Raya Dunayevskaya: 60 years of Marxism and Freedom

 

On Wednesday 7th November we were invited to say some words by the International Marxist Humanist Organisation at Hausman Books in that there London about Raya Dunayevskaya’s Marxism and Freedom in its 60th Anniversary year- Here is what we said:

 

The first time I realised Hegel was a boom boom doctor (an explosive thinker) was reading his that his students found his lectures an impossible amount of gobbledegook. It was then I realised Hegel was a Surrealist. It is only through the irrational that the rational may emerge, it in this vein the Psychedelic Bolsheviks live.

 

In 1930 Glasgow punk Harry McShane (he’s the dude who wrote the second preface to Marxism and Freedom after some German bum) went to Alaska to fix massive ice breaking drills in the wilderness surrounded by bacon stealing bears. The PBs are currently in their wilderness with the Bears phase. In his biography McShane admits he could have stayed in the Alaska ambience for the rest of his days. We relate to this, on a recent exhibition to Wales when running at the mountain Arenig naked we realised too we could have done a Hugo Ball and lost our psyche’s to rural roundabouts. But McShane did not give in to the overwhelming temptation and neither did we because we both believe in discovering humanity inspired by Raya our sweet warty king.

 

We first met each other in the SWP whirlpool, Rob found his way to the SWP after 18 months in the CPB, Ben was an SWP veteran of 5 years with the cuts and bruises to prove it. Ollie’s first romp was with Ben on a SWP’s fresher stall. Kaff joined just for the faction fight. It was abundantly clear that the SWP had severe downfalls, a low level of theory and obsession with primitive accumulation, we held a teenage delusionary sense that its more positive elements could be brought to the forefront.

 

The SWP’s cheap wooden mask was peeled away and now you wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night in a cobblestone ally way as its worst elements were revealed and strangled anything positive to death. We are of course talking about the years 2012/2013 in which a rape crisis occurred in the party, where genuine concerns were voiced by its membership and were put down by the Stalinist bureaucracy that put the SWP politics above any concrete politics and ultimately a human being. Socialism that treats individuals as contingent is no socialism at all

 

Towards the end of our dance we rediscovered elements of the IS tradition that had been swept under the Persian rug. Peter Sedgewick, Jim Higgins, Duncan Hallas and Ian Land. This at least seemed worth engaging with as it seemed more real than the shit the party had become. Still though our minds had not cracked so deep and still had to be forced to leave this decaying sock puppet. The years of indoctrination that there is nothing on the outside ran through our bloody thoughts leaving us stiff and scared. In a head spin we went along with Seymour’s vanity project but quickly realised it was a chewy false specimen with no real taste. We did though meet members of the Association of Musical Marxists and Dave Black at Plan C event slowly led us to more liberating ride on the backs of Guy Debord, Theodor Adorno and Raya Dunayevskaya. These became an affirmation of our desire to engage with the totality of everything rather than the slither of society identified as being political.

 

One of the things that exploded the narrow Berlin walls of our minds was Marxism and Freedom. This is was we took from it….

 

1. Hegel as essential to Marx- State Capitalism cannot be justified when applying Hegel to Marx. Through Hegel’s dialectic it is only understanding that a thing can be itself and not itself at the same time does it become obvious that the only way to liberate Communism is through Communism.
2. Against the separation of Mental and Manual Labour- What we experienced in the SWP was an exaggeration of the objective capitalist relations by the separation of those who were allowed to think and those who were not permitted to do so. Raya makes us realise that self-activity is the process of thinking and doing at the same time. Not reading Callinicos then selling his paper.
3. Marxism being developed from the spontaneity of the French Masses/Chartists- What Dunayevskaya makes you realise is a far more dialectical emergence of Marxism. Rather then Marx thinking up Marxism it was the activity of the masses that could a bring a higher unity to his thinking.
4. Communism as a process of discovering truth and humanness rather than a structure to be erected- a popular understanding of communism is that it reaches its realization in workers councils or a socio-economic system but truly what Raya gets is it being a process to find out what being human is.
5. Negation of the Negation- The point of the proletariat is to destroy itself in the process of finding freedom. It is not something to be fetishized being a terrible form of oppression even though it is the negation of capital it has to be negated
6. The Role of the Intellectual in the Struggle- What we admire in Raya is that she didn’t treat workers as people who could not deal with complex ideas like the majority of the trad left. We love she went to teach Japanese workers Hegel and we that John Maclean taught capital by Marx to Glasgow Workers.

