Lenin quotes Sismondi's tirade against the “false activity” of governments in imposing protectionist measures of providing subsidies and so on. But, all this actually reflects is governments responding to the needs of different fractions of capital that have dominance at that particular time. To expect that the state, let alone governments, should act in the interests of “the nation” is to believe this abstract concept of the nation exists in material reality, rather than what actually exists, which is competing classes and class fractions, each with their own antagonistic interests.
Today, for example, it is a similar kind of utopianism and romanticism that believes that governments and the state are acting in the interests of “the nation”, or the national economy when they engage in QE alongside fiscal austerity. Of course, they are not. The former is designed to inflate asset prices that have repeatedly crashed as soon as rising interest rates burst the serial bubbles inflated since the 1980's; the latter is designed to restrain aggregate demand, and economic growth, so as to restrain wages and interest rates, and, thereby, prevent those bubbles bursting. Why does the state and successive governments implement such a policy that is so obviously deleterious from the perspective of “the nation” and the national economy? Simply because the dominant fraction of the ruling class is that tiny minority that controls all of the fictitious capital, the shares, bonds and so on, and owns all of its private wealth in the form of that fictitious capital that the wealth of the nation, and fortunes of the state has become associated with, over the last forty years. Moreover, in the last forty years, it has come to see its revenues deriving from the conversion of capital gains on that fictitious capital into money.
An obvious contradiction exists, here, because in undermining the real economy, so as to inflate these asset prices, the actual material basis of revenues, and so ultimately of asset prices, is also undermined. The contradiction must result in a crisis – indeed has repeatedly done so, as bubbles have burst – but the state will continue to try to meet the needs of the owners of fictitious capital until it is no longer possible to do so. The fact that we now have the ridiculous condition of negative yields on these assets, as central banks have printed so many money tokens to buy them, suggests we have now reached that point.
This action, by the state, now to hamper real capital, whilst protecting fictitious-capital, is merely a repetition of its previous application, but in conditions where, now, the major contradiction is that between large-scale, socialised capital, i.e. the collective capital of the workers, and fictitious capital, the form of private capital now owned by the dominant faction of the ruling class. In other words, two forms of capitalist property, the former progressive, heralding the the socialist relations of the future, the latter reactionary being an echo of the past conditions of private capitalist property. In fact, this contradiction has become overripe. The workers have failed to assert their rightful control over the socialised capital, which was the condition for its further development. Instead, the control has remained in the hands of the owners of fictitious-capital, who restrain the development of real capital so as to inflate asset prices. Meanwhile, the petty-bourgeoisie, which should have continued to shrink in significance, has expanded, as a consequence of the constrained growth of large-scale capital. That petty-bourgeoisie has also, thereby, expanded its political influence, taking control of conservative parties, pushing through reactionary nationalist policies like Brexit and so on.
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