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James Petras has a new article where he deals with the issue of why US people hates the state. After reading it, it becomes obvious why: the state loads the common citizen with taxes and gives it mostly to the rich, the military-industrial complex, unwanted foreign wars, the hated state of Israel and to pay officers that spit on the face of workers and bow to the wealthy.
It's a most clear case of dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as described by Marxist classics. There's almost no trace of the redistribution role of the state in favor of those worse off, as you might find in "welfarist" regimes such as those of Scandinavia.
I would have to say that it is exactly the same case in the state of Spain as well, even if the Basque autonomous regions have become exceptional to some extent in order to quell the otherwise endemic social unrest.
As there is no or little anti-state left in the USA (would be called anarchists or autonomists) this hatred of the state plays in the hand of the right, which have a discourse of "less state", even if their praxis is not substantially different.
What interests me most is that, in both the Anarchist (Libertarian) and the Marxist traditions, Communism is defined as the revolutionary stage in which the state is abolished, along with capitalist institutions, essentially private property. The difference between both currents is that Marxists accept a "transitional" role for the state (Socialism), while Anarchists reject it and demand the simultaneous abolition of Capital and state at once, replacing them by social and economical direct democracy at all levels.
The reason why Marxism has been more successful is that, if you are forced to fight, you need an army and hence a state (no difference between both, Machiavelli dixit).
But maybe the unusual situation of the USA may allow for the development, for the first time in history of a true Communist (by whatever name) revolutionary process in which both state and capitalism are confronted together, as the unity they are.
This is what Petras calls for: an anti-state Left movement in the USA.
