusively through coercion and violence (repressive apparatuses) but mainly by its active consent through ideological-cultural hegemony (ideological apparatuses: educational systems and media) and its integration into State institutions (apparatuses of representation: parliaments, public bodies, the party system). Under normal conditions, this implies meeting some of the immediate social and political interests of the working class, which inevitably depends on the impulse of the workers’ movement, provided that the normal development of accumulation is not harmed. In this way, the workers’ struggle can permeate State institutions to some extent, commencing partial and often transitional improvements or influencing the formation of governments or even the configuration of the political regime, but always within the limits imposed by the general interest of capitalists¹⁹
      .

The notion that State interventionism effectively represents a general demand of capitalist development – or a structural necessity of capital, which goes beyond the various junctures and dominant economic policies at each stage –  is demonstrated by the fact that public expenditure as a percentage of global GDP (including for the U.S.) has not ceased to increase over the last century, and no change of trend has been noted since the 1980s at the beginning of the “neoliberal” phase²⁰. An always the political option is the form of management adopted for public services, the priorities of State investment, and the criteria for social distribution of the tax burden necessary for their financing. This reveals another aspect of the State’s structural dependence on capital, since its tax revenues depend on the vitality of accumulation. Similarly, public indebtedness depends on the possibility of future income, which in turn depends on economic growth.

2.3. Globalization of capital and imperialism 

2.3.1. The organic relationship between capital and State at the global level

Prior characterizations of the nature of the State and its functions tended to presuppose, for strictly methodological reasons, a national framework of action. It was understood that valorization and capital accumulation operate within the limits of a certain national value space ‒ where the various private labors are validated socially, by means of exchange ‒ and it was therefore further supposed that this was the natural ambit of State intervention.

However, the CMP has always had an international dimension due to the expansive nature of capital: first under colonialism, based on the extra-economic extraction of surplus through violence and pillage; and then (once capitalist relations on the periphery were consolidated) with the formation of a genuinely global market, upon which the complete globalization of capital is today based. 

The contemporary world market is configured as a hierarchical and complex articulation of the different national spaces of value (with development of very unequal productive forces) that connect with one another via exchange rates (ultimately determined by relative national productivities) and by productive, commercial, and financial flows²¹. In short, and since the end of the 20th century, the laws of capitalist production imposed through competition have governed on a fully planetary scale, so that the logic of capital globalization is imposed as an external force on the many nation-states²². 

Any analysis of the dominant social and power relations currently at play at the global level must therefore start from the fundamental fact that capitalism is a globalized mode of production. This entails a recognition that the question of power – class rule by the bourgeoisie – is strictly defined on a global scale. On this basis, the question becomes one of drawing an organic connection between capital and State at the global level, as this is the true scope of the CMP. In this regard, it is essential to understand that the general interest of capital (and particularly that of its most powerful and internationalized factions) is to shape the world economy as a single field of operation for the full deployment of processes of valorization and accumulation. Decisively, this further requires a political-military device (and a doctrine) that assumes the tasks of capitalist leadership and reproduction on a global scale that each State already performs at the national level. That supranational power apparatus in charge of guaranteeing the universal interests of capital is, in essence, representative of imperialism today.

More specifically, we can say that in the context of globalization of capital, imperialism takes the form of a political-military structure of domination and global intervention in order to guarantee the best general conditions (economic, geopolitical, military, and ideological-cultural) for the reproduction of capital on a world scale.²³ This is, we repeat, a function analogous to that played by the State in each national economic space. But since at the international level the different national States continue to exist (with very unequal levels of economic development and strength), the political-military function of global intervention will necessarily be assumed by the hegemonic power (the U.S.), albeit in alliance (not without tensions) with other subordinate powers (mainly within the EU); and this imperialist entity formed after the Second World War with a doctrine of Atlanticism constitutes the true axis of real power in the current capitalist system.

Consequently, imperialism should not be understood as an economic structure different from the capitalism of free competition based on the law of value, as a supposed “monopoly capitalism” with a distinct mechanism for extracting surplus that would also include exploitation between countries.²⁴ But neither can it be conceived as a mere “policy” (always contingent) advanced by the States to defend their particular interests in the international arena – from which interferences, rivalries, and changing alliances that shape the “international order” in each period would derive.²⁵ 

In our characterization based on the labor theory of value, imperialism is somewhat organic to CMP considered as a world system. It is, as mentioned above, a structure of global domination and intervention that derives from the needs of globalized capital. In this sense, many of the formal determinations and functions that the State presents at the national level move to the global level, with the specificities that emanate from this fact²⁶; or more precisely, today’s imperialism expresses the particularity of the structural relationship between political form and capital at the international level. This is why the notion of imperialism is not irrelevant to the current configuration of the CMP; on the contrary, it is much more functional and integrated into its economic base and is therefore more global, systematic, effective, and defined in its modalities of intervention. 

Thus, under the guise of formally sovereign States, what really governs the current political situation is systematic intervention by the great powers (the Atlanticist axis) in the internal affairs of other countries, whose regimes and governments must offer full guarantees to the globalized operation of capital and to the deployment of U.S. hegemony, which does not admit erosion at any level (monetary, financial, geopolitical, commercial, military, among others), because any admission would negatively affect the progress of global accumulation. Use of the most brutal forms of military aggression, economic warfare, and political destabilization in nations that fail to submit or that defy imperial guidelines is therefore always plausible.

