State and Capital - HEINRICH-StateCapital-2004.pdf

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• the point is not the conquest of corre- sponding territories so much as the “organization” of trade and its condi- tions: calculable extraction and secure transportation, the mode of price formation, and the currency in which trade is conducted

• The opportu- nity for action of each state is limited by the actions of all other state

• f one describes the state assertion of the capitalist general interest at an international level by means of economic, political, or mili- tary pressure against other countries as imperialism, then imperialism is no longer a particular stage in the development of capitalism; rather, every bourgeois state is imperialist within the limits of possibility, but then the term “imperialism” really doesn’t say very much

• second, the conception of the state as an instrument of the ruling clas

• conomic structure of society as “the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure”

• The conclusion was often drawn that the economic “base” essentially determines the political “superstructure”

• “neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by them- selves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life”

• every phenomenon of the “superstructure” must have a correspond- ing cause in the “base.” This simple reduction of things to economic causes is called economism

• tate as independent from all economic relations

• state and law cannot be grasped by themselves, but must always be examined against the background of eco- nomic relations.

• e state is neutral with regard to social classes: imperative is the equality of citizens before the law and the obligation of the state to serve the common welfare

• Usually state measures exist that benefit the poorer stratums of the population

• such measures as mere concessions, a means of pacifying the op- pressed and exploited

• In bourgeois-capitalist society, economic exploitation and political rule diverge

• Economic and political rule were not yet separate in pre-bourgeois societies:

• omination of slaveholders or feudal lords

• political power as well as a relationship of economic exploitation

• Economic domination therefore no longer has a per- sonal character;

• l members of society behave like owners of pri- vate property

• As the rule of law, the bourgeois state treats its citizens as free and equal owners of private property