The Possibility of a Transnational Capitalist State

Interesting question. I don't know anything about the inner workings of capital but I would guess that having separate states, currencies etc creates opportunities for further trade and exploitation as well as using cultural differences, national identity and so on to keep working class disunity on the boil.
The conspiracy theorists bang on about this quite a bit but I suppose that's kinda irrelevant.

This is purely an under educated guess but...I'd say a scenario like in 1984 is a bit more probable, i.e. a few large mega-states.

We can already see this with the giant geo-political proxy war between US, Russia, and China.

But that could expand...for instance I could see a North American Union controlled by the US mainly at some point, not to dissimilar to an EU controlled by Germany, and so on. Someone more interested in geo-politics would probably be super welcome to chime in though.

it seems as though there are some new blocs forming particaurly in latin america where they have successfully given the US the boot,(except for colombia and paraguay)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations#Economic_development

and i think somethings happening in the USSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Community#EurAsEC_Customs_Union

another place could be the arab world? but its a bit of a mess over there atm

No North American union anti Mexican racism is to strong. Possibly Canada plus the USA.

Also I just read 1984 u saying it was likely made me scared for a second. Talk about nightmare fuel.

Good question. Lots of liberals propose some kind of multi-level global democracy, from George Monbiot at the popular end to people like Juergen Habermas and David Held at the academic end. I do think their stuff is quite utopian though, i.e. it either isn't explained how the proposed system would emerge from the present one, or it is but the argument is weak (Monbiot's 'moral power' lol).

My gut feeling is it's fantasy for historical reasons, but there's nothing logically binding capitalism to a states-system as opposed to a universal state. It's also worth thinking about what we mean by state - monopoly of violence, judicial power, legislative power, monetary union, power of taxation, all of the above? I mean the Eurozone has monetary union, and the EU has a parliamentary assembly and the highest court has power over member states (the European Court of Human Rights). But is the EU a state?

I think that the national state is the highest expression that capitalism can reach and only the working class as an international class can go beyond this absolute fetter. Capitalism has been "globalised" since 1914 and its "international" expressions since then, the League of Nations, the United Nations have been nothiing but dens of rivalries, spies and corruption.

The EU is not a state but, from historical and geographical reasons, one of the major epicentres of the world's imperialist rivalries and tensions which has no chance of overcoming the contradictory interests of each national bourgeoisie. After the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, there were some elements of left communism that posed the possibility of a coherent EU bloc but this idea, always weak, was blown out of the water by the war over ex-Yugoslavia in the early 90's. There was a certain reality to the EU as part of a bloc during the Cold War under the US nuclear umbrella as part of the western bloc. But the cement that held this body together (and there still rivalries within it) disintegrated with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

The underlying tensions and divergences (capitalism is fundamentally a system of economic and military competition) of the EU was shown in the war in ex-Yugloslavia being tripped by Germany's precipitous and threatening recognition of Croatia and Slovenia and British, French and Russian reaction military action against it. In an attempt to impress its stamp on the war, the US backed and brought up the Bosnian army from scratch.

There were profound disagreements in Europe over the Anglo-French/US war in Libya with Germany even refusing to let its AWAC system be part of it. Economically Germany ended up doing relatively well out of the war in relation to Britain and France for example but, two years on, the whole country is riven by militias with the flag of al-Qaida covering some of its southern territories. In fact there's the "internationalism" of the bourgeoisie - global jihad.

The national bourgeoisie's rarely unite even in war. The allies in WWII were still very much at each others' throats and it was the same for the Axis. The only time that the bourgeoisie does unite is in the face of decisive movements by the working class; 1917 and the White Armies is one example and the unification between the Polish state, Russia, the US, the Catholic church, trade unions from Britain and America in order to confront the self-organised uprising of the working class in Poland, 1980, is another example.

The tendency of capitalism is more and more to the fortress national state, the "heights" of its achievements. This can been seen in the US, where not only the Mexican border is a mass of iron, steel, guns and security but also the Canadian border where there's a veritable "united nations" of criminal gangs operating, where border patrols have been increased 700% since 9.11, and there's even talk of building a wall.

didn't Hilferding and Kautsky wrote about it? ... there was a discussion around 10 years ago mainly among German CP members and other leftwing social democrats about the question brought forward by the economist Leo Mayer (back than a leading CP member) if the world had evolved into something like a "collective imperialism" but I do not know if this debate did spread outside the German-speaking area

It seems to me that the global division of labour between states is a major component of how global capitalism manages the global working class, and again I cannot imagine it happening unless it is a necessary solution to some form of crisis, whether military, political or economic.

