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.But even those who are more inclined to oppose the capitalistsystem itself may assume that the more global the capitalist economybecomes, the more global the political organization o f capital will be.So, if globalization has made the national state increasingly irrelevant,anti-capitalist struggles must move immediately beyond the nationstate, to the global institutions where the power of global capitaltruly lies.We need to examine these assumptions critically, but not becauseanti-capitalist movements are wrong in their conviction that transnational corporations are doing great damage and need to bechallenged, or that the WTO and the IMF are doing the work ofglobal capital - which is certainly true.Nor are these movementswrong in their internationalism or their insistence on solidarityamong oppositional forces throughout the world.We need to scrutinize the relation between global capital and national states because Internati onal i zati on of Cap i tal i st Imper ati v es 1 3 9even the effectiveness of international solidarity depends on anaccurate assessment o f the forces available to capital and thoseaccessible to opposition.It should be clear by now that, just as globalization is not a trulyintegrated world economy, it is also not a system o f declining nationstates.On the contrary, the state lies at the very heart o f the newglobal system.As we saw in Chapter 1, the state continues to play itsessential role in creating and maintaining the conditions o f capitalaccumulation; and no other institution, no transnational agency, haseven begun to replace the nation state as an administrative andcoercive guarantor o f social order, property relations, stability orcontractual predictability, or any o f the other basic conditionsrequired by capital in its everyday life.Just as the state is far from powerless, multinational corporationsare far from all-powerful.Scrutiny o f corporate operations is likelyto reveal that multinational enterprises are not particularly good atmanaging their international operations , and that profits tend to belower, while costs are higher, than in domestic operations.5 Theseenterprises have very little control over their own internationaloperations, let alone over globalisation.Any success such companieshave had in the global economy has depended on the indispensablesupport o f the state, both in the locale of their home base andelsewhere in their multinational network.The state, in both imperial and subordinate economies, stillprovides the indispensable conditions o f accumulation for globalcapital, no less than for very local enterprises; and it is, in the finalanalysis, the state that has created the conditions enabling globalcapital to survive and to navigate the world.It would not be toomuch to say that the state is the only non-economic institution trulyindispensable to capital.While we can imagine capital continuing itsdaily operations if the WTO were destroyed, and perhaps even 1 4 0 Empi re of Capi talwelcoming the removal of obstacles placed in its way by organizationsthat give subordinate economies some voice, it is inconceivable thatthose operations would long survive the destruction of the local state.Globalization has certainly been marked by a withdrawal of thestate from its social welfare and ameliorative functions; and, formany observers, this has perhaps more than anything else createdan impression of the state s decline.But, for all the attacks on thewelfare state launched by successive neoliberal governments, it cannot even be argued that global capital has been able to dispensewith the social functions performed by nation states since the earlydays of capitalism.Even while labour movements and forces on theleft have been in retreat, with so-called social democratic governments joining in the neoliberal assault, at least a minimal safetynet o f social provision has proved to be an essential condition ofeconomic success and social stability in advanced capitalistcountries.At the same time, developing countries that may in thepast have been able to rely more on traditional supports, such asextended families and village communities, have been under pressure to shift at least some o f these functions to the state, as theprocess o f development and the commodification of life havedestroyed or weakened old social networks - though, ironically, thishas made them even more vulnerable to the demands o f imperialcapital, as privatization o f public services has become a condition ofinvestment, loans and aid.Oppositional movements must struggle constantly to maintainanything close to decent social provision.But it is hard to see howany capitalist economy can long survive, let alone prosper, without astate that to some extent, however inadequately, balances the economic and social disruptions caused by the capitalist market and classexploitation.Globalization, which has further undermined traditionalcommunities and social networks, has, if anything, made this state Internati onal i zati on of Capi tal i s t Imperati ves 1 4 1function more rather than less necessary to the preservation o f thecapitalist system.This does not mean that capital will ever willinglyencourage social provision
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