What is the difference between The State and The Government?
When talking about the administrative jobs that the government carries out, such as maybe something like mandatory warranty on used car purchases (for example), that don't really appear to be "oppressing one class over the other", would these bodies be considered part of the state, part of the government, or part of something else entirely?
Are state and government even different things?
In the case of capitalist countries, should we reason about the state (the institution/apparatus for oppressing the working class and protecting the ruling class) as a separate entity to the one which handles administrative issues, such as handling public gardens (etc.)?
Yes because there are different forms of states and there are different forms of governance but a state refers to a specific entity whereas "government" really just means how we organize our community, it could be a tenants organization, a community garden, a city council, a mutual aid organization, a union, all of these require some sort of governance in the form of collective guiding principle and adherence to a mutually accepted set of rules or social contract.
I think that's an important distinction even if it sounds pedantic, because there's a lot of talk about "the government" in the US and more broadly the west that obfuscates critique of a specific state or policy by state actors.
It leads to a paradoxical notion that government = bad so we must entrust corporations that are in their own right governing bodies unto themselves.
Another distinctive characteristic is that the state must be upheld by violence or the threat of violence, this is important to understand when it comes to imperialism, anti-imperialism, and critical support not just for AES but states fighting against colonialism in general. As long as the struggle for liberation from the dictatorship of capital continues there will be pockets of resistance that will take shape in the form of states as a method of protecting any ground gained through revolution. Not all of them will be socialist and not all of them will be worth defending on any other front but toward the end of breaking US imperial hegemony.
Thank you for that response.
This part is particularly eye opening for me
I'd add to that that even a worker owned co-op is a form of government, if it's a good one it's a relatively flat organizational structure but it's still a form of government at the micro level.