If a transnational capitalist state existed, the ruling class would have to begin to afford liberal bourgeois 'rights' to labour across the world. Personally I think if the states that manage the worlds most highly socialised labour supplies (ie. where the mass worker is still a possible political subject) were not allowed to repress worker activity using the really quite brutal methods that they do, the price of labour would rocket, and capital would once again be thrown into crisis, except in this case it wouldn't just be crisis formed from contradiction between sections of capital (ie. the present crisis originating in the financial sector), but instead crisis in which the working class is once again the antagonistic force.

Perhaps also a universalisation of culture would contribute to a beginning of the internationalisation of class organisation, a very dangerous thing for capital.

Is the UK a transnational state?

Aren't all states transnational?

In response to Ent., Kautsky, when I think that he represented part of the workers' movement, imagined the emergence of a super-alliance of the great powers regulating peace across the world. Lenin denounced these ideas in "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism", as alliances between wars or preparing for wars. The ideas of Kautsky had also appeared amongst British economists early in the century; John Hobson in 1902 and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Normal Angell in 1909, who both "demonstrated" (unfortunate timing here) that the major economies were so inter-dependent on each other that imperialist war was out of the question. I have seen similar ideas expressed here and there on these threads.

Since the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 there has been no decline in miitarism, war and preparation for war - on the contrary. George Bush Senior, echoing Kautsky, declared in the early 90's, that a period of "peace and prosperity" was opening up.

Kautsky's arguments have been adapted and used by Stalinists and Trotskyists to say that the bloc controlled by Russia during the Cold War - a "peaceful and dynamic" alliance - was not imperialist.

What about a corporate state? I can imagine a SF novel based around that concept.

Baboon has it mostly right, but I have a few modifications to propose and details to add.

There are degrees of globalisation and today capitalism is more globalised than ever. It is clear that, for its own good, capital needs a global State. Just because it needs it, however, that doesn't mean it will get it.

The serious Trots see the EU as, first and foremost, an imperialist alliance. I think they're wrong. Baboon is closer to the truth, but I think the EU should be seen as primarily a utopian project to create a transnational super-State. Europe is the place where capitalism has most obviously outgrown the bounds of the nation State - and the continent has been devastated by two massive 20th Century wars to prove it. In the wake of WWII, decisive sections of the Western European capitalist class, particularly in France & Germany, decided to attempt the construction of a transnational State in order to overcome the contradictions involved in having conflicting nation States in continuous economic intercourse.

It was a project and one that needed to be done slowly and quietly, so as not to frighten the horses. The last thing they could afford to do was to let the Right wing populists start waving their national flags around, because everything would come apart quicker than you could say Yugoslavia. Two things kept it going. One was the lack of any major economic crisis until 2007 (the crisis in the 1970s can be seen in retrospect as far less severe - the current one has more in common with the 30s). The other was that the Cold War provided Western Europe with an external threat to mobilise against. When the Cold War ended, the countries of Eastern Europe wanted in, for a range of reasons. The most important one was the recoil from Stalinism, which impelled them to idealise the societies of Western Europe and want to align with them instead of with Russia.

The decision to admit Eastern Europe to the EU, however, destabilised it in a number of ways, above and beyond the disappearance of the Cold War enemy.

1. Most importantly, the EU was being massively expanded in size, bringing in huge numbers of people in societies with much lower living standards and levels of economic productivity.

2. The arrival of Eastern Europe wrecked the old balance of power in the EU, propelling Germany into sole leadership instead of the foundation being a Franco-German alliance.

3. The larger number of States in the EU caused a crisis in the EU's governance mechanisms, which could be reacted to be either retreating backwards to a customs union, in which case having over 20 sovereign States was not so much of an obstacle for decision making, or going forward to greater centralisation, in which case the EU would gain a degree of power to discipline its members - inevitably, its smaller and poorer ones. Swept away by post-Cold War euphoria, and driven by Helmut Kohl's insistence that unity was the only way to prevent war, the EU opted to go forward - though still in a slow and haphazard fashion.

100% correct. I should add that the break-up of Yugoslavia taught me that the EU was a utopian project and, even if a transnational super-State was constructed, it would still fracture along national lines if put under sufficient pressure.

Baboon is correct here. Since the breaking of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007, the capitalist classes have not retreated from economic globalisation, but rather have been fortifying themselves politically and militarily. This is a dangerous aggravation of the conflict between the material forces of production and the social relations in which they are bound.

The bourgeois advocates of peace prattle a lot about the way that peaceful trade is the alternative to war. While it is certainly the case that it is sometimes possible to obtain what one needs if trade is permitted, thus obviating the need to go to war to acquire it, this is only the most superficial analysis. In fact, every economic transaction under capitalism is a battle for power, a battle which is resolved according to the relative strength of the parties and expressed in the terms of the resulting contract - principally, but not exclusively, in the price. In the case of international transactions, the two parties to each transaction are backed and regulated by different States. Each capitalist State, acting to support the interests (as it sees them) of its national capitalist class, is therefore put into conflict with the State of the other party. Further, having different national currencies, interest rates and so forth tends to unify the interests of businesses in a given country, but separate them from the interests of businesses in other countries.

