ABSTRACT
In the wake of the financial crisis, which hit Mexico in 1995 and then spread to Asia and elsewhere in 1997, the neoliberal model of capitalist development has been seriously tarnished, abandoned by all except for a few ideological diehards. One of the biggest myths propagated in the double ideological turn towards a discourse on globalization and civil society is that of a powerless state, hollowed out and stripped off its functions vis-a-vis the economic development process, prostrate before unbridled global corporate power. In the post World War II period, the nation-state was widely regarded, and generally used, as an instrument for advancing the interests of diverse economic groups and incorporating, by degrees, both the middle and working classes into the development process as well as the political system. In the turn towards what has been termed the 'short twentieth century' Lenin identified five structural features of imperialism.