It is from this pond that the PBs spring believing we have the power to develop our own theory and fromm we would like to offer a short critique of our hosts the International Marxist Humanist Organisation (IMHO). How can IMHO who believe in the totality of capitalism not comment on some of the most ruthless critiques of capital in the concrete outputs of John Coltrane, Edgar Varese and Frank Zappa. Although this might not be true of the full membership as we see in the Doctor Magic the Hobgoblin (Dave Black) who gives creditable cultural critique in the activity of the AMM.  Despite this criticism we would probably still like to join, and we would like to sing you this song as a peace offering.

 

 

Elvis- Falling in Love with You

A Case for Bras

 

After hearing French presidential candidate Jean Luc Melenchon call for a 100% tax on the rich, a move that made the PB’s chuckle we asked him to endorse our up and coming day school, he claimed to be too busy to write much, but said we could publish his first attempts at erotic historical fiction as a clear show of support. 

 

There was a sexy bra and a sexy par of big old panties. They were on a person. The bra upon closer inspection was actually a pair of child’s swimming goggles. In a surprised protection of the collective nipple the pink pinchers against there purposed function slurped all surrounding breast flesh inward. There was I dunno know large robust frillies able to contain the appendages of an adequately sized man. Wild orgy of shapeless blobs, floating teeth suck  floating breasts, suckle and suck on pink pincher bosoms.

“Ooo crickey what ample breasts” If you slap it they will jiggles wiggles and ripples 5 seconds unaided, 5p a turn, 5 year jiggle. Release them from the pink pincher prison and you shall rub your penis over the mountains of my torso. Hurry for I grow impatient and my kettle (vagina) has come to boil. Woo Hoo she screamed Woo Hoo she screamed again Woo Hoo the Kettle had boiled.

In 221 BC the first bra was discovered fossilised in the ash of mount etna, engraved it was with its maker, the pre historic rockers dinosaur junior who had woven it from the first rejected drafts of the bible. It was taken to the pope where upon it was declared a saintly messenger from God who had finally seen fit to enslave the protruding juice buckets of heathen sex. Til the outbreak of war, Sunday was simply know as the day of the bra.

Unlike other western appendage gatherers Bras have changed little since the middle ages. There is nothing new about keeping things in there place. Froom Dulwich Italy the bra conquered the globe. The Austrians never missing new themes for erotic wall carving innovated wooden bras with fire door access, the earliest form of sexual health and safety. First World War Germany rationed Bras due to a breast shortage. Leading to the humorous British Music Hall satirical reworking of the classical “It’s a long way to tipperary” to become “Its a long way to get some boobs”. In colder countries the naked natives would use left over whale blubber from the local newspaper to frustrate the frost. Whales rights activists recently led a “no more whale 3” campaign that stormed Japan as the worlds leading blubber bra company based in Tokyo JellyFishTits was besieged. In Siberian gulags women were forced to self snowman but there bosoms were so hot (If you know what I mean) It was largely ineffective. In Bolivia bras and pants were woven by alpaca’s from their wool, when Harold Macmillan claimed “Breasts have never had it so good” He obviously never realised about the alpaca cannibalism.

King Canuts war against inanimate objects stretched way beyond the puddle of the north sea, in a farcical episode created by the vikings delicacy to abbreviate, Canuts wish to invade Britannia ended in a latex bonfire that set back the development of s and m in Denmark for nearly a thousand years. In our modern Utopia of burnt of bras, the liberation of humanities finest manifestation of chest bumps knows little bounds. Britains Got Talent was in literal titillation when the ironically titled singing breast duo the boys won the genitals of the nation only succumbing in the end to the openly racist under 5’s all white dance troop the ghetto blasters. No one wants to stereotype the no shoe hippie platoons but their constant radio play of the their pop folk classic “Take off your Man maids” encouraging Women to strip at any available opportunity was adequately lampooned by Edna Bi Carbonated soda when she said it’s destroying the fun I have in foreplay.

The question of Bras seems increasingly irrelevant like that of Brexit, but still I hear the ad infantum repetition that only the Tories will secure us a hard exit of the braupian union.

