Globalization and the

State: A Note on
Joachim Hirsch
WERNER BONEFELD
reface Globalization has become an organizing term

P of political-economic inquiry since the late 1980s.

Yet its precise meaning remains unclear. Generally,
however, it is assumed that globalization is an all-pervasive
force in the modem world, and that the idea of a cohesive
and sequestrated national economy and domestic society no
longer holds. Instead, we are witnessing the creation of a
truly global economy and society where everyday life is
dependent on global forces beyond the regulative power of
the national state.
Joachim Hirsch's "Globalization of Capital, Nation-States
and Democracy" (SPE 54) supplies a welcome departure
from mainstream globalization orthodoxy. While his argu-
ment is not particularly unconventional, his account com-
bines an analysis of the impact of globalization with a
reconceptualization of a politics of emancipation. It is for
this reason that his contribution needs to be taken seriously
and its theses and arguments need to be examined in a thor-
ough manner.

Introduction My assessment expresses a dissenting view-

point.! It is far from easy to attempt to synthesize Hirsch's
argument. His contribution to SPE is a very condensed sum-
mary of his recent book, Der nationale Wettbewerbsstaat.s
In both publications, he develops his argument somewhat
cautiously. At the same time, he stresses the devastating and
catastrophic impact of globalization. This, and the complex-
ity of his position, make it very difficult to assess his con-
tribution.

Studies in Political Economy 58, Spring 1999 161

Studies in Political Economy

His notion that the national state has been "hollowed out"
focuses this difficulty.fHe argues this in three ways. First,
from a post-Fordist analytical perspective, he argues that
the "state form" is determined by the "needs" of the accu-
mulation regime and he identifies the way in which the post-
Fordist state has adjusted to the requirements and challenges
of globalized capital. At the same time, however, he argues
similar to Held4 that previous state-centred strategies of de-
mocratization are outmoded and rendered obsolete. This sec-
ond view suggests that globalization has tipped the balance
against the ailing "democratic" state and that a democratic
movement would be well able to redress this loss of national
democratic control over capital by making democracy a tran-
snational affair. Third, with the neo-Gramscian school of
international political economy.> Hirsch argues that the na-
tional state has not come to an end but, rather, it has been
transformed. In this view, the state was, in the past, able to
regulate its national economy but since the onset of the capi-
talist crisis in the early 1970s, the state has been interna-
tionalized by adapting to the exigencies of the world
economy. This led to a greater role for more market-oriented
state apparatuses and a new form of consensus formation
between these and non-governmental international institu-
tions such as the IMF. In this view, the state is actively
involved in adjusting the national economy to global capital
requirements.
Each of these theoretical perspectives poses quite a dif-
ferent view on the "hollowing out of the state" thesis. The
first perspective suggests that the state is powerless vis-a-vis
economic relations; it merely responds passively to a Fordist
or post-Fordist economy and provides the political "func-
tions" adequate to economic "needs." The second suggests
that the democratic state was powerful in the past but has
become powerless because of globalization and that democ-
ratization adequate to the new reality of capital would redress
the imbalance. The third argues that the state has not been
hollowed out but that it is, in fact, actively involved in regu-
lating capital/labour conflicts through the internationaliza-
tion of state functions. Hirsch's account endorses each of
these views but his argument develops none of them in a

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concise manner. Hence my note of caution: I am aware that

my critique might well be subjected to the inevitable riposte
of having misread his contribution. If one wants a debate,
however, one has to start somewhere.

