ABSTRACT

This chapter constructs a theoretical framework of the developmental state that transcends statism. It identifies a lacuna within the social form critique tradition in relation to the question of the national-global relation by looking at the works of von Braunmühl, Holloway and Bonefeld, and brings to the fore the specific manner in which the global totality of capitalist social relations manifests itself. It extends Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism to the question of statism, and his critique of political economy, as outlined in Grundrisse, to concretising, through the application of further abstractions, the global totality of capitalist social relations. This chapter derives the characteristics of the developmental state not only from its relation to society and class relations at the domestic level but in relation to the position in the world market and the timing of development in world time. It seeks to explain the global social origins of statism and identify the ‘structure-like’ patterns of global capitalist development that give rise to the fetishism of statism itself with the help of key concepts developed by world-system analysis. The chapter finally offers an alternative theorisation of the developmental state in light of a critique of the fetishism of national development.