2.3.2. Functions and apparatuses of imperial power

As with each State at the national level, imperial power performs different functions in the globalized reproduction of capital, each of which requires a corresponding network of apparatuses. The key is to understand that the structure of imperial Atlanticist domination operates by intervention, in varying degrees and forms, into the different spheres of formally sovereign nations, usually with the active consent of the local bourgeoisies and their political representatives. The modalities for such interference are extremely varied: direct/indirect, official/covert, punctual/institutionalized, unilateral/allied – in a range that spans trade agreements to outright war and terrorism, from supranational organizations and treaties to operations for political destabilization and “unconventional war,” from co-optation to economic sanctions, from training senior officials to psychological and information warfare. 

The main functions of today’s imperial power (and corresponding apparatuses) are: 

i) Economic, to stabilize the international financial, monetary, and trade order: the IMF, the WB, the WTO, the OECD, the BIS, the network SWIFT, etc.

ii) Legal, to secure property rights and provide some legitimacy to imperial interference: EUIPO, the International Criminal Court, etc.

iii) Political, to establish alliances and alignment of States with the Atlanticist power axis through two types of intervention mechanism: 1) official: from unions and supranational organizations (such as the EU) to forums (Davos, Trilateral, Bilderberg, G-20, etc.) and international political organizations (liberal, socialist, green); and (2) covert: threats, co-optation, promotion of leaders and parties²⁷, lawfare, etc.

iv) Military, to ensure the international chain of command regarding the U.S. military complex, also through two types of intervention mechanism: 1) official: armies, NATO, Eurocorps; and 2) covert: intelligence services, stay-behind networks for destabilization, covert warfare (Gladio), and terrorism²⁸.

v) Ideological-cultural, to sustain the liberal and Atlanticist ideological hegemony through an extensive network of screen-organizations (foundations, academic programs, media, NGOs) of numerous government agencies, mainly from the United States (USAID, NED, CIA) and representing transnational capital: Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Fund, Cultural Freedom Congress, Open Society, Ashoka, etc..²⁹

3) Democracy and capital: the political contradiction of bourgeois society

3.1. Democratic Republic: the Political Project of the Enlightenment

Section 2.2 noted how modern principles of law (universal freedom and equality, systems of guarantee, unified sovereign authority) have as their very reason for being the requirements imposed by commodity exchange, which therefore constitutes a necessary condition for their effective deployment. It is from precisely such legal principles that the Enlightenment built the modern political model of a democratic republic – a project of civil power based on law, where national sovereignty is expressed. The legal nucleus of this model establishes a general framework wherein the acts (rights) of each person must be compatible with the acts (rights) of any other, in such a way that laws guarantee the conditions under which everyone can be equally free (that is, everyone can do with their life what they want, so long as others can do the same with theirs).

It is the proposal emanating from law that no individual can impose him- or herself on any other which requires that society as a whole must serve as sovereign power, in such a way that no one has greater decision-making capacity than anyone else, and that said power (the way decisions are made) be established through universal suffrage, which in turn presupposes full freedom of communication (expression and gathering). It is the denial, as it emanates from law, that no individual can impose himself on any other which demands that sovereign power belongs to society as a whole, so that no one has greater decision-making capacity than any other. The way to establish such power -that is, the way in which decisions are made- is that of universal suffrage, which in turn presupposes full freedom of communication (expression and assembly). As members with full rights of the political community represented by the State, individuals are deemed citizens. And as co-legislators within this legal-political framework, citizens are obedient to themselves and, consequently, free (they are not serfs). The democratic republic thus represents a situation where obeying the law and being free are one and the same thing³⁰. 

This is, therefore, a precise political model by which to organize co-existence among people (and not a simple procedure of popular participation), and it regulates the reciprocal relationship of individuals with one another based on civil principles of freedom, equality, and autonomy. These are constitutive principles (a priori principles) of the civil community that do not imply a specific legal order – which is the subject of parliamentary political activity. Rather, they are limited to establishing the legitimate conditions for any possible legal order. They are, in short, the principles according to which it is possible to ascertain whether a State is truly democratic. The modern sphere of State and law is therefore a sphere peculiarly related to conduct, but constituted precisely from the renunciation of intrinsically judging or valuing conduct. This implies a disinterest in seeking consensus in the organization of citizen co-existence, in such a way that no one is obliged to commune with any other in order to live, thus overcoming the essential binding content of pre-modern communities³¹.

It can now be understood that democracy does not simply mean that the people decide what they want at all times. It is not the unlimited power of the demos, or even the mere will of the majority. All this is pure despotism that leads to the persecution of minorities and the violation of individual freedoms. In the legal model described, decisions must be subject to norms and guarantees: it is the problem of isonomy, the question of guarantees, as prior to the exercise of any authority.³² 

In the same way, it should be noted that in no case is it inherent to the enlightened political model that democratic decisions be made only indirectly, through elected representatives.³³ That this was considered inevitable in the past was simply the result of a technological insufficiency – in terms of communication and information control – that was definitively overcome long ago. Nothing today prevents the direct and permanent presence of all citizens in political decision-making.