The Crisis of Fordism and Post-Fordlsm Hirsch identifies

the capitalism of the Twentieth Century as Fordism. There
is no need here to detail his analysis of Fordism; suffice to
say that it follows his earlier work on this topic closely. In
the context of this paper, the connection between the crisis
of Fordism and the emergence of globalization is crucial.
Following the argument in his book, Fordism is said to have
been undermined by the emergence of a structural crisis of
accumulation in the late 1960s/early 1970s (1995, p. 84).6
The core of this crisis is identified as a combination of a
structural reduction of capital profitability in metropolitan
countries and a growing destabilization of international
mechanisms of regulation which impressed itself upon, and
reinforced, the crisis of individual national states. The crisis
of Fordism is also seen to be a crisis of credit and finance.
He argues that Taylorism was exhausted, leading to the "ten-
dency of the rate of profit to fall" at the same time as Fordist
counter-tendencies were too weak to reverse the fall in the
rate of profit. This exhaustion led not only to a decline in
the rates of profit but also to an increase in finance capital
(1995, pp. 84-5). With the help of neo-liberalism, finance
capital liberated from production forced the deregulation and
flexibilization of the capital relation, supplying the finance
for productive capital to move around the globe in search
of profitable locations. In addition, "an essential factor con-
tributing to the final demise of the Fordist system was the
inter-nationalization of capital," leading to erosion of na-
tion-state regulation (1991, p. 41).
The "flexibilization" of capital relations on a global scale
is seen to be based on the emergence of multinational en-
terprises that, for Hirsch, are not only footloose but also
dominant actors in the world market scene.s For him, these
companies seek the most favourable conditions for direct
economic gains and their world-wide sourcing activities are
seen to build the foundations of an extended world economy

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through which the profitability of international capital may

be established and secured."
Hirsch's analysis is not concerned with the contradictory
constitution that the dissociation between monetary accu-
mulation and productive accumulation presents. The capital
relation is not conceived in terms of the capital-labour re-
lationship but, rather, in terms of a self-relation between
capital and capital. As a consequence, the crisis-ridden dis-
sociation between monetary accumulation and productive ac-
cumulation is not appreciated.f For Hirsch, the contradiction
is not that between labour as the source of value and the
monetary accumulation of wealth-an accumulation that
credits the future exploitation of labour with debt because
the exploitation of labour does not supply the values relative
to the accumulation of wealth represented by monetary ac-
cumulation.
Thus, the globalization of capitalist competition is seen
as an increase in the power of capital over the national states,
rather than as a manifestation of capital's crisis of accumu-
lation? and shows capital's inherent ability to overcome a
crisis of productivity (1995, p. 180). Whether the crisis of
productivity has really been overcome is, of course, still a
very contentious issue and it might well be argued that
Hirsch is guilty of confusing capital's self-presentation with
reality. Yet while globalization appears to have provided a
resolution to the crisis of Fordism, post-Fordism entails a
new crisis dynamic insofar as the "flexibilization of capital
reinforces international competition and, in doing so, simul-
taneously undermines the existing relationship of power,
domination and dependency" (1997, p. 42). Post-Fordist glo-
balization fosters state-versus-state economic competition
indicating the dynamic of the post-Fordist structural contra-
diction and its potential for crisis. Again, the "labour ques-
tion" appears to be insignificant for capitalist development
and its crises. In sum, Hirsch's work lacks a critique of the
political economy of capital. Money capital and productive
capital are merely seen in terms of a competitive relationship
whose common foundation, the value-creating power of la-
bour, falls outside Hirsch's conceptual work and is replaced
by what he identifies as structural contradictions.

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The National Competition State Hirsch sees globalization

as the economic-political project ofneo-liberalism, a project
whose promise of prosperity remains unfulfilled (p. 45).
Neo-liberalism's project of globalization is said to have
started in the United States of America after the breakdown
of the system of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s. US-capi-
talism is said to have set upon liberalizing international trade
and opened up new spaces for investment to regain com-
petitiveness particularly in relation to Japan (1995, p. 85).
Globalization, for Hirsch, undermines the state-centred
form of accumulation and regulation under Fordism: capital
is seen to have "de-nationalized" itself. The flexibilization
of the capital relation that facilitated the international op-
eration of capital, "points to the ability of capital to transcend
national borders in search of the most favourable conditions
for direct economic gains, and the highest possible margin
of profit" (1997, p. 41). Fordism was characterized by a
relatively contained economic and social space (1995, pp.
94-5). Post-Fordism is defined by its contrast to Fordism:
the post-Fordist accumulation of capital is global.
For Hirsch, then, globalization undermines the ability of
the Fordist state to regulate "its" economy in a comprehen-
sive and coherent way through money and law (1995, p.
199). He uses Reich's metaphor of the "one national boat"
(1997, p. 46) to indicate the inclusive character of Fordism.
The "national boat" is no more because capital's global ex-
tension and its search for profitable conditions beyond the
national state has transformed the state into a competition
state whose primary concern is to secure its territory as a
location for global capital investment.lv For Hirsch, the com-
petition state is characterized by its subordination to the
dictate of securing the national space as a location for capital
investment (locationism). This state seeks to supply, in com-
petition with other states, the right conditions for investment
to cajole globally mobile capital to its shores and then to
retain it there. Thus the "competition state" appears to collide
with conditions of democratic government. Instead of a
democratic project of a comprehensive social and economic
development, the competition state merely adapts to capital
demands and preferences whatever the social and ecological

