The concept of the state as a balancing force has been dented. It remains an overseer and manages the balance of power between the conflicting interests of big capital but it is no more seen as an umpire between the rulers and the ruled — the latter’s interests have been flouted and violated brazenly. Rule by consent has been replaced by rule through coercion. The fall of the ‘evil’ (Soviet) empire has transformed the western welfare state into a ‘farewell’ and ‘warfare’ state that ceases to be an ethical state and has come close to resembling the concept of a policeman or interventionist state. The latter intervenes on behalf of those who, in the name of peace and democracy, produce and distribute the means of destruction. This is the comprehensive description of the state put forth by Engels: a manifestation of antagonististic class interests that cannot be reconciled, not the reality of an ethical idea, not irrevocable, divine, reality of reason inevitable for the upkeep of people but a historical necessity at a certain stage of human development, which under capitalism is meant to oppress the working class. Through its alienation it becomes what Nietzsche says, “coldest of all cold monsters…where the slow suicide” of the working class “is called life”.Despite being familiar with the character of the state, which is passive to the interests of the masses in an economic crunch, for redemption the people in their false consciousness still tend to look to the government. “Government,” as Gramsci states, “is the prize for the strongest bourgeois party, which akin to other bourgeois parties is the swarm of coachman flies, which makes not the slightest impact on the framework of the state but buzz words and sucks the honey of favouritism.” But as far as the classes are concerned, parties have a definite role to play. Gramsci states: “In fact, if it is true that parties are only the nomenclature of the classes, it is also true that parties are not simply a mechanical and passive expression of those classes, but react energetically upon them in order to develop, solidify and universalise them.” His emphasis remains on the need and performance of parties. “Classes,” he says, “produce parties and parties form the personnel of state and government…there cannot be any formation of leaders without the theoretical, doctrinal activity of the parties, without a systematic attempt to discover and study the causes that govern the nature of class represented and the way in which it has developed.”In the western industrial world, the bourgeois parties have long attained all the necessary elements considered essential to maintaining their respective command and hegemony over society. But in many underdeveloped or developing countries for one reason or the other, this process could not be materialised. Though there is no dearth of examples but, to quote a few very obvious ones, one can conveniently consider Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, which probably can never pave their way out of their political turmoil completely. The state over here prevented its own strengthening. It could not become a national factor. In the presence of a weak political structure and strong army, “The government,” as stated by Gramsci, “in fact operates as a party. It sets itself over and above the parties, not so as to harmonise their interests and activities within the permanent framework of life and interests of the nation, and state, but so as to disintegrate them, to detach them from the broad masses and obtain a force of non-party men linked to the government by paternalistic ties of a Bonapartist-Caesarist type.” All these three above-mentioned countries have undergone this experience quite frequently. The overt and almost always covert control of the “strong men” of their respective armies remained a palpably open secret. “Hence, scarcity of state and government personnel, squalor of parliamentary life, ease with which the parties can be disintegrated, by corruption and absorption of a few individuals who are indispensable produced an apolitical national cadre (in political parties) with a purely rhetorical and non-national mental formation. Thus, the bureaucracy became estranged from the country and via its administrative position became a true political party, the worst of all, because the bureaucratic hierarchy replaces the intellectual and political hierarchy. The bureaucracy becomes precisely the state/Bonapartist party.” Do we need a more prophetic picture than this? Under monopoly capitalism, the nature of the state in the western world is yet again altered, drastically. Soiled and polluted by unreason it has become more brazen and brutal since unreason can only maintain its hegemony through coercion and its domination through tyranny. From an ethical or interventionist state it has transformed itself into a totalitarian state. In this production/consumption society, a few experts decide the fate of humanity. ‘Freedom’ to purchase waste, the unnecessary and unreal has turned the human being into a slave of wants and commodities with which he finds himself libidinally attached. The urge of buying is most intoxicating; in fact, it is a neurosis, a syndrome. The same holds true for the means of destruction. Emphasis remains upon destruction through war but not on the explanation of its necessity. Through the cunning of reason a strange/grotesque rationale of peace being a midwife of war and war a precondition for peace is devised, and hence the two opposites are reconciled. Through repetition and media hype, the hypnotic character of this unreason is coercively permeated into human unconsciousness, where it shapes itself into a ‘reality’. The mind is repressed to the extent that death, destruction and decimation leave it guilt-free, unstained and unscarred. Even recreational activities are decided by lobbyists who tell the people about the suitability of their future president, the casinos where they can bet and invariably lose, and the places where their erotic and libidinal gratification can be attained to its fullest satisfaction. On one occasion, with the same logic or lack of it, opinion makers choose a war against an enemy while on the other a peace with the same. If such rationality sounds irrational the critic can either be declared a dreamer or a neurotic. (To be continued) The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com