Theory 101: The state as personified by the embrace of Michelle Obama and George W. Bush

by DANNY HAIPHONG

Theory 101: The State as Personified by the Embrace of Michelle Obama and George W. Bush

The collapse of imperialism has been restrained by the military state.

“This analysis focuses on what Michelle Obama’s comradery with George W. Bush tells us about the US state.”

What is the state? This is a critical question for revolutionaries to understand and grapple with as the US imperialist system flounders in a state of perpetual decline. Some readers on social media have called the theory of imperial decline “fascist entryism.” However, the theory of imperial decline is not fascist at all. In fact, it stems from Vladimir Lenin’s theory of the general crisis of capitalism . Lenin posited that the general crisis of capitalism would occur in stages, of which the final stage is the total collapse of imperialism and the transition to socialism. While Lenin is no longer alive to update the theory, victorious revolutions in Korea, Cuba, and China and the current struggles of the people to defend their self-determination in Syria and Venezuela have updated it for us. Each has demonstrated through resistance that US imperialism has only one development path: collapse. The collapse of imperialism has been restrained by the military state, which wages endless war on progressive and radical forces at home and abroad.

“Lenin posited that the general crisis of capitalism would occur in stages, of which the final stage is the total collapse of imperialism and the transition to socialism.”

Revolutionaries such as Assata Shakur and Michael Parenti have analyzed the function of the state. In her analysis of the prison industrial complex, Shakur placed the mass imprisonment of Black and other peoples of color in the United States in the context of the social containment of the most rebellious segments of the population. She acknowledges that prisons also serve to super exploit Black and other oppressed communities to the benefit of neoliberal capital. Parenti describes the state as an apparatus that makes the world safe for corporate power and plunder . The state under imperialism is wielded by the rich to protect the interests of the rich.

Both Shakur and Parenti were inspired by Vladimir Lenin to varying degrees. Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, two socialist organizations that drew heavily from the foundations of Marxism outlined by Lenin and others, before being driven into exile in Cuba in the early 1980s. Lenin synthesized the works of Marx and Engels in a period of revolutionary upheaval. He wrote The State and Revolution in 1917 just prior to the great October revolution that brought the first socialist state into existence. Lenin defines the state as follows:

The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The State arises where, when, and insofar as class antagonism cannot be reconciled . . . According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order,” which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes.

“The state under imperialism is wielded by the rich to protect the interests of the rich.”

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