ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the fact that it is always the reproduction laws of capital which fundamentally determine the social dynamics, and thus also the motion of the apparatus of the State. The national State does not merely react to socio-economic crises, but it also executes them under conditions which it cannot fundamentally influence, and through which capital creates surplus value on the world-market level. The concomitant changes in the function of the State lead to certain shifts in its internal structure, and also modify the shape and outcome of social conflicts and class confrontations. Changes which occur in the course of capitalism's historical development have the effect of moving the State increasingly into the centre of the social context of production and reproduction. Nevertheless, in the face of the developments in the 'reproduction sphere' in the highly developed capitalist countries the chapter finds relatively stable mass-integrative mechanisms in the production sector, mediated by integrative labour-union organizations.
