[PEN-L:11146] Re: Capital and the State

[James Devine <Jim_Devine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While I was hassling other things in my life (and thus not intervening at
every step to share my wisdom with  pen-l ;-) ),  Terry McDonough, Eric
Nilsson, Ken Hanly, and Bill Rosenberg started a useful discussion that
spun off from that of Bill Burgess and myself. Ignoring most of what was
said, which seemed generally valid, I just want to make a couple of points.


The nation-state serves capital (both local and global) very well for some
things and poorly for others. The nation-states are usually pretty good at
preserving order and protecting capital on a national scale  without
international help.

Where they fail is in the provision of what people like Charles
Kindleberger call "international public goods," e.g., the avoidance of
trade wars, hot wars, world-wide underconsumption tendencies, international
currency instability, interconnected stock-market crashes, world-wide
environmental destruction as with global warming, etc. As capital
internationalizes, more and more of these types of problems come up.

Eventually, as "international public goods" become more important, a global
state will be needed -- but if it isn't provided, there will be a
persistent world disaster (take your pick from the list above). There is
nothing automatic about the rise of the global state: a greater degree of
international control over the economy was needed during the 1930s but
wasn't attained. Only WW II got the world out of the depression. That war
also produced US hegemony (or hedgemoney?), which  provided a _de facto_
world quasi-government until recently. The relative decline of the US and
end of enforced unity to fight the USSR have made that quasi-government
more quasi.

The future global state's roots can also be found in organizations such as
the IMF, World Bank, BIS,  the UN, etc. (Of this list, only the BIS
precedes WW II and US hegemony -- and it isn't very important.) But so far
such agencies  have simply been encouraging competition among
nation-states. Instead of 1930s-style trade wars or the hot wars of the
1914-45 period, we see competitive austerity as countries try to sell
themselves to world capital. So far, this competition has served capital
very well. But if it causes a global crisis, we should expect moves to end
the competition. Maybe a global New Deal? Could the NGOs that harrass the
World Bank be the source of the FDRs of the future?

in pen-l solidarity,

Jimmy
Jim Devine