Euro Trash Pres.

In his acceptance speech Newt makes it clear he won't go for any Saul Alinsky Left Wing Euro-Trash Socialism. Even if it means abolishing the Fed! Their "football" is played by girls, for God's sake. And after he's elected,you won't see a lot of THOSE people driving around in Cadillacs cashing their food-stamps either (wink wink). And by shrinking the State he will make capitalisms troubles go away.

But what is this State apparatus, this government, this administrative bureaucracy everyone hates? A mystery.As Richard Seymour tries to unpack the British form:

"The mystery of the state would not go away, because the state would not go away. Far from retreating to the perimeters of the 'economic', guarding its boundaries but otherwise allowing 'civil society' to go about its business in laissez-faire fashion, it was everywhere, pro-actively formulating and implementing agendas and strategies, domestically and overseas. War, sanctions, special forces operations, internment, deportation and special rendition are only the most brute, mail-fisted manifestations of the state. What about the coordination of ideological agendas on 'Britishness', 'integration', 'culture' and so on? What about the coordination of bank bailouts, and subsequent austerity programmes? What about 'workfare' and privatization? In fact, it seemed increasingly apparent that whereas the capitalist class itself was constantly divided, constantly at its own throat, rarely capable of sustained class initiatives by itself, the state was always there doing something that in one way or another furthered the reproduction of capitalist relations in new ways. And insofar as it did this, it seemed to be not just a state but a capitalist state.

Part of the mystery dissolved there and then. It had been a mistake to try to penetrate the core of the state as a sui generis form. There can be no general theory of the state. The state is not an eternal form that recurs through successive ages, modes of production and social formations, and to read it as such tends to lead to a Hobbesian view of the state as an instrument for the suppression of 'anarchy' (social conflict). At most, one can have a general, descriptive outline of what distinguishes a state apparatus (special bodies of armed men, etc), or a genealogy of types of state, noting the factors that recur (though even these factors will have an entirely different content, and stand in different relations to one another, depending on the historical epoch in which they are embedded). But it is possible to have a theory of the capitalist state, and the best way to approach it seems to be confront the state in its setting, the social formation."

These election cycles often present windows into the social formation of the state. Each politician who wants to go to Washington declares his disgust with "Washington politicians". So there is the wanting to be the thing you despise (every manager gets to feel this at some point).There is the whole acting through something you know is a farce aspect, like negotiating with a used-car salesman.(Everyone hates negative ads but they are influenced by them)

Yes, as Steve Earl put it:"With an empty feeling in my chest, wondering what it means."