Looked at this way, trade is not an alternative to war, but an ever-present temptation to it. In an economic crisis, the temptation to export economic problems can become irresistible. And, in fact, that is just what happenned in Europe in the 1930s. The policies of protectionism and competitive devaluation became known as "beggar thy neighbour". This, of course, is a negative sum game, where the winner gains less than the loser loses. So, if everybody plays it and uses their best strategies, everybody ends up worse off than they were at the start - though some much more so than others.

Capitalism is inherently bound up with the nation State. Though a transnational capitalism is conceivable, there is no realistic path to get there. Only the working class can create a world without borders, without armies and without war. Given that the next World War will most probably start, technologically, where the last one left off, the very existence of the human race depends on us abolishing capitalism before the capitalists blow us all to Kingdom Come.

isn't imperialism/neo-colonialism transnational?

No in meant that the USA includes many "nations"

Native American Tribes, clans in the deep south ETC there are lots of "nations" in the USA

I'm not sure that nations precede states. Was the Iroquois League made up of nations as commonly understood, or is that just how it was explained to/by Europeans? I think 'nations' are more a product, more or less deliberate, of state-building and/or anti-colonial struggle. In addition to the indigenous population, America was populated by Irish, English, Spanish, Italian, German etc settlers until they created themselves as 'Americans' in conflict with the British state (and more or less directly inspired. Iirc Fanon talks about creating national identity through violent anti-colonial struggle. Maybe that's why nations tend to correspond to states?

On that note, I'm not sure there's anything specifically capitalist about colonialism. The spate of direct territorial acquisitions of most of the world by Europe does coincide with early capitalist expansion (and more specifically, the gulf in military capacity that opened up with industrialisation), but it seems quite in tune with pre-capitalist dynamics. I mean, when the Spanish arrived in South America they conquered empires who had themselves conquered empires who had themselves conquered empires. Most of the nation-states of Europe were themselves united by monarchic conquests, something that still gives rise to aspirant nationalisms (Cornish, Basque...). I'd be tempted to say direct colonial plunder is like slavery and the enclosures as part of primitive accumulation but not necessary for ongoing capitalist expansion.

If anything, the specifically capitalist form of conquest is 'nation-building', i.e. creating independent nation-states with a private property economy, rather than direct rule. There was always a lot of guff in the British Empire about raising the savages up to civilisation and capacity for self-government. I'm not sure that squares with the fact it took violent anti-colonial struggles in Ireland, India, America etc to secure national independence, but when you look at modern day Iraq, the objective does seem to be to create a functioning nation-state that allows capital to flow in and develop/exploit the resources and population without the need for expensive direct military occupation.

Which I guess means I'm arguing that capitalism has globalised the nation-state form, rather than any kind of transnational state apparatus. And part of that is because resistance also tends to take the form of nation-building.

How would capitalism have developed if Native Americans had guns?

What happened elsewhere is societies that militarily resisted expanding capitalism were either defeated - like Qing China in the Opium wars - or saw which way the wind was blowing and imitated, launching their own capitalist industrialisation - like Meiji Japan. Some tried the latter but got the former, like Muhammed Ali (not that one!) in Egypt.

I don't think it's just a question of having guns, but having the economic strength (and access to raw materials) to keep churning out more guns, more ammunition, more ships etc. British (and other European states') imperial power was based on a rapidly industrialising capitalist economy. Historically, the only way to match it was to follow suit, so either way, you ended up with capitalism.

at least with the big native Empires and States in Mesoamerica (a term btw. coined by the left communist Paul Kirchhoff) and the Andes during the 16th century, it wasn't guns, iron or horses but diseases and disunity exploited by the Conquistadors which led to their downfall, especially the Inca empire with its stable economic and administrative structures could have withstood the conquest like the Japanese Shoguns in the early 17th century against Portugal if they hadn't been caught by civil war and smallpox before, the supply lines of the Spaniards (unlike e.g. during the plains wars in today's USA during the 19th century) were also far too long and to insecure to wage a continous war against a strong opponent

according to Benedict Anderson, nation states became only necessary for the ruling classes when traditional (e.g. dynastic, religious) models of legitimacy became obsolete during the emergence of capitalism

The tendency is not for states to become more transnational but, whatever the crying needs of capitalism, to become more and more like fortress states or, particularly among the weaker capitalist entities, to break down altogether.