You should all attend the No peace in the park with the psychedelic bolsheviks cause whether you turn up in a bra or not they won’t really care and that seems like feminism to me.

Jean Luc Mélenchon.

Postcode Philosophy: A desperate child’s guide to rejecting a post truth world.

In 2014 the newly formed Korschian 8 Pack handed out these leaflets in Sheffield 8 declaring:

This was in response to various diseases of gloopy gangrenous thinking intended to make your head fall off.  Bleached mouths, those responsible for making Marxism so sterile you can buy the Communist Manifesto in the classics section of Waterstones. Those same bore offs you have the phrase “Philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is to change it” permanently holstered in their Karl Marx play mobil pirate gun belts of moral superiority. They misuse and abuse this phrase to reject philosophy in totality, it is true that the glorified recycling bins that are university academics (because having an original thought is too difficult)  suck on the milk of Roland Barthes breeds disregarding any attempt at truth in favour of the tiger that came to tea,  as a laser shield protecting their comfy poof in the division of labour. But as Adorno begins Negative Dialectics  “Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realise it was missed” The proletariats failure to seize the revolutionary moment of early 20th century and abolish the abstract lingering of intellectuals means the battle of ideas continues to be an arena  that needs contesting. The Korschian 8 pack said “rum to a donkey” if this is going to be fought institutionally.

In S8, the recent closing of the Tesco and Greggs exposed the dribbling academia’s congealed thought  into everyday life. The people of Woodseats decried the loss of their identity with the removal of these big branded shops.  Where now could they buy seductive buttery pastries from crotchety old women  or get pink wafers served by the dead town archetype cashiers chewing gum like they couldn’t give a flying fuck. All that was left was to choose to drink your lager by candlelight or next t0 a large bush. Defining ourselves by our consumerist habits is the harrowing symptom  of the post modern attitude. The response to the commercial decay of the high street emerged with the formation of the 8pack gang whose activities were formed of teenage posturing  and tagging any available wall space with 8p. One toot on a moogi synth and some people no one can even remember decided graffiti had become a wallowment in decay, they turned to the most pounciest  Hegelian Marxist Karl Korsch for a tide of localized philosophical criticism.  Korsch offered explanation of the rotting state of current ideas as a reflection of material conditions in which the working class had been defeated.  It becomes no wonder  with the working class movement at it’s lowest ebb in a century that we are drowning in a sea of robotic Marxists and wish fulfilment crushing post modernists.

The KP8 were inspired in their what  an oranjeboom officialdom on the park roundabout had called  “a silly belief in the outdated notion of truth” by the Psychedelic Bolshevik before there was Psychedelic Bolsheviks Arthur Winterbottom, who misspent his youth recreating the Lettrist International denunciation of Charlie Chaplin, until he realised this was a  Chris Collinson type Napoleonic war re-enactment of no worth. With this he lapsed into worst kind of turtle neck wearing  “Everything is just opinion”. Until as the  The Tale of Arthur Winterbottom goes he had an enlightenment.

As this extract from Arthur’s Self Published Autobiography bizarrely written in the third person shows:

“Frubing from the bureau of abbreviated thoughts thronged by medicinal thick juice bozo’s. Arthur Winterbottom, the co author of the occupational buzzards guide to retna detachment

declogged of hair braiding, Ivan Campo and Love by his annual visit to the glorious ball smackers alleviation of having to care unit, fondant fancied syringing 50p bags of putrified peace and condom flavoured sawdust from his cousins wife of public engagement and discreet danish occasions detergent popping boils. Arthur home situated ruminated on his destation of refabricated bunk ups and all the nozzle fingering it contained “nowadays”

The Wall mounted toshiba squeaked with the bean saturated expectant mother quiz rinsed in vomitous amounts of Ben Shepherd infatuation, the turquoise coloured cackles salvant of orphanising reminded him of the first gay to look at the moon commemorative mechanical prize dispenser. It had awarded his icy cheeks a green letter anal rummage sponsored aversion therapy “for those scared of being obtuse” as a recuperation for winning a contest dressed as Levi Strauss’s 97th best immitator .