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bis hier Darstellung

Hirschs Argument costs. The competition state, then, mobilizes all and every-
thing to prepare its national territory and its people in the
"economic war" for capital investment (1995, pp. 109, 155).
The post-Fordist competition state is conceived in terms of
a hyper-liberal state without liberal democratic institutions
and processes. These, for him, appear to have characterized
the social-democratic-Fordist state.
There are a number of problems with this argument. The
notion that the Fordist state was able to provide "relative
homogeneous conditions for economic and social life"!!
begs the question if the state, Fordist or not, is, in fact, able
to regulate the capital relation. Of course, the capitalist state
"regulates" the "economy" through law and money. But it
does so only in a contradictory fashion, reproducing the con-
tradictions of capital in a political form.R Furthermore, as
Poulantzas noted, "institutions or apparatuses do not 'pos-
sess' their own "power" but, rather, express and crystallize
relationships of class power."!3 From this perspective, does
it really make sense to argue that Fordism was typified by
a state whose concern was the creation of a "one national
boat?" Bienefeld's critique of Reich shows, with devastating
force, the sheer absurdity of the concept of a one-national
US American boat, and Mishra argues convincingly against
ideal type conceptions of the development and restructuring
of the Western-European welfare states.H These works throw
a spanner into the conception of the Fordist state whose
priority was domestic welfare and a policy of full employ-
ment. Hirsch's conception of Fordism abstracts from the his-
torical development of capitalism post 1945 and provides
an image of post-Fordism that rests on a rigid contrast be-
tween Fordism and post-Fordism; while in post-Fordism, the
ability of the national state to regulate the economy in a
socially responsible way is hollowed out, the Fordist state
is characterized by its ability to have done just that.
Second, in his book, Hirsch argues his case against the
background of the German political economy. This has ob-
vious limitations for his conception of globalization. Look-
ing, for example, at the "British national economy,"
"globalization" has always been its main characteristic and,
in Hirsch's Own view, the "era" of Fordism was based On

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the global reach, or hegemony, of the United States of Amer-

ica. It seems, thus, that his characterization of Fordism as
a national project of capitalist accumulation and of post-
Fordism as a global project of capitalist accumulation is not
only schematic but, also, in contradiction to his own con-
ception of Fordism. Were one to espouse the notion of
Fordism in an uncritical fashion, one would have to con-
clude, as indeed he does, that it was, in fact, a global system
based on the global reach of American production methods,
American-based multinationals and, of course, the US Ameri-
can currency: the dollar. Indeed, the term Fordism, at best,
indicates "globalization," namely of Fordist principles.
This leads us to ask "when was Fordism?" Since condi-
tions were dire during post-war reconstruction of the 1950s
(1995, p. 83ft), and since Fordism went into crisis by the
late 1960s, Hirsch seems to suggest that the golden era of
Fordism was the 1960s. The 1960s, however, witnessed a
liberalization of the global relations of exchange and trade.
The laissez-faire principle of the post-war world was realized
only gradually during the 1950s; full convertibility of other
currencies with the dollar, one of the pillars of the Bretton
Woods system, was achieved in 1958 and under Kennedy
in the early 1960s, GATT negotiations to reduce commercial
tariffs-that is, to liberate international trade-became the
centrepiece of international economic policy. Furthermore,
Hirsch argues that in post-Fordism, multinational companies
have become determining actors forcing national states to
adapt to their demands and requirements. There had, how-
ever, already been a major increase in the internationalization
of trade, investment, and finance capital in the 1950s and
1960s. It was in the 1950s that the total out-flow of private
and official capital reached a peak. The expansion of US-
based multinationals declined during the so-called golden age
of Fordism. This, however, was compensated by the greater in-
ternationalization of European and Japanese firms from the
mid-1960s onwards.l> It was not only productive capital that
"internationalized" during and before the golden age of Fordism.
Banks also "globalized," particularly US-American banks dur-
ing the 1960s. British banks were already operating on a
global scale since the colonial period of British imperialism.

