"Direct, transactional government intervention in companies to secure critical industries and serve other policy ends will inevitably lead to favoritism, inefficiency, higher costs, and lower growth. Frontier companies are already pulling away from their competitors; discretionary intervention may further increase market concentration and widen the gap between the large incumbents and industry champions that benefit from government deals and access and the companies that do not.

Even for the businesses that benefit, the new discretionary state capitalism is a mixed blessing. They will face rising uncertainty and risk falling into governments’ cross hairs as everything from antitrust approvals to international mergers and acquisitions becomes less subject to predictable rules and more subject to the whim of political processes. Governments, meanwhile, may be eager to use the full range of tools available to them, but a heavy-handed, volatile state can quickly dampen economic activity and competition. Discretionary policymaking can distort corporate behavior, pushing companies to focus less on productivity and more on lobbying for political favor. And perhaps most important, a government will not succeed in securing its country’s economic future through investment in critical technology and manufacturing unless it also addresses underlying constraints, such as labor availability, skills gaps, or a burdensome regulatory environment. Economic history is littered with experiments in state capitalism that ended in failure, including U.S. price controls in the 1970s, which contributed to energy shortages and did little to tame inflation, and the 1975 nationalization of British Leyland Motor Corporation, which struggled mightily despite billions in government investment and was eventually dissolved. Policymakers keen on muscular intervention today must tread carefully or risk meeting the same fate."

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trouble-state-capitalism#
#USA #Trump #StateCapitalism #Kleptocracy

State Capitalism – Be careful what you ask for!
Good Read!

By anointing winners and losers, State Capitalism may well create an enduring snake pit of favoritism, inefficiency, higher costs, lower growth, and stunted innovation. And it’s not just losers that lose, the “winners” will also face rising uncertainty and risk of falling out of favor with business operations subject to unpredictable rules and to the flights of fancy of political actors.

Access to foreign markets will become more uncertain/possibly curtailed as more and more countries seek to promote domestic champions and reduce dependence on foreign goods. Ultimately, state capitalism is self-defeating. The U.S. has maintained its lead over China due to the dynamism of open markets and the predictability of the rule of law. Replacing a system of economic rules with a system powered by political whims will be geopolitical economic malpractice. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trouble-state-capitalism #Capitalism #StateCapitalism #Politics #Markets #Risk #Business #Innovation

Trump’s State Capitalism

https://murica.website/2026/01/trumps-state-capitalism-2/

It's really simple:

Unless you really love deepthroating #Trump's #boot and suck his dick whilst kissing the ring, you don't do #business in the #USA - period!

• The #US is ruled by it's #oligarch who has less patience than a spoiled rich brat who never got to learn to accept "No!" for an answer but also who can't be assed to remember or follow his own terms, which makes him worse than the worst cases of "ADHD" I could ever remember, let alone imagine.

This makes the #US a worse juristiction than "P.R." #China, #Russia and even #Somalia when it comes to #business because in those places the heads up top will generally leave businesses alone (As long as they pay their taxes / bribes / protection in time and don't meddle with politics!), whereas #Trumpism combines all the disadvantages of #fascism, #StateCapitalism, #warlordism and general #LateStageCapitalism without any of their "merits" for those who want to do business.

• Add to that the audacity of the US government to want to enforce it's laws and terms to businesses and assets overseas via #embargos that only serve #blackmail of #economies, and one gets only reasons to not wanting to do busiess there, even if we ignore the sinking net income and life expectancy of #USians...

The only way to fix this is to treat the US like #NorthKorea and completely isolate it: politically, socially, economically, militarily and technologically!

• Anything else is just normalizing #Neoimperialism at this point!

#commentary #sarcasm #politics #USpol #economy #tech

Helena Horská 𝕏📝💬 https://xcancel.com/imfnews:
⚠️Zatímco privátní dluh ve světě klesá, ten veřejný roste.
Krůček po krůčku k “státnímu kapitalismu”
#statecapitalism 🔗↗️
https://xcancel.com/HelenaHorska/status/2012435376594420124

“A model of crony #statecapitalism that tries to resuscitate a long-dead industrial #economy is hardly an antidote to #neoliberalism.”

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5zca2ola2zxpkw37w4f3wxtu/post/3mbwpglcxl22t

"The Trump administration has continued to snap up stakes in other private firms, most notably mining companies involved in the production of rare earth minerals and other raw materials used in technology"
Approaching the Chinese model, just from the opposite direction? #nationalisation #statecapitalism
https://aje.io/jimbw7

"Given what we know about the limited net surplus actually squeezed from agriculture and the scale of human loss, a softer, more balanced socialist strategy looks economically plausible and morally preferable. A reformed NEP with hard investment targets could have delivered comparable industrial capacity by the early 1940s, with fewer long-term distortions and a very different distribution of gains.