Coached to the leisure spandex playpen of spectacle concocters work time personalities. Forthwith bungled inside a toilet so purple anyone in the business of creating senility would presume the invention of beetroot had been a mistake. Arthur was offered a free complimentary interaction with under tongued Gary, previously a rat hormone smuggler for an unelected governor somewhere over there. This unexpectantly blossomed into a human data analyst with benefits scenario. Post polish using the toilet for a purpose Michael Barrymore never intended for it, Arthur watched as Gaz moved towards him, pulling his foreskin back in one delicious motion, easily creating the historical conditions for a relapse into the previous moments bog roll romp, when Gary shouted with the tenderness of a beep boop modger (Phantasmagorical range)

“Do you think they mop these floors with piss”

Terrified of offending the urine sodden fag end community or sentimental skag shunning chiropodists Arthur replied “they might or might not”. No sooner had the most pointless sentence in western thought (apart from football punditry) been uttered,  fishy hunk gazbo had bodged his fingers into all available nostrils. This was insignificant considering the lavatories engulfment by a narcotically ravaged tortoise who moonlighted as a spinning joy ride. The erecticcally dysfunctional terrapin currently experimenting with a slush puppy of apocalypse now gargled burpesque the aphorism “the surrealists and their gothic marxism were the only bleached bunkers to understand Marx’s desire to have it with ghosts”

The common error in this scenario was to misunderstand the flammability of piss and misapprehend that no exits were actually closed.  After all this was nothing better than a spa resort that had gone delusional. Despite suffering from an impending sense of doom pliable to mechanistic marxism the hegelian massage qualified turtle delivered a cloth fez award winning speech on the question of truth.

“If you continue to bleat on about how everything is subjective and it is up to people to create their own truth in life, don’t be surprised when in the future a group of quasi-fascist types decide to take you up on your offer and begin to disregard what you consider to be facts like “white supremacy is wrong”. So don’t start to complain because they are only embracing their subjectivity like you told them to do, it would be highly hypocritical at this point to decide that your subjective is suddenly a truer subjectivity than the racists you have come to dislike. Wrap yourselves in a philosophy that absolves you from doing anything at all till it’s too late and criticises those who may have failed abysmally but by god least they gave it a good rattle”

Arthur wept uncontrollably, comforted by Gary who had now donned an old Raya Dunayevskaya  fancy dress costume to act as a comfort and further suggested reading”

What Arthur Winterbottom and Korsahcian 8 Pack carry with them is the dual rejection of the truth of dogmatic Marxism and untruth of post modernist despair, that there exists a point at which subjectivity interacts with objectivity, and that point might possibly contain something true.

 

how much can you text before your politics fall apart?

how much can you text before your politics fall apart?

You will be working with scientists in a reformist union,
where will you find your key campagins,
from outside yourself?

From a demo outside Brain COX,
against
the BIG bang?

Does the whole of Sussex hate us?

He spat apple on my crotch
then picked it off.

marxism
and lennism
are UNscientific terms

do we hate science?

Science was an
ideological driving force
in bourgosie revolution

so must we negate sciences initial negations?

I will make us
acorn stew
for winter
meals

So typical of you to use a word you’ve just learnt while reading,
READING,
around what is to be done,
honestly

WE ARE THE COUNTERCULTRE
and we love
Obscure banners

who are you ISJ editorial board?
you’ll havve to wait for my part of plan c

We hate falsification,
We hate Science

a
new
slogan
for
which
counterculture

enforces of serious
are losing
the battle

i give you full creative freedom, ‘cept
make sure you use the picture
haha, what do you mean which one?

shut the fuck up
about TONY BENN

names for groups that don’t exist
pointless

You never told me!
about the science fair!
why are you there?

This is defiantly the priority of the 7th international

I’m inclined also to believe
that ideology is dominant over the economic

alienation drips away in the rain
drip
drop
drip drop

interact with people……

Drawing to the Captain. (An essay on pouring your heart out irresponsibly )

The following documents an eventful night that started with the question “are we Leninists? ” and ended with the protagonists finding that they had more thoughts inside their minds than any A level sociology text book could have predicted …

“put the sword down”

Taken away from the formalities of pressed lips and fingers in the air indicating to speak , it proved ,as it allows has, that the level of politics was heightened without the oomp pa pa pressure of stuffy meeting seriousness , a tendency to be adventurous with  the idea’s we communicated (like a child that drops it’s ice cream in the grass and picks it up to lick again out of curiosity) prevailed.