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Trade liberalization, as Brett reports, began in earnest during

the 1960s. These developments led Murray to argue about
a growing "territorial non-coincidence" between an increas-
ingly interdependent global economic system and the na-
tional state. Others, for example Kindleberger, posed the
question of whether "the national state is just about through
as an economic unit."16 Kindleberger's view appears to echo
Hirsch's conception of the post-Fordist competition state.
In contrast to Hirsch, however, Kindleberger's focus is on
the 1960s which, for Hirsch, presents the golden age of
Fordism.
The argument, then, that events of the 1970s led to a
new type of capitalism, that is, globalization, is misleading.
Following on from the war economies during the Second
World War, substantial "globalization" had already occurred
during the 1950s and 1960s, recouping the terrain lost during
the period of war. Furthermore, the post-war boom occurred
against the background of a stable demand for private in-
vestment, backed up by the national states as lenders of the
last resort. In other words, the so-called Fordist era was not
characterized by the political planning of national capital
accumulation and deficit financing associated with Keyne-
sianism.l? Keynesianism understood as a policy of deficit-
financing of demand occurred from the mid-1970s onwards,
especially during the 1980s. It obtained this during the period
where, according to the schema of Fordism versus Post-
Fordism, it was not scheduled to have appeared.
The uncritical understanding of the period post-1945 leads
to two conclusions. First, post-Fordism is said to pose the
question of survival in earnest leading to the portrayal of
Fordism as a golden past that, however, never was. Second,
the image of a post-Fordist future seems to rely on "pre-
Fordist" conditions-neo-liberalism's struggle to resolve the
persistent contradictions of the world economy against the
background of an accumulation of unserviceable debt, mass
unemployment, social dislocations, low investment, etc.-
provoked social upheavals that led, in some cases, to bar-
baric regimes. This is, in brief, how Polanyi summarizes
the conditions of the early 1930s. Hirsch supplies an image
of globalization that is quite similar to Polanyi's view of

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the 1930s. The difference between the competition state of

the pre-Fordist era and the post-Fordist competition state is
that the latter is subjected to global capital's demands as a
territorially fixed entity whereas the former pre-Fordist-com-
petition state sought to travel with capital by expanding its
territory through war and conquest (1995, pp. 107. 169).
For Hirsch, however, globalization does not by-pass the na-
tional state because, for him, it is "the state itself' that
adopted neo-liberal policies of globalization. This would im-
ply that the state's "regulative" ability has not been made
blinkered= redundant but that it is, rather, emphasized.If
engstirnig Hirsch's argument is blinkered. Fordism is identified as
being regulated by a democratic state. Insofar as post-
Fordism is construed as the opposite to Fordism, the post-
Fordist political regulation merely characterizes the state as
a strong state that provides a forceful backup to the operation
of the free market. This back-up "function" of the compe-
tition state should not be identified, however, as Hirsch ap-
pears to argue, with a loss of the state's ability to intervene
in the economy. Hirsch, himself, argues that the competition
state seeks to mobilize the resources within its territory, in-
cluding its people, to comply with "global" capital's dictate
for profitable locations. For Hirsch, however, this mobili-
zation stands condemned because it does not summon a just
and fair-that is, a socially and ecologically responsible-capi-
talism. Globalization has undermined the national "material
basis [that] can facilitate social and political integration of so-
cieties" (1997, p. 46) and this loss, he charges, has to be re-
couped through a transnational-democratic movement. In short,
the competition state is not hollowed out as such. Although
its scope for intervention is restricted, it is essentially liberal
democracy that has been hollowed out (1997, p. 45).