3.2 Capitalist Blockade of the Democratic Model

As a formal construction, the democratic model does not include explicit reference to the material (socio-economic) conditions necessary for its effective realization. It is in relation to these two aspects – the formal and the material – that Marx identifies a double-block to realization of the democratic model in capitalist societies. 

Primarily, this model is materially blocked by the structural dependence of the State on the power of capital, which completely subverts the principle of equality and, therefore, that of popular sovereignty, in such a way that the law and State of all citizens proclaimed in theory becomes in practice the law and State of a certain class. This is because when society is based on the market as the general structure of production, there is no correspondence between the political and economic spaces, which are constituted according to opposite and incompatible principles. While the democratic project is conceived in its formal definition as a unified space (where we all participate) that is both uniform (we all count equally) and public (through citizen deliberation and decision, and not through mere aggregation of individual preferences formed in isolation) – in short, a space where the general will is expressed – the economic space is based on fragmentation (resources and labors are private), inequality (asymmetries of power), and atomization in valuation and decision-making. This non-correspondence between the political and economic spaces constitutes an insurmountable contradiction within market societies, since operation of the one (the political) necessarily depends on the resources of the other (the economic), which are forbidden to it. Without the necessary means to carry out its designs – the means being private, and with no social control over surplus – notions of democracy and a general will that is constituted by universal suffrage ring somewhat hollow, without relevant meaning. In the same sense, those freedoms that can be recognized are effective only for those with sufficient resources to exercise them (e.g., in practice, there is no true freedom of communication, but only the freedom of the owners of the media to exercise their property rights). 

But it is not simply a matter of public authorities unable to possess the resources necessary to carry out the democratic will. It also happens that the actions of these authorities must systematically submit to the demands of the true sovereign, which is capital – an ungovernable economic process that imposes upon society its internal needs for reproduction on an ever-increasing scale. For this reason, there can never be citizen self-government under capitalism, but only management by public authorities of the general conditions for capitalist reproduction.

But the democratic paradigm is not only blocked materially in our societies; it is also formally violated by all sorts of fraud and by restrictions on freedoms and rights, as well as by control over communications and information, or by the distortion of parliamentary representation – all of which derives from the defensive position of the bourgeoisie as a ruling class, driving it to limit and obstruct the free circulation of any ideas that may erode its ideological control of the population.³⁴

3.3. The political program of the revolution: “conquer democracy”

As described in section 3.2, it can now be understood that the distance or difference between the democratic model and what currently exists as an effective political system in our self-styled “democratic” States is not what derives from the comparison of a “perfect” democracy and those supposed “insufficiencies” of democratic condition as may exist in the current political reality. By definition, no material realization of a theoretical concept or principle can consist simply in its complete fulfillment; distortions or inadequacies in its application are inevitable, yielding the triviality that things can always be improved. What is truly at issue here is whether or not capitalist economic conditions even allow us to pose the problem of realization of democracy (with its inevitable distortions), or whether this is all a masquerade, pure and simple. 

Marx’s answer – here nothing more than a consistent development of philosophical republicanism – is that the conditions of possibility for citizen self-government, or for popular sovereignty, are absolutely incompatible with the existence of capital. He believes that the model of the democratic republic can only rule effectively on the basis of a socialized economy. Only a society freed from its subjection to blind market power can carry out a conscious, rational, and democratic regulation of its metabolism with nature, while at the same guaranteeing the fullest individual autonomy. This is why communism – the socialization of production and workers’ power – is not just one political option among many but the material condition of politics itself and the economic basis for citizen self-government, consisting of the real and general possibility for deliberating and acting within the public sphere. 

In addition to all this, it remains clear that the mere recognition of certain freedoms and rights (always precarious), or the current existence (suitably manipulated) of certain democratic institutions such as suffrage, do not suffice to make a political regime “democratic.” Marxists never disparage those civil rights that can be won; on the contrary, they are their most consistent defenders. But neither do they confuse or assimilate these rights or freedoms with democracy itself.

Furthermore, the recognition of certain rights of citizenship takes place exclusively within the national State, even if the true political power of our time – the genuine capacity to make decisions on decisive matters – no longer resides within those narrow limits but is established at a global level. It is concentrated in certain powers and ultimately forming an imperial power exercised in an unquestionably undemocratic way through intervention into the various States. And it is evident that there can be no true democratic rights in a country subject to such intervention, which finds that it must follow the guidelines set for it in matters political, economic, and geopolitical (under penalty of being attacked), and the totality of whose political life unfolds under permanent imperial blackmail. 

From all of the above, it follows that the task of the communist revolution on the political plane cannot be but to effectively realize the democratic model: to consistently undertake the political program of the Enlightenment that the bourgeoisie cannot fulfill – in short, to “conquer democracy” (Manifesto). It is therefore not a question of either of the following:   

i) “Extending democracy to the economy,” under the presupposition that democracy already governs (albeit ‘imperfectly’) in the political sphere. This is a conception of democracy as a decision-making procedure, or as a mere election of representatives (even if they are without power). The problem of the relationship between politics and the economy in the CMP is not that of two juxtaposed spheres, each organized on the basis of a distinct principle (one democratic, the other plutocratic); rather it is the problematic relationship between a specific legal-political project and the economic conditions that prevent its realization.

ii) “Overcoming” the political model of the Enlightenment, devising a “new democracy” of ‘worker’ character and founded on institutions and legal principles other than those of citizenship and the rule of law – which would mean a return to forms of pre-political communitarianism with the pretense of building a “new man” based on moral or ideological consensus (cf. 4.3).