(interrupted by the need to tell a fan that our bodies are beautiful)

Cider was choosen unwisely, then we parked our rinky dinks in what we can only assume was an illegal Shisha establishment , from there we marched to the finish line , we arrived there at 2:30 am (is my mum singing about a mass strike as she walks past me? irrelevance!) with the conclusion that there’s more to the communist tradition than having read Chris Harman (bet you couldn’t have guessed that one)

So are you ready,  buckle your knee’s , the Happy Mondays are here ..

Nope , Humour

these are  the minutes taken from the night described ( a night lacking pies or any other kind of pastry  product) , it in no way represents what was achieved on the night, but we are selfish so we want to keep it for ourselves :

live fast, die young , I’ll neck 50 of these

Has anyone got any pets we could take to the vets in the morning?

the greatest sentence of the 21st century

O look the mensheviks won’t let us print Iskra

Why are these so Loose

homage to Jim Higgins in a play

can we call it the death agony of the IS tradition

Teeth (thigh slap , over the map)

don’t blog, make a book

Bob black is a wanky life stylist

Micheal Viks got put in prison for fighting bulldogs

if you take Reichs conception of class consciousness , does that mean we couldn’t catch a mammoth?

these are concentrated times

i don’t eat enough food to go swimming

I was going to take whey protein but thought it a bit macho

this man’s grown a nose while this music has been playing

get them made

Stop idolising Ben Watson….

MARX AND PROUDON GETTING SMASHED AND SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Quick, pick up your hazel nuts before the rabbits pounce on them ( and i thought the left was rift with opportunists).

Well story time has ended and picket lines will always be a great place to tell a story.

Tune up, Tune out, Queer everywhere

HBDPB

Pumping, collaspse … the importance of b sides

(For S. Ridley , the original mismatch )

my objective incompetence,

put it under your tongue ,

mushroomed all over Russia ,

 

 

smaller,

 

 

sunday morning  mud shark ,

piano hoovers,

moon land off , the broken verandas of Webern,

shallow weeping , collective  losing

loose music

–

mmmmmuuusssiiiiccc  (sing like your famous)

wet knee keeping

space piglet , ambiguous position

Nectarine involvement , your good, your this…

“Bert, close the blinds, i’m trying to sleep!”

every time you do that it moves 3 cm to the left,

he’s been elongated ,  sea moor , see more?

o your academic , o you fell off a cliff – ha

BBC 4  communism,

guitar  3 typhoon ,

sustenance paving

the boom and busts of being confused

irregular , murky puck

soon                                                                          soup

career  development –  (man sat on fingers soils himself )

get your fresh hypocrisy, available in all good ……. ?

7 second pause

it creases then reproduces its , huh  terrific

George Duke has created fruit x 3

and John Molyneux Marxism ?

the raffles more important than the movement

 

 

“where did you get them, Uncle Sam?”

regarding research turn to the sand pit , more more

Kissenger , Angola 1976

bombing existing moments,

united ebola ,

situations are needed ,well , ingredients are

59 minutes of the night was a joke

long planet , guilt is mainstream

I thought that had been agreed

Circle, Circle , Circle

excuse me ?   he knows about them , he does? well he uses them? who does? Fischer

I don’t think Burroughs will be at branch next week

weakness, board games , burpings not a game you fool

into the river, basic forces

 

origins of a Tankie ,  hump

stop being deviant let me cup you,  pa pa

Gone with …   (choose a word, complete this line, post your answers to P.O BOX BOX P.O)

slipping loose bunk cradle

husc-noip , electro berry

legislative mistakes tip toeing behind every saxophone obsessed Hobgoblin

whimpering , multi- purpose badger wipes

blluuuee, blllamme, stilts

cassette dessert , an emotive speech on behalf of hand writing

there’s plenty of time ….. go get some

drenched in

3 sided , stand closer while you piss?

i do this because i can , its possible

the other way round , solve North

infantile sock  , sit above the polemics , teenage mathmatics

in and out , at the same time two moon platypus

 

mythological insurrection ,  run run run run run      run  RUM

mingus 5 dizzy dissent , awww

don’t say it out loud ,omnipotent birthday

laudable , breakfast your skins too tight

 

 

sit

to do list for tomorrow:

Dear self,

ointment psychology

friend league

smashing definition

your smiling, that wasn’t Birmingham

go back flooded heads , eat with me tonight, your so beautiful

 

 

 

 

not the leather , underneath it , there’s all the answers

notice he has a toy  dog on his lap ; like me.

