{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":110,"pdf_page":110,"physical_index":110,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d70bce309cdaa7db3e99ec356f0c83bf44feb1402953e5ef853ea561a0603418"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"which it has grown up. The state and the individual capitals are intertwined, with each feeding off the other.\n\nNeither the state nor the particular capitals can easily escape this structural interdependence. The particular capitals find it easier to operate within one state rather than another, because they may have to profoundly restructure both their internal organisation and their relations with other capitals if they move their operations. The state has to adjust to the needs of particular capitals because it depends on them for the resources-particularly the revenues from taxation-it needs to keep going: if it goes against their interests, they can move their liquid assets abroad. The pressures which different states apply on each other are indispensable for the capitals based within each to ensure that their interests are taken into account when they are operating globally. The existence of rival states is not something produced from outside capitalism nor is it optional for capitalists. It is integral to the system and to its dynamic. Failure to grasp this, as, say, Nigel Harris does, leaves a great hole in any attempt to understand capitalism over the last century.\n\nThe \"autonomy\" of the state and the class nature of its bureaucracy\n\nThe mutual dependence of states and capitals does not, however, mean that states can simply be reduced to the economic entities that operate within them. Those who do the actual running of the state take on functions which competition between firms prevents firms themselves undertaking. They have to mediate between rival capitals, providing judicial systems and overseeing, through central banks, the financial system and the national currency. As Claus Offe put it, \"Since 'capital as a whole' exists only in the ideal sense . . .it requires special guidance and supervision by a fully differentiated political-administrative system\" .76\n\nThe state also has to provide mechanisms for integrating the mass of people into the system: on the one hand the coercive institutions that beat people into submission (police, secret police, prisons); on the other hand the integrative mechanisms that divert grievance into channels compatible with the system (parliamentary structures, frameworks for collective bargaining, reformist, conservative or fascist parties). The proportions in which these two sets of mechanisms operate vary from situation to situation, but everywhere they exist to complement each other. The coercive mechanisms persuade people to take the easier path of integration into the system; the integrative mechanisms provide the velvet glove which conceals the iron hand of state coercive power, so legitimising it. The Italian revolutionary Marxist Antonio Gramsci rightly used Machiavelli's metaphor of the \"centaur\", half animal, half human, to capture the way in which force and consent are combined in the state.77\n\n110\n\nUnderstanding the System: Marx and Beyond","previous_page":null,"next_page":111}