John Holloway and Sol Picciotto In Capital, Crisis and the State print the
following:
It is our argument that a materialist theory of the state must extend and
develop this critique of the 'fantastic forms' assumed by social relations under
capitalism, Just as the analysis of the categories of political economy must
show them to be surface forms which have their genesis in surplus value
production as capitalist forms of exploitation, so the analysis of the state
must show it to be a particular phenomenal form of social relations which has
its genesis in that same capitalist form of exploitation. This implies, firstly,
that a materialist theory of the state begins by asking not in what way the
'economic base' determines the 'political superstructure', but by asking what it
is about the relations of production under capitalism that makes them assume
separate economic and political forms.
George: Value is a category of political economy yet it cannot be validly
regarded, as Holloway and Picciotto would have it, as a "surface forms" of
political economy.
They also mistakenly suggest in the above piece that "political forms" including
the capitalist state are forms of the relations of production. The capitalist
state is for them a social relation of production. This means, then, (that for
them) there obtains no essential difference between exchange value, commodity,
money, capital and the CAPITALIST STATE since they are all social relations of
production.
As I have suggested before Holloway, Picciotto and Clarke by conceiving the
state as a social relation of production extend capital, as a social relation of
production, beyond the limits outlined in Marx's Capital. Consequently this trio
challenge the very nature of Capital and its categories and thereby Marx's
critique of political economy.
Warm regards
George
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