4) Workers’ Power and Transition

4.1. The Nature of Workers’ Power

“Proletarian revolution,” according to Marx, means the dismantling of the economic law that objectively governs the movement of capitalist society, and the consequent integration of all production into a general process or single plan that is consciously regulated by the population as a whole. This transformation cannot occur when the working class is without power, which is why the revolution begins precisely with the conquest of political power¹⁴. 

Therewith, it is possible to guess, given the essential difference between the political power of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat. The former is spontaneous, deriving from the operation of the economic structure itself – an operation that the State must guarantee, and that naturally places the bourgeoisie in a position to determine policy. Only those measures that are compatible with the expanded reproduction of capital can be adopted, and never those that would enable taking advantage of existing material capacities to satisfy the needs of the overall population. The proletariat, on the other hand, is part of the same capitalist economic structure; it does not come from outside (as did the bourgeoisie with respect to the feudal system), and it is not the bearer of a new economic law that is already being developed within the CMP itself in order to sustain its own power. Communism – the conscious, rational, and democratic regulation of production – is a political project that must be consciously assumed by the proletariat, a class that can only exercise its power in a conscious way. Precisely to highlight this character of consciously exercised power, which cannot be supported by any objective economic dynamics, Marx uses the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which does not refer to any “authoritarian” form of government. This characterization of revolutionary power as non-spontaneous implies two things: that there cannot be a gradual transition to socialism, and that the exercise of workers’ power requires full democracy. 

4.2. The impossibility of a gradual transition

4.2.1. Communism Cannot be Developed from Within the CMP

Unlike market production with respect to the feudal system, communism is not a productive form that can be developed within the CMP; much less does it constitute an objective trend of its own, or something that already exists in a latent state or at small scale and that might emerge progressively. None of this can occur because communism is precisely the overcoming of capitalist economic spontaneity. For this reason, the proletariat cannot spontaneously come to power, advancing gradually and naturally through the development of tendencies and processes typical of the CMP. There is no parallel between the bourgeois revolution (which did develop progressively, by leaps, within the feudal system) and that of the worker (which demands an abrupt break from current legality).

But neither is it possible to promote this transition from the bourgeois political bodies themselves. The first reason for this, economic in nature, has to do with the expansive nature of capital, the reproduction of which (on an ever-increasing scale) will admit no limits, and much less a progressive step-by-step reversion that leads to a qualitative change in the relations of production. The second reason, political in nature, is that the State is class-based, and not a neutral institution that might be put at the service of any social project. This is what is meant by the State being organically linked with the capitalist mode of production: the State is a necessary condition for the functioning of the CMP, and its most essential function is to ensure the general conditions for the reproduction of global capital (cf. 2.2). Were this role to be interrupted, even for an instant, the entire process of capitalist reproduction would immediately short-circuit, and the economy would collapse. Similarly, one’s income and the possibility of going into debt depend on the vitality of accumulation, which one is obliged to favor. The different State apparatuses (political, legal, military…) that ensure the ordinary functioning of the economic structure cannot, by definition, cease to operate and fulfill their respective functions, much less put themselves at the service of a different purpose (such as progressive dismantling of that same economic structure, to initiate socialist construction). For the reproduction of capital to take place, there must at all times be legal security, certainty for investments, confidence in the national currency and in the public debt, socialization of costs, worker subordination, and ideological control or repression. Furthermore, a gradual disarticulation of the institutional framework is not possible, since the various apparatuses are mutually involved and cannot function separately. For example, the legal apparatus that establishes security of property rights requires the simultaneous presence of a repressive apparatus that guarantees these rights materially. Neither can these devices gradually cease to be functional: either they fulfill their function or they do not fulfill it, but they cannot be dismantled by parts. Recall that all these functions and apparatuses are in turn determined, in different degrees and forms, by the intervention of the imperial power (cf. 2.3). To then believe that socialism can be achieved by way of the bourgeois State is to suppose that it can be achieved through imperialism, placing the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, or the institutions of Atlanticism (NATO, the EU, the IMF) at the service of the workers’ cause. This absurd conception demonstrates that reformism approaches reason as if imperialism did not exist – as if the question of power in the CMP were not already operating on a global scale. 

Nor can an ‘interstitial’ or non-State strategy of radical social transformation be designed (as Wright, Hirsch, and Holloway all believe)³⁵, where the non-market spaces within the CPM are taken advantage of and/or widened; as mentioned before, capital systematically tends to convert such spaces into new business niches. ‘The market’ and ‘planning’ constitute two antagonistic principles of economic organization that must be mutually exclusive in order to unfold their respective potentialities. The market is efficient (and exists as such) only insofar as it operates as a general principle with a tendency to encompass everything: companies can only truly compete if their autonomy to choose and exchange is not restricted, which implies that they operate in a general market for inputs and products.