Globalization and Democratic Renewal Neo-liberalism is

seen as a project of de-democratization effected through glo-
balization. For Hirsch, globalization "liquidates" the basis
of democratic national self-determination (see SPE, p. 51)
and undercuts a politics of social integration. National
governments unleashed the capitalist globalization offen-
sive in order not to dissolve national states but to destroy
Keynesianism and therewith the state-centred mode of

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Fordist regulation (1995, p. 90). Neo-liberalism's globaliza-

tion offensive, then, aims to solve the crisis of Fordism not
only by renewing the foundations of capitalist profitability
through "flexibilization" but, also, by restricting the eco-
nomic costs of democracy. As he argues in his book, the
neo-liberal conception of democracy is based on market-cri-
teria such as efficiency, effectiveness and economy. Democ-
racy in the competition state is merely concerned with filling
out the detail in an effective manner, leaving the grand design
of social-political development to the market. The world
market becomes, then, a means by which national states, on
their own initiative, are compelled to establish low-cost de-
mocracies. Social marginalization and division can thus be
legitimized: there is no alternative to cost-cutting, unem-
ployment, deregulation and wage restraint. Nobody can be
blamed for deteriorating conditions as everything appears
to derive from the invisible hand "personified" by globalized
capital.
Globalization, in short, entails that society is increasingly
fractured on socio-economic lines. This leads Hirsch to assert
that the term "society" is increasingly questionable and prob-
lematic (SPE, p. 46). The inference is that, during Fordism,
"society" was not problematic because it stood for integrated
social relations. Again, his argument appears to suffer from
his schematic contrasting of Fordism and post-Fordism.
From its inception, the term "bourgeois society" has stood
for a class-divided society. Hirsch's notion that the Fordist
one-national society is replaced by a post-Fordist society
that is fractured on socio-economic lines seems to vindicate
this insight and to dismiss it at the same time. Furthermore
for him, post-Fordist social divisions are summoned to in-
dicate the degree of repression "sections" of "society"--es-
pecially the "neglected" (SPE, p. 45}--might face. The social
conflicts that these divisions are able to provoke are merely
those of an repressive and "uncivil kind" such as "neo-ra-
cism." There is, however, one exception to his distrustful
assessment of the political economy of social conflict under
conditions of globalization: the Mexican Zapatistas. Their
struggle, he argues, shows that neo-liberalism is inherently

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weak and that democratization is urgently required (1995,

pp. 204-5).
Concerning his proposals for a democratic renewal,
Hirsch argues that "national politicians are no longer in a
position to solve the economic, social and ecological prob-
lem" (SPE, p. 51), that the basis of national democratic self-
determination is undermined (SPE, p. 44), and that the
"traditional form of a national state-centred reform policy
along social democratic lines has become antiquated" (SPE,
p. 52). Yet while he seems to say that the national state is
no longer adequate as a framework for political practice, he
maintains that only the national state "can offer the terrain
upon which democratic self-determination can begin to de-
velop" (SPE, p. 51). This is because a "world society based
on democratic political institutions does not exist" (ibid.).
He seeks to resolve the contradiction between the nation
state as, on the one hand, a terrain for democratic renewal
and, on the other, as a redundant unit by arguing that de-
mocracy has to be sought simultaneously at all levels and
that the movement for democracy has to operate both within
"and if necessary against the prevailing political institution"
(SPE, p. 53). The national state, then, seems to offer some
sort of opportunity structure however corrupted and com-
promised by global forces. Furthermore, "local" democrati-
zation processes and "world citizenship" do not stand in
contradiction to one another; rather, they necessitate one an-
other (SPE, p. 56). In the last instance, the demand for demo-
cratic renewal is directed at putting into question the
"capitalist state form: the national state" (SPE, p. 52).
This politics of democratic emancipation is not a "class
strategy" but a citizenship effort. Hirsch charges, rightly,
that the debate on globalization ignores human beings. As
he puts it, "one barely acknowledged side-effect of the glo-
balization of capitalism is the fact that human beings have
been principally removed from the debate. They remain im-
prisoned within the parameters of the nation-state, which,
in turn, serves as a precondition for the disposability of a
cheap labour force and congruent differentiated expressions
of 'locational politics'" (SPE, p. 47). Referring to their
plight, he focuses, rightly, on the form-determined role of

