As Marx pointed out, in relation to the French state,
“under the absolute monarchy, during the first Revolution, and under Napoleon the bureaucracy was only the means of preparing the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Under the Restoration, under Louis Philippe, under the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class, however much it strove for power of its own.”
Indeed, one of the strengths of capitalism, and of the bourgeoisie, is its adaptability to different political regimes, whether, as Trotsky describes, those regimes assume the mask of democracy or fascism, for example. Under Louis Bonaparte (and the same can be said of Nazism, Stalinism and Zionism), the political regime is based not upon the bourgeoisie, and their class interests, but on the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie,
“the state power is not suspended in the air. Bonaparte represented a class, and the most numerous class of French society at that, the small-holding peasants.”
(ibid)
Because, Bonapartism is characterised by a fusion of the political regime and the state, this gives the illusion that the state, itself, represents the interests of that petty-bourgeoisie. The Nazis were based on the German petty-bourgeoisie, the Stalinists on the managerial middle-class layers and bureaucracy, the Zionists on the Zionist ruling caste. But, that is an illusion, and is manifest by the heightened contradiction that the conflicting class interests that have to be reconciled, now, within the regime.
The point had been made by Engels, in his analysis of the Peasant War in Germany.
“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests.”
It is not, however, just a revolutionary leader that faces this problem, but also a counter-revolutionary leader. This same problem faced the Brexiters, in Britain, for example, but, in reverse. In the age of imperialism, attempts to turn the clock backwards, and to seek a solution based upon the nation state, are impossible, as well as reactionary. Either those attempting to pursue such a course (Johnson/Starmer) are forced to essentially lie about what they are doing (seeking Brexit In Name Only), or else they are defeated in their attempts (Pol Pot, Truss). Even where they seem to have achieved their goals, it is a delusion. North Korea is dependant on China; the Zionist state, in Israel, is dependent on US and EU imperialism, for example. In each case, the growing contradiction that the regime seeks to reconcile, requires not only ever greater lies, but also ever greater authoritarian rule.
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