4.2.2. The Need for a Revolutionary Strategy

By not starting from the labor theory of value and its understanding of the CMP as an organic totality of which the State is also a part, reformism underestimates objective economic laws, autonomizes the political sphere, gives primacy to the subjective factor, and reduces all social reality – including the State itself – to mere correlations of strength between classes.³⁶

I) An evolutionary conception of the workers’ struggle

From this ‘politicist’ perspective there is no true logic of capitalist domination ‒ which finds its objective basis in the restrictions imposed by economic laws ‒ while the struggle for socialism is conceived as a gradual process of accumulation of forces within bourgeois institutions, where any expansion of the workers’ presence is interpreted as progress, without considering its limits or its integrating effect. 

Precisely by ignoring the laws and contradictions of accumulation, reformism can take as the basis of its strategy an evolutionary, superficial, and mechanical conception of the class struggle, when in reality this struggle is essentially discontinuous, of multidimensional character, and conditioned by very diverse factors. This is why the workers’ struggle is marked by victories and defeats, advances and setbacks, with feedback loops that have a dragging effect, and it has episodic moments, cuts, and abrupt outbursts followed by long periods of relative calm and the stability of bourgeois rule.

It is during such periodic upheavals that the working class can make qualitative leaps in its organization and awareness, and when revolutionary ideas and adherence to communism can quickly gain influence. This complexity of the class struggle is what the “art” of politics demands of revolutionaries, considering all the mediations that exist between the party, the vanguard (the most conscious and active sector), and the masses within the framework of the distinction between the revolutionary, pre-revolutionary, and non-revolutionary phases of the struggle.

II) The nature of reforms

Also at the base of the reformist strategy is a misunderstanding of the nature and scope of the socio-economic reforms promoted by the State, as the measures necessary to ensure the general reproduction of capital are confused with supposed links in a long, gradual transition to socialism.

Since many social benefits can be imposed only through the State, and against the immediate individual interests of competing capitalists, these types of measures are only finally established as a result of the workers’ struggle and the parliamentary game³⁷. This is interpreted unilaterally by reformists as a mere result of the struggle, absolutized as a “conquest” under the belief that at any given time, as many reforms can be implemented as the correlation of forces allows, until the “overcoming” of capitalism is at last achieved. This perspective gives rise to the proposal of impossible reforms such as distribution of work, basic income, or guaranteed work, all thought to inhibit the action of structural elements of capitalist functioning (such as the need for a social majority to be economically obliged to sell its strength of work, or the notion that unemployment disciplines the demands of workers while permitting a sufficient profit margin).

On the other hand, the Marxist tradition considers that social and democratic reforms have a contradictory effect: undoubtedly they do represent improvements and “conquests” (always transitory and partial, never completely solving the underlying problems), but at the same time they constitute an instrument of dominance and legitimacy that creates illusions in bourgeois institutions. In any case, reforms are never cumulative, and the greatest advances have always come as a result of revolutionary struggles, as occurred with the drastic reduction of the working day in Europe following the Bolshevik triumph of 1917³⁸, or with the implementation of the “Welfare State” in Europe after the defeat of Nazism by the USSR, and thanks to the strength of the communist parties. 

iii) Independence of class, party, and program

As seen in section 4.1, the overcoming of the CMP can only be a process consciously assumed by the proletariat and directed precisely against the economic spontaneity in which this system consists. It will then be understood, by the very definition of the terms involved, that capitalist functioning cannot by itself spontaneously generate revolutionary consciousness or struggle. The only thing that can occur spontaneously ‒ because it is inherent to the functioning of the capitalist structure ‒ is the economic struggle wherein the proletariat sells its work-force in the best possible conditions, along with the development of a “trade union” consciousness.³⁹ 

In contrast, the revolutionary perspective represents conscious intervention, with an understanding of the structure and the possibilities of acting against it. This is not a mere extension of the economic-union conscience, since there is no automatic connection between one and the other, and it should not be confused with the ‘fighting spirit’ or the ‘indignation’ of the workers. This is why the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat needs to be introduced “from outside” (Lenin⁴⁰) of its daily and economic experience, as a result of a theoretical-political intervention. For that very reason, it materializes in something that is no longer part of the immediate existence of the class itself (including its organizations of struggle in the workplace) but in a political organization: the “revolutionary party.” For all these reasons, given that the proletariat is part of the same capitalist economic structure, its independence as a class can consist only in its constitution as a “class for itself” – an act of a political-intellectual nature⁴¹. 

On this basis, and to guide the revolutionary struggle, the Marxist tradition distinguishes between a minimum program (demands that do not question private property and the State) and a maximum program (seizure of power and measures of socialization of production). For their part, transitional measures (those that without being wholly socialist are incompatible with capitalist property and its State) traditionally entered into the maximum program (for Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg) as measures to be applied from a position of power⁴², and they were meant to prepare the transition to socialism (distribution of working hours, large nationalizations with workers’ control, suppression of trade secrets, etc.). With this distinction, the aim was to intervene in non-revolutionary conditions, combining the struggle for labor and ‘democratic’ improvements with communist propaganda toward the avant-garde and explaining the limits of reform without creating illusions or awakening confidence in the bourgeois State.