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the state as an enforcer and guarantor of the bourgeois forms

of equality and freedom, and this would mean the treatment
of human productive power as a labouring commodity. His
argument, however, remains silent on capitalist command
over labour in the production process. Indeed, in his pro-
posals for democratic renewal, capitalist social relations ap-
pear to lose their exploitative character. As he sees it,
democratic self-determination "can begin to develop in jux-
taposition to the global rule of economic mechanisms" (SPE,
p. 51).
What is to be understood by "economic mechanisms?"
The implication seems to be that global capital's devastating
socio-economic rule is such only because ofneo-liberalism's
flexibilization of the capital relation. Would it be too far-
fetched to conclude that Hirsch's proposals aim at a rationale
organization of capitalist social relations to meet the social
needs of the citizens of the world? And what of the working
class? The national state, as he rightly argues, "still governs
over the labour force" (SPE, p. 47).19 This "by no means
minor" activity of the nation state constitutes the "decisive
basis of valorization of capital" (SPE, p. 48). Despite this
insight, his argument is constructed such that the only issue
is whether democraticization might secure the guarantee of
human rights. In short, while commendable, his espousal of
human rights remains abstract unless, of course, one were
to argue, as he seems to do, that the treatment of human
activity as an exploitable resource during a part of the day
does not mark the whole daily activity of human social prac-
tice. There is no reason to assume that such a differentiation
can be drawn.

Conclusion There is no doubt that governments invoke the

language of globalization to legitimate the attack on the eher das eine
working class. Is this attack a consequence of the hollowing oder das andere
out of democracy or what is creating it? The answer to this
question is important. The first part of the question suggests
that democracy has lost out because capital has globalized,
leaving the state with no means of continuing on the national
democratic path of socio-economic development. The answer
to the second part is different. Here the state is actively
pursuing a politics of "de-democratization," rendering the

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state not only strong and capable but also directly involved
in the managing of the "labour question." It also suggests
that the state does so by trying to insulate itself from the
social consequences of its policies through the depoliticiza-
tion of policy-making.s'' In Hirsch's account, both answers
are affirmed. Yet the second is of little consequence to his
analysis because the resolution to economic crisis has been
effected by globalization. His emphasis falls on the first
part of the answer: de-democratization is conducive to the
survival of national states within the global world of "foot-
loose" capital.
De-democratization, then, is not seen as a "class politics."
Rather, it seems to mean that the "state" no longer has the
ability to respond in a democratic fashion to the social and
ecological consequences of capital's crisis resolution. Social
demands, the human rights of citizens and calls for ecologi-
cal protection appear cut-off from previously existing chan-
nels of democratic influence and expression. In this way,
Hirsch's analysis emphasizes democracy's reforming poten-
tial to cope with the social, economic, and ecological con-
sequences of capitalism's "economic mechanisms." Is it
really possible to overcome ecological destruction, to secure
human dignity and to achieve democratic self-determination
without touching relations of exploitation and therewith ana-
lyzing relations of class? The solution to ecological destruc-
tion is not just a question of the relationship between nature
and Man but, rather, a question of the relationships between
the human beings themselves, and that would imply the over-
coming of relations where humans exploit humans for the
sake of an accumulation of abstract wealth.