But plausibility on paper isn’t the same as political feasibility in 1928–32. Information was thin; the leadership’s worldview was siege-minded, which was hardly irrational given the collapse of collective-security efforts after 1933 and, ultimately, the 1941 German invasion; and incentives inside the party-state pushed toward command solutions. From that vantage point, the crash path felt “inevitable,” even if it wasn’t in a strict economic sense. The late-1980s debates in the Soviet Union revived the counterfactuals, including the idea that Lenin might have kept a mixed economy longer. As Alec Nove cautioned in the last edition of An Economic History of the USSR, it’s far from obvious he would have chosen differently had he lived into the 1930s.

So, I land here: a more humane path was possible, but not likely under the beliefs, threats, and institutions of the time. The lesson isn’t that speed always justifies the means. It’s that the means shape the society you end up with, long after the steel is rolled and the machines are built."

https://deveconhub.com/was-stalin-necessary-three-ways-to-read-soviet-industrialization/

#Russia #USSR #Stalin #Industrialization #NEP #Lenin #StateCapitalism

💯 👉"Critics of socialism argue that it is a cop-out to say that the USSR was not socialist. But it seems clear that in practical terms, those running the system were trying to beat capitalism at its own game. They were not only imprisoned in a competitive logic but also bound by its limited horizons.

Of course, this does not tell us what the Soviet economic system was. To pose that question, as some did in the USSR, was to step outside the ruling order and to invite retribution. The job of the economists that Feygin discusses was to help the system work better.

Yet even some of those who were at the center of these “insider” debates could not help wondering exactly what the USSR was. Feygin in particular instances Yakov Kronrod, who spent four decades or more trying to think not only about reform but also about value relations and the question of alienation and exploitation in the Soviet system (David Mandel’s book on Konrod, Democracy, Plan, and Market, is not cited, however).

In the event, the USSR and the wider Soviet-led bloc collapsed, becoming the “ruin” of Feygin’s title. It failed to catch up with (let alone overtake) the West, and it failed to satisfy the aspirations of its own population. The idea of socialism from above, directed by a plan, has not really recovered. When we think, therefore, of going beyond capitalism, we must think about different ends as well as different means.

A bottom-up, participative system might well be messy in different ways, but it would have to engage people. In the USSR, Soviet workers were never the knowing agents of their own fate. They figured only as a constraint..." 👈💯

https://jacobin.com/2025/11/soviet-economic-reform-workers-feygin/

#SovietUnion #USSR #Socialism #Capitalism #StateCapitalism #EconomicDemocracy #Gorbatchev #Perestroika

"In this episode, join your hosts Sam Thomas (resident Italophile), J.E. Morain, and James Crane for a discussion taking the 1951 polemic, “Murder of the Dead,” as a point of departure for deeper dive into Amadeo Bordiga’s bellicose and beautiful run of essays in eco-communism throughout the 50s and 60s. Topics of discussion include: Bordiga’s critique of a version of the ‘state capitalism’ thesis, the conceptual matrix of living/dead labor and variable/constant capital, the theoretical and stylistic function of ‘invariance’ in Bordiga's writings, coal mine collapses, the flooding of symbols of national pride, and scientific-scatological reflections on the ‘how’s of abolishing the antithesis of town and country. We end with a few remarks on the conquest of the fear of death and the “natural condition of the prosperity of the species” in Bordiga's 1961 “In Janitzio Death is not Scary.”

Other Bordiga essays discussed in the episode:

“The Filling and Bursting of Bourgeois Civilisation” (1951)

“The Human Species and the Earth’s Crust” (1952)

“The Spirit of Horsepower” (1953)

“Weird and Wonderful Tales of Modern Social Decadence” (1956)

“The Legend of the Piave” (1963)"

https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-4-amadeo-141919007?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

#Marxism #StateCapitalism #Bordiga #Italy #ItalianMarxism

Bosses (everywhere) are always keen to reduce the “cost of labour” to boost their stolen wealth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires

https://beinsure.com/ranking/china-billionaires/

#Billionaires #Capitalism #China #StateCapitalism

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-02/china-k-visa-draws-fierce-criticism/105840312

“Invisible overtime” during 996 9am-9pm 6 days a week (whatever happened to the - 19th century - 8 hour day ?)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-25/china-invisible-overtime-reforms-labour-law-work-hours/103599992

#Capitalism #China #labourmovement #migrantworkers #overtime #StateCapitalism #STEM #WorkVisa

“The United States has entered a new era of state capitalism. The real question is no longer whether the state will act, but whose interests it will serve. … If progressives don’t seize this moment to define a democratic, public-minded industrial policy, they will find themselves living in one designed by the Trump administration.”

#Politics #USPolitics #StateCapitalism #Economics #IndustrialPolicy #WorkingClassPolitics #ProgressivePolitics

https://newrepublic.com/article/200025/trump-state-capitalism-intel-steel-democrats

I don't have much patience for Losurdo's Stalinist deliriums. In any case, it's awesome that just one of the dozens of famous marxist intellectuals of the 21st century is an apologist of the old USSR and its authoritarian state capitalism...! His critique/rant of Nietzsche just stinks. And Nietzsche is probably my favorite philosopher.