This classical perspective is very different from the “transitional” methodology that libertarian anti-party currents or Trotskyism have championed, which proposes overcoming the distinction between the minimum and maximum programs to replace them with a system of minimum and transitional slogans and “up the ladder” demands; that is, internally connected and oriented to the mobilization of the masses for the seizure of power.

Faced with the classical approach that views reforms or demands only make sense in relation to their conditions of application, thus referring ultimately to the question of power, in the transitional perspective, the real conditions are abstracted for the application of the various slogans; this is why it tends to propose impossible reforms, demanding that the bourgeois State apply transitional measures toward socialism. Some slogans, when formulated in isolation and disconnected from a revolutionary or transitional situation, can appear to be ‘solutions’ to the problems of capitalism: distribution of work to end unemployment, price controls to curb inflation or inequality, etc.

IV) The seizure of power

Contrary to what is usually believed, the revolutionary perspective of Marx, Engels, or Lenin does not generally prescribe a concrete formula for the conquest of power but is limited to establishing the need for a violent break with the current legality. It is recognized that such action can follow varied and unforeseen paths, being a complex process overdetermined by very diverse factors, and it is admitted that in exceptional circumstances (economic depression, crisis of bourgeois rule, inter-imperialist tensions) a transition may indeed be triggered from government positions, or following an electoral victory. But such a possibility can never be the basis of an entire strategy. The parliamentary route does not serve as a general orientation: winning elections requires prior compromises of all kinds with the bourgeoisie (national and international) and adaptations to the legal structure that cannot later be deactivated at will, as by the flip of a switch. This parliamentary path educates the masses to trust in the institutions, and it favors demobilization, so one cannot ask of this system a predisposition for open confrontation with the bourgeoisie and imperialism. If it is admitted that at some point after an election a violent rupture may be necessary, as recognized by Blanc⁴³, then the entire organization and action of the party must prepare for it; but this is incompatible with the electoral route and the management of the State’s purviews. 

The Kautskyists argue that there are two strategies – overthrow and attrition – to be used depending on whether the situation is revolutionary or not. And since the people “do not want revolution” (Blanc), or “there are no conditions” for revolution because “the State has legitimacy” (Chibber), then it would be necessary to opt for the parliamentary road. As if one could enable the other; as if the choice were between equally viable but alternative roads with respect to the same final objective. In any case, this perspective is tricky, because for Marxists the distinction of phases is not a technical and mechanical prescription external to the class struggle itself, without nuances or intermediate situations. The revolutionary situation depends in part on the party: it must be prepared, and provoked, and this is done by intensifying class struggle, which is incompatible with parliamentarism or “ministerialism.”

4.3. The Democratic Republic: a Legal-Political Form of Workers’ Power

In section 3.3 we saw that the political program of the communist revolution, as Marx understands it, is none other than the “conquest of democracy”: realizing the legal-political model of the Enlightenment that capital prevents. Now it is necessary to verify that this realization is also a requirement of workers’ power, which cannot be exercised effectively if it is not within a framework of full democracy, which means that the “democratic republic” must necessarily be the legal-political form of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (i.e., of workers’ power).

It was further stated in section 4.1 that the exercise of workers’ power is not sustained by any new economic law or spontaneous dynamic, but rather that it represents an act of authentic political sovereignty based on conscious control of the productive process. What we now add is that, if this is a power whose defining feature is its continuous exercise, with a critical sensibility, then it is clear that the only political form compatible with it is democracy, the political system based on freedom of communication (expression and assembly) and equal decision-making power. 

This means that rights and freedoms cannot be recognized for only a portion of the population – the proletariat – no matter how large a majority it represents. Democratic rights are rights that by their very definition can only be established in a coherent (effective) way in strictly universal terms. Indeed, freedom of communication is a freedom possessed by each with respect to the others. So if ‘X’ is prevented from expressing her opinion (whatever that may be), she is at the same time violating the right of everyone else to be able to hear her. One cannot advance in the communist construction without an assurance of full freedom of expression, or in the absence of contrasting opinions and the development of critical thinking.

However, faced with the program of the realization of democracy that we are defending, it has been common to practically the entirety of the revolutionary left (Marxist and non-Marxist) to try to discover new political forms beyond the modern legal principles of the State and citizenship, which have been considered insufficient or “bourgeois.” According to this majority view, the project would be one of building a “new democracy” or a new form of State, perhaps characterized by councils or assemblies.

Such a claim is based on the idea that the proletariat has its own nature beyond that imposed by the CMP: a moral community based on cooperative relations and community values, and it is therefore the bearer of its own universe of ideas and political forms. Such a vision is incompatible with the Marxian emancipatory project, for two fundamental reasons:

i) “Councilism” cannot provide a coherent model of the State: it replaces the universalism of law, from which a unified and uniform political space is built, with an aggregation of arbitrarily defined sectoral spheres (workers’ councils), thereby generating overlaps, gaps, and an imprecise articulation of the whole. 

ii) This approach restores forms of pre-modern communitarianism by founding the political community on some moral consensus or ideological commitment – an expression of the “new man” – and this would give rise to a society that is little less than “perfect” or “harmonious.” But when we recognize that we are rational and finite beings, the only “new man” who can legitimately aspire to create communism will be precisely the free man (with all his defects and virtues) who springs naturally from the material and institutional conditions that seek to safeguard individual autonomy and end all forms of oppression and servitude.