Notes

1. For a class-based analysis of so-called globalization, see W. Bonefeld

and J. Holloway (eds.), Global Capital, National State and the Politics
of Money (London: Macmillan, 1995).
2. J. Hirsch, Der Nationale Wettbewerbsstaat (Berlin: Edition ID-Archiv,
1995). Given this, I will draw upon both this and his 1997 article
in SPE 54 in discussing his viewpoints, prefacing page references
by the publication dates to make clear the particular source to which
I am referring,

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Studies in Political Economy

3. The following part draws on P. Burnham, "Globalization: states, mar-

kets and class relation," Historical Materialism I (1997).
4. D. Held, Democracy and Global Order (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).
5. See R. Cox, "Social Forces, States and the World Orders," in R.
Keohane (ed.), Neo-Realism and its Critics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986); and R. Cox, "Global Perestrioka," in R.
Miliband and 1. Panitch (eds.), Socialist Register 1992, (London:
Merlin, 1992).
6. He argues that these companies operate worldwide but then moderates
his view by suggesting that we witness a regionalization of the world
among the three centres of Europe, North America, and East Asia.
F or an insightful assessment of the notion that multinational corpo-
rations are footloose, see P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization
in Question (Cambridge: Polity, 1996) and W. Ruidrok and R. van
Tulder, The Logic of International Restructuring (London: Routledge,
1995).
7. For a seminal critique of approaches that identify "capital" with spe-
cific capitalist interests or capital enterprises, see: S. Clarke, "Capital,
Capital Fractions and the State," Capital & Class 5 (1978).
8. On this: E. Mandel, Die Krise (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag,
1987) and W. Bonefeld, The Recomposition of the British State during
the 1980s (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1993).
9. Although an argument premised on analogies is not a fruitful exercise,
Polyani's The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944)
assessment of the inter-war period offers most instructive insights
into capitalist crisis and "globalization." See also B. Eichengreen,
Globalizing Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) on
the history of global monetary systems; S. Clarke, Marx S Theory of
Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1994) on Marxist theories of (global)
capitalist crisis; and M. Rukstadt, Macroeconomic Decision Making
in the World Economy (London: Dryden, 1989) on the politics of
(national) political decision making in the world economy, especially
his discussion on the inter-war period.
10. On the competition state see also P. Cerny, The Changing Architecture
of Politics (London: Sage, 1990). The clearest conception of the state
as a competition state has been provided by D. Ricardo, On the Prin-
ciples of Political Economy and Taxation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, [1821] 1995), p. 39: "if a capital is not allowed to
get the greatest net revenue that the use of machinery will afford
here, it will be carried abroad" leading to "serious discouragement
to the demand of labour."
II. J. Hirsch, "Nation State, international regulation and the question of
democracy," Review of International Political Economy 2/2 (1995),
p.269.
12. See S. Clarke, Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State
(Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1988) and S. Clarke, "The Global Accu-
mulation of Capital and the Periodisation of the State Form," in W.
Bonefeld et al. (eds.), Open Marxism Vol. I (London: Pluto Press,
1992).
13. Quoted in P. Burnham "Globalization ... ," p. 157. Burnham is quoting
from N. Poulantzas, "L'mternationalisation des Rapports Capitalistes
el l'Btat-Nation, Les Temps Monderes," (February, 1973).

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14. R.B. Reich, The Work of Nations (Vintage, New York, 1991); M.
Bienefeld, "Is a Strong National Economy a Utopian Goal at the End
of the Twentieth Century," and R. Mishra "The Welfare of Nations,"
both in R. Boyer and D. Drache (eds.), States Against Markets (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1996).
15. On this: R. Murray "The Internationalisation of Capital and the Na-
tional State," New Left Review 67 (1971); E.A. Brett, The World
Economy since the War (London: Macmillan, 1985); E. Mandel,
Europe versus America (London: New Left Books, 1970).
16. C.P. Kindleberger, American Business Abroad (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1969), p. 207.
17. See for example A. Glyn, "Social Democracy and Full Employment,"
New Left Review, 211 (1995).
18. On this: E. Helleiner, States and the Re-emergence of Global Finance
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); G. Epstein, "International
Capital Mobility and the Scope for National Economic Management,"
in R. Boyer and D. Drache, States Against Markets, (1994).
19. On this issue in relation to the debate on globalization see: L. Panitch
"Globalization and the State," in R. Miliband and L. Panitch (eds.),
Socialist Register 1994 (Merlin, London, 1994).
20. On this in the context of the British national economy: W. Bonefeld
and P. Burnham, "The Politics of Counter Inflationary Credibility in
Britain, 1990-94," Review of Radical Political Economy 30 (1998).

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