I agree with Ablokeimet above and particularly his link between competition and imperialist war. I think that this is a vital, pressing and relevant issue to the discussion. I also agree with him on the primacy of the national state and its defence for the bourgeoisie. I agree with what he says about protectionism, "beggar thy neighbour", and how these expressions of autarky and division led to the second world war. These same issues of competitive devaluation - where as Ablokeimet correctly says everyone ends up worse off - is unshamedly pursued today by the British and Japanese economies among others.

Part of the reason for the construction of the EEC (European Economic Community) was the protection of Europe's iron, coal, steel and agricultural industries. In this sense it was some sort of attempt at an trans-national economic structure. But it was also set up with US approval, when the latter was the undisputed head of the western bloc, as a further bulwark against Russia and its bloc. The Europeans accepted US discipline over it but important divisions remained between the European "partners" . As the economic crisis deepens this is even more true today where the EU is a whole unstable mess of intrigues, rivalries and centrifugal tendencies.

In a situation where the internationalisation of the economy has reached previously unknown limits and where the bourgeoisie has tried - and failed - to give itself a framework to go beyond the nation state in order to manage the economy, the EEC/EU is an example of that failure.

The EU today involves some major powers whose national interests are absolutely opposed. It also contains more than its fair share of joke countries, dissolute aberrations and unstable "national" entities that came out of the chaos post world-war two and the collapse of the eastern bloc. Even from capitalism's point of view these "national" bodies, mostly run by mafias, are ridden with divisions, prone to demagogy, xenophobia and pogroms.

So, contrary to some positions taken above, there is no real tendency of capitalism towards transnational organisation but sharpeniing antagonisms and rivalry. On the one hand, and we see this in areas like the Middle East and north and central Africa, where there is the tendency for the breakdown of national borders into warlordism, gangsterism and religious fundamentalism (the latter being a particular expression of capitalism's "transnationalism") and borders becoming more unstable and dangerous; and, on the other hand, for the stronger countries, the defence of borders, the strengthening of the fortress state and along with that the strengthening of militarism and imperialism.

Baboon is almost entirely correct in his/her latest post. I would only take a minor exception to the following:

My exception is to say that the various capitalist classes themselves are fully aware of the instability of the system and the dangers inherent in letting them get out of hand. Therefore, they not only engage in the fortification of their own nation States, but they also attempt to build transnational institutions to regulate and, hopefully, solve conflicts. While I agree that, in the end these efforts are going to be unsuccessful, there is no law of history that says you can't try.

I don't know about "logical binding", but I think that it is the competitive character of accumulation that might be taken as a strong counter-force against any such project of a capitalist supra-state.

Yes, that's true. Although competition between capitals also exists within state units. If parliament (in liberal states) can mediate competing capitalist interests into a single 'national interest', in principle it doesn't seem impossible that a transnational body could do something similar.

However the weakness of the EU seems relevant here, I think the EU disposes of something like 1% of GDP whereas nation-states dispose of something closer to 40%. So it doesn't have the resources to smooth out uneven development (e.g. Greece and Germany), which then gives rise to divergences of interests which could pull it, or at least the Eurozone, apart. I can't see a full pan-European state emerging for various reasons, but I think it's unlikely for historical reasons (can't see how we'd get from A to B) rather than logical reasons (incompatibility of capital accumulation and transnational governance).

The difficulty here is that what are accepted as 'nations' are typically those which succeeded in establishing a state (or perhaps, states which succeeded in fostering a sense of national loyalty and belonging?). So transnational states would seem to be excluded by definition. But within the UK there's various nationalisms, which could possibly devolve into independent states - notably Scotland. The old USSR was transnational for a long time (relative to the post-breakup nation-states). Austria-Hungary was a great power until WWI. Belgium's arguably multinational (Flemish, Walloons etc). There's also 'failed nations' all over the place, i.e. nationalist projects without a state (Basques, Cornish, Kurds...). So arguably transnational states aren't that rare.

For example if Spain broke up into independent nation-states - Catalonia, Basque Country, Castille etc - would we retrospectively accept that Spain was a transnational state, doomed to fragmentation? I mean most European states were formed like Spain, by unification of quasi-autonomous entities (duchies, principalities etc), and outside Europe most states were the product of colonialism, with governance imposed regardless of (non-existent) national boundaries (the nation came later, with nationalist liberation movements, sometimes congruous with the colonial state, sometimes breaking it up).

that was my point. Also if I say that I have a national identity does that make me the smallest stateless nation?

As much as i dislike George 6 allotments Monbiot (who aspires to something like a trans-national state, albeit on capitalist Keynesian lines) he is at least aware of the power and wealth that the state can bring in the way of protectionism. To suppose that there are enough unusually idealistic industrialists out there prepared to forego the benefits of state protectionism would be an eye opener, though you do find this talk quite a bit from some quarters (though usually when they want to thump rivals).