Conclusion

We have shown that the type of theoretical analysis that is made of capitalism (the characterization of its basics structures and institutions) logically determines both the form of societies that opposes it to overcome it (that is, de definition of socialism) and also the type of political strategy that is adequate to achieve it. In this sense, we have shown the insufficiencies of “democratic socialism” and the consequent need to recover the Marxist tradition of fighting for communism. This tradition puts at the center of the debate issues such as the need for the revolutionary party, the program (minimum/maximum) and the strategy of rupture, as well as categories such as imperialism, all of which are absent in the “democratic socialism”.

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1. E. O. Wright, How to be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century (London: Verso, 2019); V. Chibber,  ‘Our road to power’, https://jacobin.com/2017/12/our-road-to-power, 2017; J. Muldoon, ‘Reclaiming the best of Karl Kautsky’, https://jacobin.com/2019/01/karl-kautsky-german-revolution-democracy-socialism, 2019; E. Blanc,  ‘Why Kautsky was right (and why you should care) ‘,https://jacobin.com/2019/04/karl-kautsky-democratic-socialism-elections-rupture, 2019.
2. K. Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Marxist.org, 1918.
3. N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London: NLR, 1978).
4. Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings vol. 3, (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press, 1992) and C. Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997).
5. A. Gorz, Adieux au Prolétariat, (Paris: Le Seuil, 1981).
6. E. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, (London: Verso, 1990) and E. Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985).
7. A. Negri, The Politics of Subversion: A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989) and A. Negri and Felix Guattari, Communists Like Us, (Cambridge: Semiotext Press, 1990).
8. Material conditions alluded to in philosophical republicanism, of which Marx himself through consequent development would also be a part.
9. Curiously (or perhaps not), where these authors do not usually recognize any degree of democracy, but admit that the issue is not merely one of quantity or extension, is precisely in those countries where the bourgeoisie has been expropriated – all of which, without exception, are considered to be anti-democratic. Thus, for example, they find that Colombia is a democracy (albeit a very improvable one, as they will specify) while Cuba is not (despite its other achievements, which they will perhaps concede).
10. K. Marx, Grundrisse, (London: Penguin, 1973), 206.
11. M. Nieto, ‘Market socialism: the impossible socialism’, Science & Society, 86 (1), 2022, 66-94.
12.  On the “derivation debate” and State theory see: J. Hirsch, ‘Retrospectiva sobre el debate’, in Hirshc et al. Estado y Capital (Madrid: Dado, 2020); J. Holloway John and Sol Picciotto, State and capital, (London: Arnold, 1978); J. Holloway, 2020, ‘El debate sobre la derivación del Estado’, in Hirsch et al. Estado y Capital, (Madrid: Dado, 2020); B. Jessop, State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); G. Reuten, The unity of the capitalist economy and state: A systematic-dialectical exposition of the capitalist system, (Boston: Brill, 2019).
13. K. Marx, Capital. Volumes I (London: Penguin, 1976), 178.
14. F. Martínez Marzoa, La filosofía de El capital, (Madrid: Abada, 2018).
15. F. Martínez Marzoa, La filosofía de El capital, (Madrid: Abada, 2018); E. Altvater, ‘Notes on some problems of state interventionism’, Kapitalistate, 1, 1973: 96-108; E. Altvater and Jürgen Hoffman, ‘The west german state derivation debate: the relation between and politics as a problem of marxist state theory’, Social Text, 24, 1990: 134-155; W. Müller and Christel Neusüss, ‘The illusion of state socialism and the contradiction between wage labor and capital’, Telos 25, 1975: 13-90; M. Heinrich, Crítica de la economía política, (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2008); J. Rodriguez, La revolución en el Capital, (Madrid: Garaje, 2019).
17. Intervening according to its own concept, without having to consider the multiple riggings and distortions that occur in real life.[/ote] obliging all members of society to recognize one another as private owners, thereby ensures the reproduction of the capitalist relationship of dependency and exploitation.

    In this way, the personal disconnection of some individuals from others entails the separation of the political and economic spheres, which now appear as differentiated forms or manifestations of the capitalist social relationship. It is the universal nature of the exchange – indicative of a true general structure – which explains that the legal-political functions of domain cannot be assumed individually by each private owner, but that impersonal “rules of the game” are required. Thus the apparatus of political domination does not operate (as in pre-capitalist societies) as a private instrument in the hands of the ruling class; instead it takes the form of an impersonal public power situated above society.¹⁶E. Pashukanis, General Theory of Law and Marxism, (London: Routledge, 2001).