 

 

 

 

 

Surrealism, Peret and Trotsky (Delegates Delights) by Slim Brundage

“Trotsky had nothing to do with any of the Surrealist Manifestos, but he did coauthor, with Breton, the excellent ‘Manifesto
for an Independent Revolutionary Art’. I find most of Trotsky’s writings on culture uninspiring despite their often being head and shoulders above the mainstream of Bolshevik opinion on the matter. People should take the Surrealists far more seriously IMHO – they have a very honourable tradition as early interpreters of Hegel, early supporters of Trotsky and opponents of the bureaucratisation of the CP. They are far more creditable as revolutionaries than many of the later Trotskyists who are casually lauded. Ignorance of your culture is not considered cool, as someone else once said.

If these guys don’t sound interesting to you you are doing something wrong:
“In January 1927 5 members of the Surrealist group joined the Communist Party: Breton, Aragon, Eluard, Unik and Peret. Others, like Desnos and Miro refused to join. Even with Breton, Party membership was with qualifications. He saw the Communist programme as only a minimum programme, and criticised the Party paper as “Puerile, uselessly declamatory, cretinous, unreadable; completely unworthy of the role of proletarian education that it tries to assume”. Whilst Aragon transformed from the “most libertarian spirit of the Surrealist group” into a horrific Stalinist hack who wrote poems honouring the Russian secret police the NKVD, others who had joined the Party began to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the Moscow show trials. It was a stormy period for the Surrealists as they tried to participate as they saw it in the workers’ revolution, whilst at the same time safeguarding their own specific preoccupations, and fighting against the Party leadership’s attempts to keep them on a tight rein. Breton was expelled in 1933, and at a Party-controlled International Congress for the Defence of Culture the Surrealists were denounced and were only allowed to speak on the last day at 2 in the morning!

Trotsky
By now some of the Surrealists were allying with Trotskyism and oppositional Bolshevism. Peret made contact in France and Brazil with the Communist Union and the Internationalist Workers Party. Breton made contact in Mexico with Trotsky when he was put in charge of a series of conferences at Mexico University on Poetry and Painting in Europe in 1938. Together with Trotsky and the Mexican painter Diego Rivera he drafted For an Independent Revolutionary Art which announced that “The revolution is obliged to erect a socialist regime with central planning; for intellectual creation it must, even from the start, establish an anarchist regime of intellectual liberty. No constraint, not the least trace of command”. This contradictory and bizarre document seems to have been written by Breton and amazingly Trotsky, with Rivera substituting for Trotsky’s signature when he got cold feet. It is not clear when Trotsky helped write this document what he thought he was doing, as it went against everything he had ever done or said.

Durruti
Peret for his part had gone as delegate of the Internationalist Workers Party to the Civil War and Revolution in Spain. Here he worked as a radio broadcaster for the anti-Stalinist Marxist party the POUM, but left this post when he criticised this organisation for participating in the Catalan government. He joined the anarchist Durruti Column on the Aragon front. “All collaboration with the POUM was impossible, they wanted very much to accept people to their right, but not to their left. I have decided to enter into an anarchist militia, and here I am at the front, at Pino de Ebro”, he wrote to Breton. Two years later he paid tribute to Buenaventura Durruti, after whom the Column was named. “I have always seen in Durruti the most revolutionary anarchist leader, whose attitude was most violently opposed to the capitulations of the anarchists who had entered the government and his killing moved me very much. I think that the lesson that was the life of Durruti should not be lost.” Returning to France, he was called up at the start of the war. He was arrested for distribution of leaflets of “an anarchist character” and after a prison term managed to escape to Mexico. Here he undertook a thoroughgoing critique of Trotskyism and distanced himself from its organisations. Writing later in a letter to Georges Fontenis, the French libertarian communist militant, he remarked: “If the disappearance of the State can not be envisaged in the immediate, it is no less true that the proletarian insurrection must mark the the first day of the death agony of the State”