it is not the state in general that must be analysed but "the specific political organisation of the world market in many states" . . . the role of the state in question in its specific relationship with the world market and with other states must always be included in the analysis from the outset. 63
Few people have followed through such attempts to develop such insights into a rigorous interpretation of the world system. But some of their presuppositions are taken for granted in everyday ways of talking and writing about the world. People habitually speak of "the economic interests" of this or that state, of how one is doing compared with another, of the "profits" of one or other country. So the recent very useful account of capitalism since the Second World War by Robert Brenner emphasises the interactions of "US capitalism", "Japanese capitalism" and "German capitalism", with negotiation by states playing a central role.64 There is the implication of a tight alignment of interest between a particular national state and a particular sector of the international capitalist system.
The view of national states as wholly congruent with "national" capitals is a big oversimplification, especially in today's world, with multinational corporations operating in scores of countries, as we shall see later. But this does not mean that states simply stand at "arms length" from particular capitals, or that states do not act at the behest of particular nationally based groupings of capital. They remain tied to them in complex ways.
The genesis of the capitalist state
A starting point for understanding this can be found in the relationship between the development of modern states and capitalism. This was not dealt with explicitly by Marx, and it was Engels who first did so in a manuscript written after Marx's death and not published until 1935. His studies led him to conclude that as merchants and tradespeople of the towns (the "burghers" ) grew in importance at the end of the Middle Ages they allied themselves with the monarchy against the rest of the feudal ruling class: "Out of the confusions of the people that characterised the early Middle Ages, there gradually developed the new nationalisms"-and the beginnings of national states very different to the earlier political structures.65
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