Terry McDonough wrote: > While state policy (as a first approximation) is in service of > capital, there is no reason why this should be local capital > exclusively and no necessity the policies pursued should be > nationalist in character. This issue revolves around how one conceptualizes the mechanisms through which capital "controls" the state. I tend to believe that the main route through which capital controls democratic states involves hegemonic processes (Gramscian) that leads the majority (non-capitalists) to internalize the goals of capital. If this is true, then IF international capital is to control national states they must succeed in taking over control of the hegemonic processes with a nation away from purely national capital. This is likely hard to do. The more international capital attempts to do this, the more national capital will tend to organize hegemonic processes around the notion of "our nation versus others". Or, perhaps nationalist thinking is so well ingrained within national cultures due to past hegemonic processes (via a path dependency sort of process) that international capital will likely be unable to overcome this key fact. Perhaps this is one possible reason for the rise of international organizations/structures/quasi-states which international capital can control more directly without getting involved in mucking around with domestic hegemonic processes. Perhaps this is also why these international quasi-state structures tend to be "technocratic" and/or "rule guided" (like WTO) so that democracy (and hence the need for hegemonic processes) does not rear its ugly head at the international level. Eric .. Eric Nilsson Department of Economics California State University San Bernardino, CA 92407 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
