Neither do international mergers show that the importance of states is declining. Part of their rationale is for a multinational to be able to extend its influence from its home state to other states. US and Japanese firms invest in West European countries so as to be able to "jump" national boundaries and so influence the policy of these states and the European Community from within: hence the spectacle in the early 1990s of US multinationals like Ford and General Motors lobbying European governments for measures to restrict the import of Japanese cars; hence also the sight of Japanese car firms negotiating for subsidies from the British state to set up car assembly plants. The giant company does not end its link with the state, but rather multiplies the number of states-and national capitalist networks-to which it is linked. The continued importance of such connections is shown most vividly during financial and economic crises. For states alone can marshal the resources to stop a giant firm or bank going bust-and pulling down with it whole industrial or financial complexes. The history of such crises since the early 1970s has been a history of states bailing out stricken corporations or putting pressure on some firms for "lifeboat operations" to keep others afloat. Because the period of globalisation has been one of much greater crises than the post-war decades, the reliance of corporations on governments for such rescues has been much greater. As we will see in the next chapter, the transformation of the credit crunch of 2007 into the great banking crash of 2008 showed how great that reliance had become. The overall conclusion has to be that corporations, whether multinational or other, do not regard a state which will defend their interests as some afterthought based on nostalgia for the past, but an urgent necessity flowing from their present day com petitive situation. The successor to the state capitalism of the mid-20th century has not been some non-state capitalism but rather a system in which capitals rely on "their" state as much as ever, but try to spread out beyond it to form links with capitals tied to other states. In the process, the system as a whole has become more chaotic. It is not as if individual firms have simple demands that they merely put on individual states. As a firm operates internationally, one of its divisions can establish relations with a particular state and its associated complex of capitals, even while other divisions of the same firm can be establishing other relations
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