"Losurdo, a self-styled realist, felt that classical Marxism’s assumption that revolution had to happen in the leading capitalist countries was unfounded and needed to be revised. Overcoming capitalism would be a much more drawn out process than Marx, Engels, or Lenin had imagined, and would require state-building.

This brings in one of Losurdo’s favorite hobbyhorses: his thesis that the Marxist doctrine of the withering away of the state has had disastrous consequences for efforts to realize communism. He made this argument again and again throughout his œuvre, at times even arguing that the doctrine betrayed a harmful anarchist origin.80 Whereas Marx, Engels, and Lenin had predicted the eventual disappearance of state power, Losurdo believed that this millenarian forecast stood in need of revision (...) ” In contrast to this more positive attitude toward the state, Western Marxists seized on the most utopian elements of Marxism, “accentuat[ing] the messianic tendency in Marx and Engels.” Eastern Marxists were compelled to take the reins of power, and thus were not afraid to get their hands dirty. Lenin purportedly moved away from the fantasy of the withering away of the state in practice, according to Losurdo, even if he never officially renounced it in theory.
(...)
Needless to say, Losurdo diverged sharply from what Marx, Engels, and Lenin had to say on each score (...) His readings are so tendentious as to strain credulity, and must thus be compared with the source material to gauge the accuracy of his accusations."

https://newintermag.com/against-losurdo/

#Marxism #Stalinism #Philosophy #Capitalism #State #StateCapitalism #WesternMarxism

The US is witnessing a shift from small government to state intervention, as seen in Trump's influence over corporate decisions, government stakes in Intel, and tighter controls on semiconductor exports to China, signaling the end of the free-market era.
#YonhapInfomax #CrackerBarrel #DonaldTrump #Intel #SemiconductorExport #StateCapitalism #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=79696

"The texts collected here belong to the materials on ‘racket theory’ composed by members of the Institute for Social Research between 1941 and 1944. More specifically, they were mostly (probably) written by Max Horkheimer, albeit with considerable input from Theodor W. Adorno and occasional feedback from others.
(...)
The history of the ‘racket theory’ corpus is difficult to reconstruct. We have found it helpful to divide our subsequent analysis of the racket theory project into three major sections, which are not exclusive in terms of content. Our narrative starts with the earliest use of the term in Max Horkheimer’s essay “The End of Reason” (1942). After this, we turn to analyzing the stream of texts which were explicitly composed for or about publication(s), mostly written between spring 1942 and fall 1943. Then we treat the topic of reflexivity and the specific character of the racket theory project that flows from its particular form of reflexivity. Finally, we briefly discuss some particularities of the core racket theory texts before concluding. Translations from additional German sources are our own."

https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/blog/2025/RacketIntro/

#CriticalTheory #FrankfurtSchool #RacketTheory #StateCapitalism

“Trump’s MAGA is abandoning free markets. From CEO intimidation to picking industry winners, it mirrors state capitalism—less Smith, more Xi. #MAGA #StateCapitalism #EconomicTakeover” fortune.com/2025/08/12/m...

Is MAGA going Marxist and Maoi...

IF I'd the aptitude for studying all this fantastical World history, tyrants and kings, nazis and oligarchs, elections and coups, THEN I wouldn't be in a constant state of #SHOCKandAWE now. #STATECapitalism - new term for me but I get it. #damnthebastards

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bono5gae7m6r3qpfxomshwbd/post/3lw5h536w4c24

One can try to argue #StateCapitalism in the #USSR was on the #socialist spectrum at least, but the core argument here is correct -- the Soviet Union was not a socialist society, as #unions were banned and workers did not control the means of production. Socialism is anti-statist.

"Alami and Dixon’s The Spectre of State Capitalism is a careful discussion of a topic often dealt with in platitudes and sound-bites. The authors cover uses of ‘state capitalism’ as an ideological tool, as well as serious scholarly work on the subject. They accept that ‘all capitalism is state capitalism to some extent,’ and ‘the new state capitalism may not be so new after all’ (5). But, at the same time, they detail the changes in the nature of the global economy, and argue that they must be reckoned with – that is, not just described, but explained.

The authors define state capitalism as an expansion of the state’s role in the world economy through state-capital hybrids (such as sovereign wealth funds, state enterprises and banks embedded in states), and increasingly statist policies (including industrial and development policies and economic nationalism). They argue that this expansion of the state’s economic and political role is not contingent. It is ‘structured by deep-seated, secular transformations’ in global capitalism (15). The economy itself they understand as ‘a world-historical totality’ (13), and not just a collection of disparate institutions and states."

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/22211_the-spectre-of-state-capitalism-by-ilias-alami-and-adam-d-dixon-reviewed-by-j-d-evans/

#Capitalism #StateCapitalism #Marxism #PoliticalEconomy #Geopolitics #Ideology #Neoliberalism