Some reflections prompted by the debate about my latest article. If we agree that the state is a tool of class rule, we should ask ourselves which class is ruling. The US has outsourced its core functions to unelected interest groups heavily invested in the MIC, MICI or in Ray McGovern’s definition MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex. That complex is virtually unaffected by popular vote, it can easily accommodate the negligible deviations proposed by either party. It doesn’t matter whether you get a Democrat or a Republican in the White House. ▪️Many pundits offer interesting observations about the so-called Deep State but fail to see the big elephant in the room: class relations. The capitalist state organizes the interests of the dominant classes and disorganizes the dominated classes. That what it does, did and will continue doing unless it faces an organized resistance that cannot be coopted. An empirical approach is necessary to understand the nexus of power, but insufficient. It needs to be informed by a coherent theory of the state otherwise we end up naming all the agencies and organizations that form this mind-boggling network and miss the forest for the trees. The outsourcing of more and more functions of governance from representative institutions to public private partnerships hasn't dissolved state power, it has made it more pervasive and internalized. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. All that is solid doesn't disappear when it melts into air. And that applies to class domination as well. @LauraRuHK