18. K. Marx, Capital. Volume I,(London: Penguin, 1976), 348.
19. E, Altvater, ‘Notes on some problems of state interventionism’, Kapitalistate, 1, 1973: 96-108; M. Heinrich, Crítica de la economía política, (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2008); W. Müller and Christel Neusüss, ‘The illusion of state socialism and the contradiction between wage labor and capital’, Telos 25, 1975: 13-90.
20. https://datos.bancomundial.org/
21. D. Guerrero, Competitividad: teoría y política, (Barcelona: Ariel, 1995); R. Astarita, Monopolio, imperialismo e intercambio desigual, (Madrid: Maia, 2009); M. Nieto, Cómo funciona la economía capitalista, (Madrid: Escolar y  Mayo, 2015).
22. R. Astarita, ‘Sobre Estado y relaciones sociales’, Realidad Económica, 212, 2005: 53-77.
23. R. Astarita, Monopolio, imperialismo e intercambio desigual, (Madrid: Maia, 2009); M. Nieto, Cómo funciona la economía capitalista, (Madrid: Escolar y  Mayo, 2015).
24. In Marxist terms, exploitation is always between classes (and not capital in circulation), defined in the sphere of production. In addition, the capital of major powers is usually intertwined with that of dependent countries, and it is increasingly common for capital from emerging countries to be invested in developed countries. See D. Guerrero, Competitividad: teoría y política, (Barcelona: Ariel, 1995); D. Guerrero, Historia del pensamiento económico heterodoxo, (Madrid: Trotta, 1997) and R. Astarita, Monopolio, imperialismo e intercambio desigual, (Madrid: Maia, 2009).
25. This seems to be the conception of Heinrich (2008), who is unable to derive imperialism from the needs of globalized capital and therefore offers an external and merely ‘political’ characterization.
26. The apparatus of domination cannot be as unified as occurs at the national level.
27. For example, the creation in the 1970s of ‘socialist’ parties in Greece, Spain, and Portugal following the departure of military dictators (Garcés, 1996).
28.  J. Garcés, Soberanos e intervenidos, (Madrid: S. XXI, 1996); D. Ganser, NATO´s Secret Armies, (London: Routledge, 2005); Th. Welschen, Het Italiaanse complex, (Bussum: Uitgeverij Thoth, 1996).
29. E. Cancela, ‘Open society: ¿derechos humanos y democracia o ingeniería social neoliberal?’, Lamarea.org, 2018; F. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War, (London: Granta, 1999); N. Guilhot, ‘A network of influential friendships: the Fondation pour une Entreaide Intelectauelle Européene and Est-West Cultural diaologue (1947-1991)’, Minerva, 44 (4), 2006: 379-409.
30. C. Fernández Liria and Luis Alegre, Educación para la ciudadanía, (Madrid: Akal, 2007).
31. F. Martínez Marzoa, ‘Estado y legitimidad’, Los filósofos y la política, (Madrid: FCE, 1999).
32. The need for decisions to be always subject to rules was precisely proposed by Socrates and Plato, in what is usually misinterpreted as a rejection of Athenian democracy.
33. It was precisely the theorists of the Enlightenment (such as Rousseau) and of bourgeois-democratic radicalism (Jacobins) who first carried out the democratic critique of representation.
34.  J. A. Arnau, ‘Sociedad moderna, mercado y fraude democrático’, Disjuntiva, 1.1, 2020: 7-21 Sociedad moderna, mercado y fraude democrático | Arnau Espinosa | Disjuntiva. Crítica de les Ciències Socials (ua.es)
35.  E.O. Wright, How be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, (London: Verso, 2019); J. Hirsch, ‘Retrospectiva sobre el debate’, in Hirshc et al. Estado y Capital, (Madrid: Dado, 2020) and J. Holloway, ‘El debate sobre la derivación del Estado’, in Hirsch et al. Estado y Capital, (Madrid: Dado, 2020).
36. From the ‘strategic-relational approach,’ according to which the State is a “material condensation of power relations between classes,” there are no true systemic determinations in the political sphere but only “State tendencies” that result from interactions between the patterns of “strategic selectivity” possessed by the institutions and the strategies adopted by agents for their transformation. Consequently, there is room for a wide variety of policies that ultimately depend on the correlations among existing forces at any given time. See: N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, (London: NLR, 1978); B. Jessop, State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007) and B. Jessop, The State. Past, Present and Future, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016).
37. On the understanding that social reforms are a necessity of both capital and a workers’ conquest, see F. Martínez Marzoa De la revolución, (Madrid: Alberto Corazón, 1976); W. Müller and Christel Neusüss, ‘The illusion of state socialism and the contradiction between wage labor and capital’, Telos 25, 1975: 13-90; or M. Heinrich, Crítica de la economía política, (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2008).
38. M. Rasmussen and Carl Nutsen, ‘Reforming to Survive: The Bolshevik Origins of Social Policies’, APSA, 2019 (Unpublished manuscript, University of Oslo).
39. In order to be waged, this union struggle also requires the vindication of certain freedoms and therefore the development of a certain “democratic” conscience.
40. V. I. Lenin, What is to be done?, 1902, Marxist.org
41. F. Martínez Marzoa, De la revolución (Madrid: Alberto Corazón, 1976).
42. R. Astarita, ‘Crítica del Programa de Transición’, 1999, rolandoastarita.blog
43. E. Blanc, ‘Why Kautsky was right (and why you should care) ‘, 2019, Jacobin.org