The State and Global Capital: Revisiting the debate

Abstract

An assertion runs through Marxism, particularly the Marxism that studies international politics and international political economy: state domination is founded on a specific territory and is limited by it, while capital is capable of overcoming such determinations. But is this difference self-evident? From the viewpoint of the concept of capital, to accept this dichotomy would be to assume that state and capital are separate entities following a completely different logic. As a way of advancing in a critique of this false dichotomy, we suggest the state be understood as a particularised form of the capital relation, one that is constituted on a territorial basis, but whose domination depends on the broader reproduction of capital at a global scale. Its relation with the ‘outside’ is immanent to it – it is a precondition for its reproduction. It is also the reason why territoriality-deterritoriality, as Clarke (2001) points out, should not be understood as a dichotomous relationship but rather as a contradictory form rooted in the separation between the process of production and that of circulation...