The electoral trap
▻https://intransigence.org/2017/10/07/the-electoral-trap/
▻https://external-frx5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQBMQyMJ1EcnL27n&w=476&h=249&url=http%3A%
To put it more succinctly, the state provides the medium by which capitalist interests exert power over society in order to reproduce their conditions of existence. This was essentially Marx’s point when he argued that the legal and political structures of a society correspond to its mode of production. All superstructural (or non-economic) practices occur within the context of the productive relations that form the basis of a given society. Thus, the political and the economic are inextricably bound together, and it is impossible to attempt an accurate treatment of capitalist politics without examining their relationship to the economic base, as the state is both the product of capital and its guardian.
In order to fulfill its function, the state applies two basic types of power: repressive and ideological. The state’s repressive power is expressed via institutions of organized violence, such as the military and police. Their objective is to force people to follow established rules out of fear of reprisal. Obviously, breaking the law appears much less attractive when such an action comes with the possibility of incarceration, injury, or even death. Ideological power, on the other hand, is more subtle. It attempts to produce an internalized accommodation to these rules without applying (or threatening) direct force. Instead, ideology situates individuals within a system of imaginary relations in such a way that they perceive themselves as belonging to certain social roles or identities. These relations are generated by the material practices that constitute a given society, producing external forces that shape the consciousness of its members. Hence, an individual becomes a subject. By constructing certain subjectivities that limit people’s understanding of themselves and the world to the horizon of capitalism, the state’s ideological apparatuses protect the status quo. Among the most complex and expansive of these apparatuses is the political system of liberal democracy.